Western Writers Pick Top 100 Westerns
The Wild Bunch? Thumbs Up. The Grapes of Wrath? Come on! And where’s Westward the Women?
By: Henry Cabot Beck 05/01/2009
Last year, a line was drawn in the sane when, as part of their annual summer convention, the Western Writers of America (WWA) decided that they would make a list of 100 Greatest Western Movies of All Time.
Each one of the 600-plus members was asked to choose their 10 favorite pictures, and the votes were then tabulated at the WWA offices in New Mexico.
The list was announced in June 2008. For weeks the Internet was lit up as bloggers and e-mailers and message board posters took a crack at the list; it was one big electronic saloon brawl for folks who take their Oaters to heart.
One thing, though, that was particularly interesting about the list was the variety of the choices the members made; it was nothing if not eclectic. Their picks included silent pictures going back to the beginning (1903’s The Great Train Robbery, at number 100) and movies that were less than a year old (2007’s No Country For Old Men, at number 79).
Much of the list featured contemporary Westerns, including The Last Picture Show (1971) at number 45, Hud (1963) at number 29, The Misfits (1961) at number 78, Thunderheart (1992) at number 66 and Lonely Are the Brave (1962) at number 27. But when you consider that the WWA is a group of writers, it’s not all that surprising that works by authors Larry McMurtry and Edward Abbey (deservedly) made the cut.
They also tossed in a couple of left-field films like The Last of the Mohicans (1992), at number 44, which takes place in the East about a century before the West as we think of it happened. It’s true, though, that Last of the Mohicans feels a bit more like a Western than, say, Gone With the Wind (1939), which didn’t even scratch the list.
The truth is, parsing genre particulars can be fun, in an academic exercise sort-of way, but it’s always going to be ultimately frustrating. The WWA placed 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath at number 46 on the list.
A great movie, a John Ford movie, a movie that follows a family from Oklahoma to California, which is the West, undeniably, but it’s a Depression-era film. A certain floodgate needs looking after. Given the criteria of a film taking place in the West, they could have just as easily added the Lucy-Desi movie The Long, Long Trailer (1953).
The fact is, when a group with the authority of the WWA expands genre boundaries in this way, it’s a bit liberating, but it’s also a little dizzying. The downside is that some more traditional Westerns might lose a deserved place on a list that open. These Westerns are more tightly bound by the traditional conventions, defined in great part by the pre- and post-Civil War West decades, the movies that consist of wagon trains and cattle drives, of Indian wars, dance hall girls, gangs of rustlers, stage and train robbers, lantern-jawed heroes and snake-eyed desperados.
All that aside, it’s interesting that the WWA seems to be, on the one hand, bringing in a few relatively recent movies at the top of the list, while at the same time, holding a few stale chestnuts in venerated positions. I’d be the first to applaud the elevated status of Tombstone (1993) at number 8, Dances With Wolves (1990) at number 5 and Open Range (2003) at number 10, but I might be more comfortable finding them a little farther down the line.
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