For you, who played the best cowboy in a movie western?
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ucme (
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November 1st, 2013
Such a massive group to choose from, makes no difference if they played the good guy or the bandido nastie. Be good if you can select the specific character/movie rather than just the actor in question.
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52 Answers
Clint Eastwood, Josie Wales- no contest. John Wayne is second.
Eastwood.
One of the WORST was Yul Brynner. He was in the Magnificent Seven, and he wasn’t even remotely convincing.
@KNOWITALL Check out my topics, we seem to be in complete agreement, i’ll even forgive that you spelt his name wrong :)
@elbanditoroso Can’t agree, Brynner put in a fine performance, one which he repeated in Westworld.
Oh man….the 90’s film ” Tombstone” with Kurt Russel, Val Kilmer and Sam Elliot…my heart be still. BEST western to come down the old trail in decades
Oooh, I’ll be your Huckleberry Val. lol
@ucme Dang it, sorry. You’ve got excellent taste then.
@Coloma Love it, my husband recites it often.
Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Take a Look. His sidekick, on the left, wasn’t bad either.
Who was the whiny Mexican bad guy, with the scruffy beard that always tried to convince Clint he wasn’t a bad guy, then would pull his gun and Clint would shoot him? He was in 8 or 10 movies. He made the best guy that ever got popped.
Henry Fonda
Charles Bronson
Lee Van Cleef
John Wayne, in the John Ford films – especially The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.
Does Johnny Depp in Dead Man count? (Great movie. My favorite “western” by far.)
Robert Duvall. His character of Gus MacRae in Lonesome Dove, was simply great!
Clint Eastwood. Fantastic actor all round.
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Eastwood, but William Munny in Unforgiven.
Dale Robertson in Wells Fargo. He died in February this year aged 89. R.I.P.
For me they are Randolph Scott and Jimmy Stewart. Both actors made good Westerns with various directors both early and late in their long careers. But it was in the ‘50s, when Stewart teamed with Anthony Mann and Scott with Budd Boetticher, each for five or six movies, when they truly hit their peaks in that genre.
My love of Stewart and Scott goes back of course to my Texas childhood when I saw a lot of Westerns. But it was in my adulthood and had grown to understood movie-making and could really appreciate fine direction and acting that I realized how unique each of these guys’ “adult” Westerns were.
Morgan Woodward , who was mostly known as a supporting actor but every role he ever acted in was memorable especially in the Gunsmoke series with nineteen appearances .
Some may remember him in the original Star Trek series as the renegade Starship Captain Ronald Tracey in ‘the Omega Glory” and as Simon Van Gelder in “Dagger of the Mind” .
He is also often remembered as “Boss” Godfrey who wore the mirror-sunglasses in “Cool Hand Luke” .
Kilmer was fantastic as Doc Holliday, properly good, as was Newman as Butch.
Gene Hackman in both Unforgiven & The Quick & the Dead deserves a mention.
Of course, who can forget Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles? Certainly not me.
Newman and Redford were no slouches as Butch and Sundance.
There is also no better western villain than Lee Van Cleef.
@Blondesjon Agreed, Van Cleef was menacing as fuck, came into acting late too.
Clint Eastwood as the man with no name in The Dollars Trilogy.
As @KNOWITALL said Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales is my all time favorite, although Alex Karras’ Mongo in Blazing Saddles was right up there.
Terence Hill for the funniest cowboy.
Ben Johnson made a great Western hero and villain. Remember him in Shane”?
Don’t forget Bruce Dern in “The Cowboys” with John Wayne.
Quite surprised no one mentioned Jack Palance, not my fave by any means, but still.
@ucme What’cha gonna do boy, just stand there and bleed, I said skin that smokewagon! lol
@Coloma Wow, you use your tongue prettier than a two dollar whore.
@ucme Why thank you ya old coot. ;-)
To quote Pete, all the best cowboys have chinese eyes.
Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven is a revelation, and combined with The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, he is easily the screens greatest cowboy. John Wayne and James Stewart were great, but Clint got game.
It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got, and all he’s ever gonna have.
Holy Shit! I see they are remaking Unforgiven as a samurai film! Here it is
Okay…jump start to the present. I LOVED ” Django Unchained”...not quite a true ” western”....but…awesome film!
@Blondesjon, I loved Newman and Redford as Butch and Sundance but I never bought them as real cowboys, not like some of the others mentioned on this thread. To me, they were just dressed up as cowboys. Don’t get me wrong, they were great in the parts, yet I always felt they were just playing the parts. Great acting, but acting nevertheless.
Boy, this thread has got me fired up!!!
I loved Alan Ladd as Shane, but like Redford and Newman, he just didn’t seem to me like a real cowboy, just duded up like one. For one thing, he was too short, and for another, he didn’t talk how I imagined a gunfighter would talk. But damn he was good (as was everyone else in the film) and it was such a great movie. if you’ve never seen it or haven’t seen it for a while, do.
SHAAAAAANE… COME BACK SHAAAANE.
One little kiss and Feliiiiiina, gooooodbye!
Clint Eastwood. Need more be said? As “Josey Wales” or “The Man With No Name,” in the spaghetti Westerns, he was the best.
Sam Elliott in The Big Lebowski?
@Coloma “Old coot!?!”
Worst cowboy has got to be George dubya, or fucking Billy Ray Cyrus!
I’m glad to see so many votes for Butch and Sundance….
“Aww, come on, Woodcock…..don’t make me blow this up with you still in there…..”
“I am employed by Mr. E.H. Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad…”
“Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch…??”
I’m going to cheat because this isn’t a movie character (not by this actor anyway), but James Garner’s Bret Maverick has always been one of my favorites. I have seen every single episode of the old black and white show.
Nods to those that said anyone from Tombstone. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood. Heath Ledger actually played a believable cowboy.
@ucme -GQ
I like both Clint Eastwood & John Wayne.
My question is why were JW’s pants always too short??
A cowboy herds cows. Is this what you meant by “cowboy”?? Or did you mean gunfighter/gunslinger??
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