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The Legend of the Western MovieSite Index HomeClick to Find Hi-Quality DVDs
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The Western was made epic by George Stevens, King Vidor and William Wyler, tightened by Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher and glorified by Delmer Daves, Raoul Walsh, John Sturges, Henry Hathaway, Andrew V. McLaglen and Henry King, while being variously interpreted by William A. Wellman, Fred Zinnemann, Robert Aldrich, Nicholas Ray, Richard Brooks, Samuel Fuller, Arthur Penn, Martin Ritt, Allan Dwan, Joseph H. Lewis, Tom Cries, George Roy Hill, Don Siegel, John Huston, Marlon Brando, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Robert Altman and even Alejandro Jodorowsky. Maybe my adjectives are stupid, but altogether these are the 34 directors who mainly formed the Western, even if some only directed one Western film.
It is a matter of defining the heroes. William S. Hart, Eastern born, but a true cowboy-Westerner from the 1800s, evolved into Gene Autry, Oklahoma bred, who entered movies at the urging of Will Rogers, singing and setting a code of ethics to help youth develop good character. Gene suspended his career to fight in WWII, and his 'King of the Cowboys' screen title was assumed by Roy Rogers at Republic Pictures where John Wayne also did most of his work. After the war, Gene returned to making 'B' Westerns that were essentially the same as those he'd made before the war, but produced by his own Flying A production company, which made him a millionaire, while John Wayne, working with John Ford and Howard Hawks, and later with Henry Hathaway and Don Siegel, forged his uniquely diversified Western icon that today lives in the image created by Clint Eastwood.
World War II changed the style and content of major Westerns, just as however obtusely it influenced and motivated new creativity in cinema world wide. Ford's 1939 community of Stagecoach evolved into Wellman's divisively tragic Ox Bow Incident (1942), followed by Vidor's tragically romantic Duel in the Sun and Ford's tormented Doc Holliday in the otherwise serene My Darling Clementine, both in 1946. Then came Hawk's epic Red River (1947). In this film John Wayne emerged as the quintessential Western hero, the good, the bad and the ugly, which reached its definitive portrayal with his Ethan Edwards in Ford's The Searchers, nine years later. Meanwhile, we saw Joel McCrea redo High Sierra in Walsh's Colorado Territory (1949); Gregory Peck die in King's The Gunfighter (1950); James Stewart lose his wife in Daves' Broken Arrow (1950) and go looking for revenge in The Naked Spur (1953) and other Mann Westerns; Gary Cooper act out of courage and duty rather than desire in Zinnemann's High Noon (1952); Alan Ladd ride in, fight the fight and ride away wounded in Steven's Shane (1953); Sterling Hayden and Joan Crawford make out in Ray's Johnny Guitar, John Payne overcome false accusation with false endorsement in Dwan's Silver Lode and Cooper and Burt Lancaster shoot it out in Aldrich's Vera Cruz, all in 1954; Robert Taylor go mad and freeze to death in Brook's The Last Hunt and Indian renegade Richard Widmark save the settlers in Daves' The Last Wagon, both in the same year The Searchers appeared, 1956.
By this time, the Western had become very diverse and its heroes very flawed. Besides the film's epic sweep, the sustaining interest of The Searchers lies in tone set by the ambiguous and obsessive John Wayne character. Randolph Scott had been playing laconic roles in Westerns for several years, and in 1956, he teamed with Budd Boetticher for a series of tight, confrontation Westerns, most motivated by a revenge or obsession theme that also embraces all the Mann-Stewart Westerns.
At a certain point, obsession for revenge or obsession of any sort becomes madness. Wayne's Ethan Edwards character influenced many later Westerns, such as Gregory Peck's character in King's The Bravados (1958). Note the difference in John Sturges's portrayal of Wyatt Earp in his 1957 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and ten years later in Hour of the Gun (1967). Somewhat bonkers were Dennis Hopper's young villain in Hathaway's From Hell to Texas (1958), Paul Newman's Billy the Kid in Penn's The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and Anthony Quinn in Dmytryk's Warlock (1959), and even Gary Cooper reflects a peculiar obsessiveness in Mann's Man of the West (1958) and Delmer Daves' The Hanging Tree (1959). Hawk's vastly entertaining Rio Bravo (1959) was the most significant departure from the madness that laced most great Westerns after 1950---indeed, it was the 2nd most popular Western on Sight and Sound's poll in 1992, after The Searchers, racking up identical votes with Ford's My Darling Clementine in the top 50 of all films, (though closely followed by Ford's Stagecoach and Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad & the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West).
However, it was with John Wayne's portrayal in The Searchers that John Ford set a tone for the Western hero that influenced Peckinpah and Leone and nearly every major Western to follow, still echoing in the last two significant Westerns of the 20th Century, Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992) and Cosmatos Tombstone (1995), which is the most entertaining of all the fine Earp-Holliday-OK Corral movies, due to its embracing of today's brutal, fast-moving action complemented by eccentric character portrayals.
The Golden Age of the Western ended in 1962. Gary Cooper died in 1961, with Daves' The Hanging Tree making a suitable denouement to his cowboy career that began in 1925 and gave him stardom in 1929 with Victor Fleming's The Virginian. After 1960, Daves never made another Western nor did Anthony Mann. Budd Boetticher, after his collaborations with Randolph Scott, made one more with Audie Murphy in the late 60s, after spending many years on a bull-fighting film that caused him a mental breakdown, and some think that the Boetticher-Scott Westerns more influcence Clint Eastwood's Westerns than any other director's. A moot point, for present art is always derivitive from the past, whatever the source.
Regardless, great Westerns after 1962 would be more innovative in style, reflecting the influence of international cinema creativity that bloomed in the post WWII 1950s, while paying hommage to their classic predecessors. (There is also the insight that Westerns are reflective of current politics and world situations, none maybe more obvious than Dwan's take on McCarthyism in Silver Lode.
The era ended with four fantastic, summary Westerns. Marlon Brando released One Eyed Jacks in 1961, followed by a triumphant trio in 1962: Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country that not only showed his uniquely formative directing style to a wider audience than The Deadly Companions had the year before, but also served as the sunset saga for two of the screen's Western mainstays, Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea, who 'enters his house justified'--his dying words. David Miller's Lonely Are the Brave presented horse riding cowboy Kirk Douglas battling the forces of modern civilization in what finally amounts to classic tragedy in structural terms, signifying the final gasp of a western life that can never be again. Lastly, John Ford put James Stewart and John Wayne into his own commentary on the death of the Western mystique with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, whose closing statement on the genre of 'we print the legend, not the facts' throws away any concept that the Western film had ever tried to portray the reality of what really happened in the West. Liberty Valance fairly states that the whole genre is based on myth, and the great Westerns to come would only amplify and luxuriate in this concept, even while their characterizations became more naturalistic in line with contemporary cinema screenwriting.
It is significant that only one decent minor Western was released in 1963, after the multitude from the previous dozen years, then in 1964 Sergio Leone's Per un Pugno di Dollari appeared in Italy, with the U.S. release not coming until 1966, titled A Fistful of Dollars, making Clint Eastwood an international star and a new Western icon. Leone's Italian 'spaghetti' Westerns borrowed from the best of his predecessors, while amplyfiying the effect and adding the director's own unique style.
A Fistful of Dollars was a Western version of Akira Kurosawa's Samurai tale Yojimbo (1961), just as Sturges had successfully used Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) to provide the story of The Magnificent Seven (1960). Similarly Martin Ritt's The Outrage (1964) redid Kurosawa's Rashomon (1951). Thus the superb Japanese director became a major influence on the develpment of the American Western. Look at the 45 second, frozen frame final standoff duel in Kurosawa's Sanjuro (1962) sequel to Yojimbo to regard his influence on Leone's style. Leone was a wonderful assimilator of worldly cinema culture, a film giant bending his assimilations much as Shakespeare did his borrowed plots. In Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), he references Ray's Johnny Guitar, Ford's 1925 Iron Horse, uses Ford's Monument Valley setting, plus scene set-ups from The Searchers, Shane and High Noon--Sanjuro's final duel. At the same time, one has to realize that here is a director influenced equally by the Fellini of La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963) and perhaps also by the Stanley Kramer of Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) in his circular camera movement (for which few critics credit Kramer), as well as Truffaut and Goddard and even David Lean, then putting it altogether in a Western. Ennio Morricone's superior music scores, with the whistling motif, might have been inspired by Nelson Riddle's haunting theme from Robert D. Webb's The Proud Ones (1956).
During this tiime there were also excellent transitionary Westerns: Peckinpah's Major Dundee (1965) that muddied the waters with grayish heroes and villains, however badly MGM made the final cut; Brook's The Professionals (1966) playing off a bunch of good bad guys against the bad supposed good guys; Hathaway's Five Card Stud (1968), making a rare Western mystery out of perception and deception; Tom Cries' Will Penny (1968), with Charlton Heston trying to portray a real cowboy's life; George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), with Newman and Redford shooting them up and making a running joke of it all, including their demise; J. Lee Thompson's Mackenna's Gold (1969), with Gregory Peck wanting the loot like everyone else and by chance coming out on top; Hathaway's True Grit (1969), where a drunken, one-eyed Wayne takes the reins in his teeth and blasts away the bad guys.
In 1969, Peckinpah made The Wild Bunch, putting a definitive mark on the genre and additionally applying his own 'end game' to the Western tradition that he saw as expiring in 1913: Holden simply saying, 'Let's go,' followed by the most extraordinary shoot-out ever filmed.
In most all the best Westerns of the 70s & 80s, the central characters were outlaws, or guys beyond the law, and the 'law' itself has been either been portrayed as ineffectual or dishonest or evil or merely a means to an end in either getting the money or revenge, e.g.: Peckinpah's The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) & Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973); Mankiewicz's There Was a Crooked Man (1970); Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971); Don Siegel's The Shootist (1976), John Wayne's final film with James Stewart playing his last Western role, & featuring Ron Howard who has since become a major American director; Lawrence Kasdan's Silverado (1985); and Eastwood's High Plains Drifter (1973), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) & Pale Rider (1985).
The 1990s saw the best, most unique variations on the traditional western with Cosmatos' afore mentioned OK Corral redo Tombstone, Sam Raimi's girl hero The Quick & the Dead & Jim Jarmusche's indescribible Dead Man in 1995, & in 1999 with Uli Edel's spooky, other-worldly Purgatory & Antonia Bird's vampire/zombie Ravenous.
The best westerns of the new century's first decade were fewer & a bit more traditional---to list them all: Dwight Yoakam's much under-rated, Casavette's-style, South of Heaven, West of Hell (2000), HBO's 2003 retro-contemporary, historical 'western-about-the-making-of-a western' by Bruce Beresford And Starring Pancho Villa As Himself, John Hillcoat's ultra-violent, OZ located The Proposition (2006), & David Von Ancken's enthralling, odd pursuit saga Seraphim Falls. 2007 saw the release of two major westerns, James Margold's remake of 3:10 to Yuma, which he'd quoted in his DVD commentary on the excellent CopLand years before, but becoming only transitory entertainment in a contemporary action-thriller style, & Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, probably the most boring, tedious attempt at an "art" western ever made (compare with Wellman's audious Track of the Cat from 1954), while 2008 brought the most recent attempt at making a significant western---Ed Harris's brave, character oriented Appaloosa, which unfortunately becomes slow & mannered on repeat viewings.
Only one great, super western stands out from our new century---Kevin Costner's wonderful Open Range (2003), which may prove historically even a better film than his great Dances with Wolves (1990), which significantly was honored by the first Best Picture Academy Award since Cimarron in 1930. However, no western since Clint's Unforgiven in 1992 has equalled the power of its presentation & statement, rightly called by one esoteric film mag as 'the best western since Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973). And that is sad for the current state & future of the western as cinema art.
From the icons of William S. Hart through Gene Autry, Gary Cooper and John Wayne, James Stewart, Gregory Peck to Clint Eastwood & Kevin Costner, and the most recent esoteric departures from traditional stories & structure, this is the evolution of the American Western film. Right now it is . . . 'searching' (I hope).
Defining the Western
What makes a great Western or any great film in general, regardless of genre?Somehow they resonate more broadly with more people, and continue to do so after years and years, and repeated viewings.
How do we define what is a Western? A perplexing, controversial question, pondered by many, and we tackle now, even considering that perhaps the Western is the easiest of all genres to define.
For me, the Western is defined by style, atmosphere and tone, character portrayal, and mainly by location in space and time.
Generally, a Western is essentially set West of the Mississippi River from the early 1800s through about 1915. It is about conflict and confrontation, wars waged on an individual basis---people overcoming deadly obstacles in the form of other people, creative individualism opposing grouped forces that seek to thwart a person's individualism. Protagonists and antagonists can be on either side of the law, and of any race, white, red, yellow, black or brown, depending on the narrative set-up.
Horses are a primary means of locomotion in a Western, thus Westerns generally have to take place before the automobile became widely used.
The hand gun is a major means of resolving the central conflict. Western protagonists don't say, "I'll call the cops!" or "I'll sue you!" They say: "I'll shoot you!" or simply, "Draw!"
A Western features rugged landscapes and small frontier towns, not developed lands and large cities.
Physical action and conflict, gunfights, hard riding--these are usually necessary elements in any good Western. Not extensive dialogue. Westerns are about doing, not talking.
Westerns can contain humor but are generally serious in tone.
Thus, according to our definitions, we exclude all musical Westerns like:
Fred Zinnemann's super 1955 Oklahoma or less than great ones like Joshua Logan's 1969 Paint Your Wagon (yes, Clint Eastwood sings!) or stylized experiments like George Marshall's 1954 Red Garters.
Also excluded are comedies or spoofs like: Leo McCarey's Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) with Charles Laughton as an English butler transported to the old West, Norman McLeod's Paleface (1948) and Alias Jesse James (1959) and Frank Tashlin's Son of Paleface (1952) all with Bob Hope, Norman Taurog's Partners (1956) with Martin and Lewis, Raoul Walsh's The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958), Elliot Silverstein's Cat Ballou (1965), Burt Kennedy's Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), Mel Brook's wonderful Blazing Saddles (1974) and Hal Needham's The Villain (Cactus Jack) and Robert Aldrich's The Frisco Kid, both 1979.
Although the original TV series was happily inventive on the Western structure, Barry Sonnenfeld's The Wild Wild West (1999) is not only over-the-top Victorian sci-fi and personality comedy, but also rather mediocre entertainment. The only difference between it and the much-maligned but more enjoyable Jeremiah S. Chechik's 1998 film of The Avengers was about 100 years in time.
Westerns with sci-fi or time-travel trappings are excluded, like Gene Autry's The Phantom Empire (1935), Michael Crichton's 1973 Westworld, William Dear's 1982 Timerider and Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future III (1990), or silly stuff like Jim O'Connolly's 1969 Valley of Gwangi where cowboys try to herd dinosaurs.
Why Michael Mann's exquisite 1992 Last of the Mohicans has been called a Western, I don't know, or Ford's 1939 Drums Along the Mohawk. They're pre-Revolutionary War sagas, Eastern settler pieces. Mohicans is about the end of a way of life, that of a particular Indian tribe in the East. At the same time, a movie like Joseph Kane's 1955 The Vanishing American is a Western because it is about a Western tribe from a book by Western writer Zane Grey. Settler confrontations with native inhabitants do not a Western make. Otherwise, one could call Ken Annakin's memorable New Zealand drama Land of Fury (1954) a Western.
Just because a film's location is in frontier America during the 1800s does not mean it is a Western.
However, we class Burt Lancaster's only directorial effort The Kentuckian (1955) as a Western, maybe because it feels like one with its traveling, individualistic hero, who is in the process of going West. But not Clarence Brown's 1946 The Yearling nor Robert Stevenson's 1957 Old Yeller.
Mountain man stories are nearly always Westerns.
Some Civil War movies are Westerns while others are not. Mainly it's a matter of style and content. Victor Fleming's Gone With the Wind (1939) is certainly not a Western, it's a romantic historical saga and domestic drama. Likewise William Wyler's 1956 Quaker oriented Friendly Persuasion is not a Western. However, Andrew V. McLaglen's 1965 Shenandoah is a Western, because James Stewart and his sons do a lot of riding and hold up a train. It's a matter of style. John Ford's 1959 The Horse Soldiers is a Western; John Huston's 1951 The Red Badge of Courage is not.
At the same time, though placed at the very end of the historical time period of the Western, Mexican revolution films are almost always Westerns. Again, it's their style, men fighting in a rugged landscape, which is just an extention of the American West South of the border. Pancho Villa himself was finally shot down while riding in a motor car in 1923, but at least in his movies, he mainly went round on horseback. However, William Dieterle's 1939 Juarez is a political drama.
Here are some superb movies that many class as Westerns but we do not:
George Stevens' Giant (1956), Martin Ritt's Hud (1963) and Peter Bogdonvich's The Last Picture Show (1971) are domestic dramas and family sagas set in the modern West, not Westerns. Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978) is located within the same era as The Wild Bunch, but despite the final chase and shoot-out, it's a romantic drama.
Bogart as the central figure in John Huston's classic Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) fills the film with more of an urban noir sense than that of a Western, despite the location, horses and shootings.
Edward Zwick's Legends of the Fall (1994) has many Western elements, but its epic sweep includes WWI, sea voyaging, domestic love triangles, bootlegging and bad cops driving cars.
Likewise, both Frank Perry's 1975 Rancho Deluxe and Sydney Pollack's 1979 Electric Horseman contain too many contemporary attitudes and trappings to be Westerns within our perspective.
John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) is decidely Western in execution and setting; however, its racism focus and the denouement with Spencer Tracy blowing away Robert Ryan via a Molotov cocktail made from the gas in a jeep is as urban as John McTiernan's great thriller Die Hard (1988), which not only borrowed and expanded in spades the shoot-out from High Noon, but also paid verbal hommage to the genre.
Films like these provide a basis for redefining the Western, however the genre has experienced long periods of plenty in the past, followed, like now, by equally long periods of famine, so it will be another five years or so before we can say that the traditional Western that fits our definitions of style, time and place is unlikely to be seen again.
Martin Campbells 1998 The Mask of Zorro is super entertainment, but not a Western, while Elia Kazan's 1952 Viva Zapata is. Why? Mainly because Zapata is a real person in Mexico in the midst of the revolution, and uses a gun, not a fictional archtype operating within the palaces of the rich in urban old California, and fighting with a sword.
The Western is largely defined by its location within a territory that is undefined or striving for development, primitive and blasted by natural untamed elements. Which is why Henry King's South African Untamed (1955) is also a Western. where they ride horses and shoot it out just as though they were in the American Southwest during the same era.
However, Heping Fandian (Peace Hotel) by Ka-Fai Wai (1995), though Western styled, is set in China in 1930, and thus is less American Western feeling than any of Kurosawa's three great Western source materials mentioned above.
Rodeo movies aren't westerns, they're more sports stuff, regardless of time period, thus excluding Nicholas Ray's The Lusty Men, Cliff Robertsons J.W. Coop or Peckinpah's superb Junior Bonner, both 1972. The same is true of John Huston's wonderful The Misfits (1961).
Jan Troell's 1974 Zandy's Bride is romantic drama, not a Western, though its depiction of mundane life on the American frontier in the 1800s is maybe more accurate than any other film. Though rather boring, it's good enough to include on our long list; however Troell's 1971 Utvandrarna {The Emigrants}, which is mainly conerned with getting to Minnesota from Sweden, is excluded, and also his 1972 sequel Nybyggarna {The New Land}, which is concerned with day to day living there.
They say exceptions define the rule. Thus, Alan J. Pakula's post WWII Comes a Horseman (1978) is a Western because of the settings, horse riding and final shoot-out. George T. Miller's Oz-based 1982 The Man from Snowy River is also because the landscapes are super vistas worthy of any movie made in the North American West (many Westerns today are shot in Canada) as well as Kirk Douglas in dual roles as rancher and prospector and above all, some of the best horsemanship that has ever been displayed in the cinema.
David Miller's 1962 Lonely Are the Brave is a Western because its protagonist Kirk Douglas rides his horse and shoots it out with contemporary life (including downing a helicopter--20 years before Stallone did the same in First Blood), escaping the posse by dragging his horse over a mountain, only to be felled crossing a highway by a semi carting toilets in a classic tragedy structure---the absolute last word on the fate of the cowboy hero.
Good Westerns contain a lot of myth.
Horses, hand guns and hard enemies.
"Print the legend."
This slogan applies to John Sayles' 1996 Lone Star, not a Western, yet containing enough Western elements, in the vien of Lonely Are the Brave to merit its mention here, for Sayles manages to combind past and present, myth and magic within contemporary Western times, bringing together on an inner level themes that haunted the traditional Westerns and tying them to a modern mystery drama that is very connected to the West of the past, so as to say, 'What we might have thought it was, was not; what we think about it now has no end; what we are is what we have come to, because we cared, because we had integrity to be our true selves, right or wrong.' Thus, Lone Star might be called a succesor to the great Westerns of the past, in part because all the sheriffs carry the single-action six-shooter .45s that were developed by the Colt company in 1872. (Any Western supposedly occurring before 1872 is anacronistic, which shows guys shooting manufactured bullets instead of loading pistol chambers with cap and ball. This includes John Ford's The Searchers which states "Texas, 1868." Film the legend, not the fact.)
Western Directors
Major directors who made Westerns:John Ford's The Searchers is now generally considered the finest Western film ever made, as well as his greatest film. He began his film career in 1917 and received six Academy Awards. Two were for his WWII efforts, the other four were given as Best Director for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and The Quiet Man (1952). His only Western to receive a nomination for Best Picture was Stagecoach (1939) for which he also received a Best Director nomination.
Sam Peckinpah is noted mainly for his Westerns. His first major film Ride the High Country served as a fitting denouement to the fine careers of both Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea. He revitalized the genre with gritty anti-heroes, who many feel are an extension of John Wayne's Ethan Edwards in The Searchers; however, his directorial approach is unique in terms of human interaction and dialogue, and a violent realism that is simultaneously conveyed with esthetic distance. Thus, his slo-mo so-called 'ballets of death' are not gratuitous baths in blood, but poetic portrayals that by their Brechtian presentation we realize are staged. The Wild Bunch is generally considered his greatest work.
Sergio Leone, an Italian, contributed as much to the development of the Western as Ford and Peckinpah. His artistic creations within the new spaghetti Western with the Man Without a Name trilogy between 1964-1966 spawned a new vista. That he chose to shoot his greatest creation Once Upon a Time in the West in Ford's monument valley while basing the story's premise on Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar and the conclusion on John Ford's Iron Horse is evidence of his homage to them and their influence.
Clint Eastwood reached international stardom via Leone's first three films, then went on to not only become the new screen icon that John Wayne had created in his minimalistic way, but also to direct films in a style and with a choice of material that has makes him the most interesting and consistently watchable and enjoyable American director working today. After years of boxoffice success but dismissal by critics, he finally achieved recognition with an Oscar as Best Director of Unforgiven with the film itself widely regarded as the Best Picture of 1992, then was awarded again for Million Dollar Baby in 2004.
Through his Malpaso (a creek near his home in the California Big Sur coastal country) Company, he has directed not only his superb Westerns but also the first-rate psychological thriller Play Misty for Me (1971) which predated Fatal Attraction by 15 years; the ultra-feminist Dirty Harry saga Sudden Impact (1983); the jazz musician biography Bird (1988); an unusual portrayal of John Huston in White Hunter, Black Heart; humanistic dramas like Bronco Billy (1980), Honkytonk Man (1982); the romantic Bridges of Madison County (1995) and Breezy with William Holden in 1973; heavy drama with Mystic River (2003); excellent thrillers Absolute Power (1997), True Crime (1999) & Blood Work (2002); action thrillers The Gauntlet (1977) & The Rookie (1990); the sci-fi adventure Space Cowboys (2000); unique simultaneous views of WW2 in the Pacific from both sides with Flags of Our Fathers & Letters from Iwo Jima (2006); and perhaps his most unrecognized accomplishment of A Perfect World (1993) which gave us the America of our imagination in the days preceeding the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 and portrays the after-effect of our jarring loss of innocence in a single helicopter shot.
Howard Hawks is as well known for his off-the-wall comedies Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday as his great Western films, Red River and Rio Bravo.
Anthony Mann had a certain allegorical approach to the western and collaborated with James Stewart on six films in the 1950s that redefined the actor's screen persona, while the director himself went on to stage some of the last great costume spectacles with El Cid and The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Budd Boetticher brought a special leanness to the western and reached his apex in several films created during the 1950s with Randolph Scott and producer Harry Joe Brown, and often scripted by Burt Kennedy, who went on to direct also, while the aging Scott himself, in his quiet way, was also redefining the quintessential western hero. Nearly every western the actor did from the late 1940s through his retirement with Ride the High Country in 1962 is enjoyable for his presence.
Delmer Daves, writer and director, creator of Bogart's Dark Passage, had a particular affinity for the western genre as evidenced in Broken Arrow, 3:10 to Yuma, Cowboy and The Hanging Tree.
Nicholas Ray also directed In a Lonely Place, Rebel Without a Cause and Bigger Than Life.
Henry Hathaway's best work was in Westerns and a lot of John Wayne's.
Raoul Walsh began his career with silent two-reelers in 1912, gave John Wayne his first starring role in The Big Trail in 1930, and continued working in film until 1964, ending his career with a fairly forgetable Western. His best Western was his 1949 Colorado Territory, a remake of his High Sierra, his 1941 Bogart crime thriller, and also Cagney's 1949 White Heat "Top of the world, Ma!"
Michael Curtiz also directed Casablanca.
Fritz Lang was director of Metropolis, Dr. Mabuse, M, The Big Heat and Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt.
50 Fabulous Westerns
For students or critics who wish to assimilate the western movie as briefly as possible, I offer this list of a top 50 Westerns and additional lists of 110. See the list of 500+ for more complete casts. Because some people have asked me to note my top 10 westerns, i'm indicating the ones i find most pleasurable on repeat viewings with an "*". There are 11, & my choices may change :) . (Students may find my inclusion of 2-3 films highly questionable v. their review by other critics---well, we all have our entertainment bias; however, i trust mine as it has proved correct since the 1950s, when i was a lil kid.)
More important: Why my omission of 3 critically highly-regarded westerns, from either my primary or secondary lists. Stagecoach, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid & McCabe & Mrs. Miller.
Stagecoach. Despite the great intro of John Wayne into superstardom, John Ford's direction & a couple of great action scenes, the story & character interplay become uninteresting after a few viewings. The supposedly restored Warners release looks very worn in image quality. I'm not sure the Criterion is much better.
Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. I tremendously respect both Newman & Redford for what they've done in cinema & socially. William Goldman is one of the great screen writers & communicators. Unfortunately, this movie bores me because after the first or 2nd viewing, everything becomes anticipated, & the "how" of getting there is similarly predictable, as is the dialogue.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller. One of the most beautifully shot westerns ever by Vilmos Zsigmond. Very real dialogue in the Altman style. I love the Leonard Cohen songs. However, the story is simplistic with a downer ending: Warren freezing to death in the snow after defeating his opponents, & Julie Christie knocking herself out in an opium den. Altman wanted it to be 'real'. Warren Beatty is a very intelligent person---his face shows this, & his Oscar win for Best Director---yet he perpetually plays half-dummies like in this film & in virtually every film he's made. His visage betrays their premise, although in Heaven Can Wait it was acceptable because of the comic script & his direction. Perhaps Warren Beatty is the most wasted actor in history, who's tragically chosen to always miscast himself. Strange.
Simultaneously, I repeatedly enjoy Rudolph Maté's The Violent Men, with Glenn Ford, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson & Brian Keith. However, perhaps Maté, generally considered a '2nd string' director, is one of those 'undiscovered' auteurs, as he was Carl Dreyer's cinematographer on La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc & Vampyr.
My 50 faves in chronological order:
The Ox-Bow Incident - William A. Wellman (1942) Henry Fonda
Duel in the Sun - King Vidor (1946) Gregory Peck, Jennifer Jones
My Darling Clementine - John Ford (1946) Henry Fonda, Victor Mature
Red River - Howard Hawks (1948) John Wayne, Montgomery Clift
Broken Arrow - Delmer Daves (1950) James Stewart, Jeff Chandler
The Gunfighter - Henry King (1950) Gregory Peck
Stars in My Crown - Jacques Tourneur (1950) Joel McCrea, Ellen Drew
Winchester '73 - Anthony Mann (1950) James Stewart, Stephen McNally
* High Noon - Fred Zinnemann (1952) Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly
The Naked Spur - Anthony Mann (1953) James Stewart, Robert Ryan
* Shane - George Stevens (1953) Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jack Palance
Johnny Guitar - Nicholas Ray (1954) Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden
Vera Cruz - Robert Aldrich (1954) Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster
The Man from Laramie - Anthony Mann (1955) James Stewart
The Violent Men - Rudolph Maté (1955) Glenn Ford, Barbara Stanwyck
* The Searchers - John Ford (1956) John Wayne
Seven Men from Now - Budd Boetticher (1956) Randolph Scott
Forty Guns - Samuel Fuller (1957) Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan
The Tall T - Budd Boetticher (1957) Randolph Scott
* The Big Country - William Wyler (1958) Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons
The Bravados - Henry King (1958) Gregory Peck
Man of the West - Anthony Mann (1958) Gary Cooper, Lee J. Cobb
The Hanging Tree - Delmer Daves (1959) Gary Cooper, Karl Malden
* Rio Bravo - Howard Hawks (1959) John Wayne, Dean Martin
One Eyed Jacks - Marlon Brando (1961) Brando, Karl Malden
Lonely Are the Brave - David Miller (1962) Kirk Douglas, Walter Matthau
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - John Ford (1962) Wayne & Stewart
Ride the High Country - Sam Peckinpah (1962) Scott & McCrea
For a Few Dollars More - Sergio Leone (1965) Clint Eastwood
* Good, the Bad & the Ugly - Sergio Leone (1966) Eastwood, Eli Wallach
The Professionals - Richard Brooks (1966) Lancaster, Marvin, Ryan
El Dorado - Howard Hawks (1967) John Wayne, Robert Mitchum
Hour of the Gun - John Sturges (1967) James Garner, Jason Robards
* Once Upon a Time in West - Leone (1968) Bronson, Fonda, Robards
Mackenna's Gold - J. Lee Thompson (1969) Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif
True Grit - Henry Hathaway (1969) John Wayne, Dennis Hopper
* The Wild Bunch - Sam Peckinpah (1969) William Holden, Robert Ryan
The Ballad of Cable Hogue - Sam Peckinpah (1970) Jason Robards
The Hired Hand - Peter Fonda (1971) Fonda, Warren Oates, Verna Bloom
High Plains Drifter - Clint Eastwood (1973) Clint Eastwood
My Name Is Nobody - Tonino Valerii, Leone (1973) Fonda, Terence Hill
* Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid - Peckinpah (1973) Kristofferson & Coburn
Bite the Bullet - Richard Brooks (1975) Gene Hackman, James Coburn
The Outlaw Josey Wales - Clint Eastwood (1976) Chief Dan George
The Shootist - Don Siegel (1976) John Wayne, James Stewart
Pale Rider - Clint Eastwood (1985)
Dances with Wolves - Kevin Costner (1990)
* Unforgiven - Clint Eastwood (1992) Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman
Tombstone - George P. Cosmatos (1995) Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer
* Open Range - Kevin Costner (2003) Robert Duvall, Annette Bening
60 More Super Westerns
For everyone who enjoys the genre, with these, I have these 60 in my personal collection, & 50 which also deserve mention.
Pursued - Raoul Walsh (1947) Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright3 Godfathers - John Ford (1948) Wayne, Pedro Armendriz, Ward Bond
Colorado Territory - Raoul Walsh (1949) Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo
The Furies - Anthony Mann (1950) Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Huston
Viva Zapata! - Elia Kazan (1952) Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn
Hondo - John Farrow (1953) John Wayne, Geraldine Page
Garden of Evil - Henry Hathaway (1954) Gary Cooper, Richard Widmark
Silver Lode - Allan Dwan (1954) John Payne, Dan Duryea, Lizabeth Scott
Track of the Cat - William A. Wellman (1954) Robert Mitchum
Man with the Gun - Richard Wilson (1955) Robert Mitchum, Jan Sterling
Run for Cover - Nicholas Ray (1955) James Cagney, John Derek
Bandido - Richard Fleischer (1956) Robert Mitchum, Gilbert Roland
The Fastest Gun Alive - Russell Rouse (1956) Glenn Ford
The Last Hunt - Richard Brooks (1956) Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger
The Proud Ones - Robert D. Webb (1956) Robert Ryan, Jeffrey Hunter
Decision at Sundown - Budd Boetticher (1957) Randolph Scott
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral - John Sturges (1957) Lancaster & Douglas
Night Passage - James Neilson (1957) James Stewart, Audie Murphy
The Ride Back - Allen H. Miner (1957) Anthony Quinn, William Conrad
3:10 to Yuma - Delmer Daves (1957) Glenn Ford, Van Heflin
The Tin Star - Anthony Mann (1957) Henry Fonda, Anthony Perkins
The Badlanders - Delmer Daves (1958) Alan Ladd, Ernest Brognine
Buchanan Rides Alone - Budd Boetticher (1958) Randolph Scott
The Left Handed Gun - Arthur Penn (1958) Paul Newman, John Dehner
Saddle the Wind - R. Parrish, J. Sturges (1958) R. Taylor & Cassavetes
Terror in a Texas Town - Joseph H. Lewis (1958) Sterling Hayden
Day of the Outlaw - André DeToth (1958) Robert Ryan, Burl Ives
Last Train from Gun Hill - John Sturges (1959) K. Douglas, A. Quinn
Ride Lonesome - Budd Boetticher (1959) Randolph Scott
Warlock - Edward Dmytryk (1959) Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Widmark
Westbound - Budd Boetticher (1959) Randolph Scott, Virginia Mayo
The Wonderful Country - Robert Parrish (1959) Robert Mitchum
Comanche Station - Budd Boetticher (1960) Randolph Scott
The Magnificent 7 - John Sturges (1960) Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen
The Unforgiven - John Huston (1960) Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn
Two Rode Together - John Ford (1961) James Stewart, Richard Widmark
A Fistful of Dollars - Sergio Leone (1964) Clint Eastwood
The Outrage - Martin Ritt (1964) Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey
Major Dundee - Sam Peckinpah (1965) Charlton Heston, Richard Harris
The Appaloosa - Sidney J. Furie (1966) Marlon Brando, John Saxon
Duel at Diablo - Ralph Nelson (1966) James Garner, Sidney Poitier
Hombre - Martin Ritt (1967) Paul Newman, Fredric March, Richard Boone
Hang 'Em High - Ted Post (1968) Clint Eastwood, Pat Hingle
Lawman - Michael Winner (1971) Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Lee J. Cobb
Red Sun - Terence Young (1971) Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune
Valdez Is Coming - Edwin Sherin (1971) Burt Lancaster
Ulzana's Raid - Robert Aldrich (1972) Burt Lancaster
The Missouri Breaks - Arthur Penn (1976) Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson
Ballad of Gregorio Cortez - Robert Young (1982) Edward James Olmos
The Man from Snowy River - George Miller (1982) Kirk Douglas
Last Days Frank & Jesse James - W. Graham (1986) Cash, Kristofferson
Old Gringo - Luis Puenzo (1989) Gregory Peck, Jane Fonda, Jimmy Smits
Quick & the Dead - Sam Raimi (1995) Sharon Stone, Hackman, Crowe
Dead Man - Jim Jarmusch (1995) Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Mitchum
Purgatory - Uli Edel (1999) Sam Shepard, Randy Quaid, Eric Roberts
Ravenous - Antonia Bird (1999) Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle
South of Heaven, West of Hell - Dwight Yoakam (2000) Yoakam
And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself - Bruce Beresford (2003) Banderas
The Proposition - John Hillcoat (2005) Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone
Seraphim Falls - David Von Ancken (2006) Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan
50 More Significant Westerns
These 50 additional Westerns, all of which are well worth seeing twice, have been culled from my personal collection, or are not available on DVD . (* = ones I hope to add to my collection, not available now in any form)
Tumbleweeds - King Baggot (1925) William S. HartThe Virginian - Victor Fleming (1929) Gary Cooper
Cimarron - Wesley Ruggles (1930) Richard Dix, Irene Dunne
Dodge City - Michael Curtiz (1939) Errol Flynn
Stagecoach - John Ford (1939) John Wayne
Blood on the Moon - Robert Wise (1948) Robert Mitchum
Fort Apache - Ford (1948) Wayne, Fonda, Shirley Temple, Ward Bond
Yellow Sky - William A. Wellman (1948) Gregory Peck, Anne Baxter
Hellfire - R. G. Springsteen (1949) Bill Elliott, Marie Windsor
I Shot Jesse James - Samuel Fuller (1949) John Ireland, Preston Foster
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon - John Ford (1949) John Wayne, John Agar
Rawhide - Henry Hathaway (1951) Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward
Bend of the River - Anthony Mann (1952) James Stewart, Rock Hudson
Springfield Rifle - André de Toth (1952) Gary Cooper, Paul Kelly
Escape from Fort Bravo - John Sturges (1953) William Holden
The Far Country - Anthony Mann (1954) James Stewart, Walter Brennan
Three Hours to Kill - Alfred L. Werker (1954) Dana Andrews, Donna Reed
The Last Command - Frank Lloyd (1955) Sterling Hayden
The Tall Men - Raoul Walsh (1955) Clark Gable, Robert Ryan
Jubal - Delmer Daves (1956) Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine, Rod Steiger
The Last Wagon - Delmer Daves (1956) Richard Widmark, Felicia Farr
* Stranger at My Door - William Witney (1956) Macdonald Carey
* Run of the Arrow - Samuel Fuller (1957) Rod Steiger, Ralph Meeker
Cowboy - Delmer Daves (1958) Glenn Ford, Jack Lemmon
* From Hell to Texas - Hathaway (1958) Don Murray, Dennis Hopper
The Law and Jake Wade - John Sturges (1958) R. Taylor, R. Widmark
Sergeant Rutledge - John Ford (1960) Jeffrey Hunter, Woody Strode
Deadly Companions - Peckinpah (1961) Maureen O'Hara, Brian Keith
Nevada Smith - Henry Hathaway (1966) Steve McQueen, Karl Malden
Firecreek - Vincent McEveety (1968) James Stewart, Henry Fonda
Five Card Stud - Henry Hathaway (1968) Dear Martin, Robert Mitchum
The Stalking Moon - Robert Mulligan (1968) Gregory Peck
Will Penny - Tom Cries (1968) Charlton Heston
Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid - G.R. Hill (1969) Newman, Redford
Cheyenne Social Club - Gene Kelly (1970) James Stewart, Henry Fonda
Little Big Man - Arthur Penn (1970) Dustin Hoffman
A Man Called Horse - Elliot Silverstein (1970) Richard Harris
* Monte Walsh - William A. Fraker (1970) Lee Marvin, Jack Palance
There Was a Crooked Man - J.L. Mankiewicz (1970) Fonda, Douglas
El Topo - Alejandro Jodorowsky (1970) Alejandro Jodorowsky
McCabe & Mrs. Miller - Robert Altman (1971) Warren Beatty, Julie Christie
Jeremiah Johnson - Sydney Pollack (1972) Robert Redford
The Train Robbers - Burt Kennedy (1973) John Wayne, Ann-Margret
The Long Riders - Walter Hill (1980) Brothers: Carradine, Keach, Quaid
Silverado - Lawrence Kasdan (1985) K. Kline, Scott Glenn, K. Costner
Lonesome Dove - Simon Wincer (1989) Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones
Frank & Jesse - Robert Boris (1994) Rob Lowe, Bill Paxton, Randy Travis
Wyatt Earp - Lawrence Kasdan (1994) Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman
Streets of Laredo - Joseph Sargent (1995) James Garner, Sam Shepard
3:10 to Yuma - James Mangold (2007) Russell Crowe, Christian Bale
Appaloosa - Ed Harris (2008) Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Jeremy Irons
The 500 Plus - a Western Lover's Listing
This is intended to be a comprehensive list of all Western movies even remotely worth seeing from the past 100 years, interesting, entertaining or in some way provocative or memorable. The Internet Data Base (INDb.com) lists 11,000 Westerns. Well, that's a bit much, so we settled on the more digestible number of 500+. For someone, who loves the genre, these are all fairly enjoyable. I've seen 90-95% of them; the rest are based on others' recommendations.No formula series Westerns are included, thus nothing of Tom Mix, Buck Jones, Tim McCoy, 30s John Wayne, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Rex Allen, Charles Starrett, Al 'Lash' LaRue or Whip Wilson. A couple of 'Wild Bill' Elliott's are included, as the stories and excecutions were a grade above the others, much as Carrow's burgers outshine McDonald's.
These actors as protagonists make almost any Western worth seeing: John Wayne, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Gregory Peck, Randolph Scott, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, William Holden, Charlton Heston, Robert Ryan, Audie Murphy and Clint Eastwood.
In the recent years of this llist, a number of Westerns shown only on TV and released on video are named, as very few theatrical Westerns are made today and some of the 'made-for-TV' are actually better than some that saw carbon arc projection. Although Western TV series from the 50s and early 60s were no different from the cowboy series of the 30s and 40s, a couple in recent years have provided unique entertainment. I've seen only a few Westerns of recent years--none after 1996; however, in the interest of being comprehensive, I've accepted recommendations by others for inclusion and exclusion. It appears, though, that the Western in recent years has ventured into some very weird territory.
1903
The Great Train Robbery - Edwin S. Porter (Broncho Billy Anderson)
1914
The Squaw Man - Oscar Apfel, Cecil B. DeMille (Dustin Farnum)
1916
Hell's Hinges - William S. Hart, Charles Swickard (William S. Hart)
1917
Straight Shooting - John Ford (Harry Carey)
1919
Scarlet Days - D.W. Griffith (Richard Barthelmess)
1923
The Covered Wagon - James Cruze (J. Warren Kerrigan, Alan Hale)
1924
The Iron Horse - John Ford (George O'Brien)
1925
Tumbleweeds - King Baggot, William S. Hart (William S. Hart)
1929
The Virginian - Victor Fleming (Gary Cooper, Walter Huston)
1930
The Big Trail - Raoul Walsh (John Wayne)
1930
Cimarron - Wesley Ruggles (Richard Dix, Irene Dunne)
1934
Viva Villa! - Jack Conway, Howard Hawks, William Wellman (Wallace Berry)
1936
The Plainsman - Cecil B. DeMille (Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur)
1937
Wells Fargo - Frank Lloyd (Joel McCrea)
1939
Destry Rides Again - George Marshall (James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich)
Dodge City - Michael Curtiz (Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland)
Frontier Marshal - Allan Dwan (Randolph Scott)
Jesse James - Henry King (Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, Randolph Scott)
The Oklahoma Kid - Lloyd Bacon (James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart)
Stagecoach - John Ford (John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Thomas Mitchell, Andy Devine)
Union Pacific - Cecil B. DeMille (Joel McCrea, Robert Preston, Barbara Stanwyck)
1940
Dark Command - Raoul Walsh (John Wayne, Roy Rogers, Claire Trevor, Walter Pidgeon)
The Return of Frank James - Fritz Lang (Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney)
Santa Fe Trail - Michael Curtiz (Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Raymond Massey, Ronald Reagan, Van Heflin)
Virginia City - Michael Curtiz (Errol Flynn, Randolph Scott, Humphrey Bogart)
The Westerner - William Wyler (Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan)
When the Daltons Rode - George Marshall (Randolph Scott, Brian Donlevy)
1941
Belle Starr - Irving Cummings (Randolph Scott, Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Chill Wills)
Billy the Kid - David Miller (Robert Taylor, Brian Donlevy)
The Outlaw - Howard Hughes, Howard Hawks (Jane Russell, Jack Buetel, Walter Huston)
Texas - George Marshall (William Holden, Glenn Ford, Claire Trevor)
They Died with Their Boots On - Raoul Walsh (Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Arthur Kennedy)
Western Union - Fritz Lang (Robert Young, Randolph Scott, Dean Jagger)
1942
The Ox-Bow Incident - William A. Wellman (Henry Fonda, Harry Morgan, Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn)
The Spoilers - Ray Enright (Randolph Scott, John Wayne, Marlene Dietrich, Harry Carey))
1943
The Desperadoes - Charles Vidor (Randolph Scott, Glenn Ford, Claire Trevor)
1944
Buffalo Bill - William A. Wellman (Joel McCrea, Maureen O'Hara, Anthony Quinn, Thomas Mitchell, Linda Darnell)
Tall in the Saddle - Edwin L. Marin (John Wayne, Ella Raines, Ward Bond)
1945
San Antonio - David Butler, Raoul Walsh (Errol Flynn)
1946
Abilene Town - Edwin L. Marin (Randolph Scott)
Badman's Territory - Tim Whelan (Randolph Scott)
Canyon Passage - Jacques Tourneur (Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward, Ward Bond, Lloyd Bridges)
Duel in the Sun - King Vidor (Gregory Peck, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Lionel Barrymore, Walter Huston, Harry Carey, Herbert Marshall, Lilian Gish, Charles Bickford)
In Old Sacramento - Joseph Kane (Bill Elliott)
My Darling Clementine - John Ford (Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, Time Holt, Ward Bond, John Ireland)
The Virginian - Stuart Gilmore (Joel McCrea, Brian Donlevy)
1947
Cheyenne - Raoul Walsh (Dennis Morgan, Jane Wyman, Arthur Kennedy)
Gunfighters - George Waggner (Randolph Scott, Forrest Tucker)
Pursued - Raoul Walsh (Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright, Dean Jagger)
Sea of Grass - Elia Kazan (Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Walker, Melvyn Douglas, Harry Carey)
Trail Street - Ray Enright (Randolph Scott, Robert Ryan)
Wyoming - Joseph Kane (Bill Elliott, Vera Ralston)
1948
Albuquerque - Ray Enright (Randolph Scott)
Blood on the Moon - Robert Wise (Robert Mitchum, Robert Preston, Barbara Bel Geddes, Walter Brennan)
Coroner Creek - Ray Enright (Randolph Scott, Forrest Tucker, George Macready)
Fort Apache - John Ford (John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple, Ward Bond)
Four Faces West - Alfred E. Green (Joel McCrea, Charles Bickford, William Conrad, Frances Dee)
Fury at Furnace Creek - H. Bruce Humberstone (Victor Mature, Coleen Gray)
Man from Colorado - Henry Levin (Glenn Ford, William Holden)
Red River - Howard Hawks (John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru, John Ireland)
Return of the Bad Men - Ray Enright (Randolph Scott, Robert Ryan)
Silver River - Raoul Walsh (Errol Flynn, Thomas Mtichell, Ann Sheridan)
Three Godfathers - John Ford (John Wayne, Pedro Armendriz, Harry Carey Jr, Ward Bond, Mae Marsh)
Whispering Smith - Leslie Fenton (Alan Ladd, Robert Preston, Donald Crisp)
Yellow Sky - William A. Wellman (Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark, Anne Baxter)
1949
Ambush - Sam Wood (Robert Taylor, John Hodiak, Arlene Dahl)
Canadian Pacific - Edwin L. Marin (Randolph Scott, Jane Wyatt, J. Carrol Naish, Victor Jory)
Colorado Territory - Raoul Walsh (Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo, Dorothy Malone, Henry Hull)
The Doolins of Oklahoma - Gordon Douglas (Randolph Scott, John Ireland)
Fighting Man of the Plains - Edwin L. Marin (Randolph Scott, Dale Robertson, Bill Williams)
Hellfire - R. G. Springsteen (Bill Elliott, Marie Windsor, Forrest Tucker, Jim Davis, H.B. Warner)
I Shot Jesse James - Samuel Fuller (John Ireland, Preston Foster)
The Last Bandit - Joseph Kane (Bill Elliott, Forrest Tucker)
Riders in the Sky - John English (Gene Autry)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon - John Ford (John Wayne, John Agar, Ben Johnson, Joanne Dru, Victor McLaglen)
Streets of Laredo - Leslie Fenton (William Holden, Macdonald Carey)
The Walking Hills - John Sturges (Randolph Scott, Arthur Kennedy, Ella Raines)
1950
Branded - Rudolph Mat (Alan Ladd, Mona Freeman, Charles Bickford)
Broken Arrow - Delmer Daves (James Stewart, Jeff Chandler, Debra Paget)
Colt .45 - Edwin L. Marin (Randolph Scott, Zachary Scott, Ruth Roman)
Dallas - Stuart Heisler (Gary Cooper, Ruth Roman, Raymond Massey)
Devil's Doorway - Anthony Mann (Robert Taylor, Louis Calhern)
The Eagle and the Hawk - Lewis R. Foster (John Payne, Dennis O'Keefe)
The Furies - Anthony Mann (Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Huston, Wendell Corey)
The Gunfighter - Henry King (Gregory Peck, Millard Mitchell, Karl Malden)
Kansas Raiders - Ray Enright (Audie Murphy, Brian Donlevy, Tony Curtis)
The Kid from Texas - Kurt Neumann (Audie Murphy, Gale Storm, Will Geer)
Montana - Ray Enright (Errol Flynn, Alexis Smith, S. Z. Sakall)
The Nevadan - Gordon Douglas (Randolph Scott, Dorothy Malone)
The Outriders - Roy Rowland (Joel McCrea, Barry Sullivan, Arlene Dahl)
Rio Grande - John Ford (John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Ben Johnson)
Rocky Mountain - William Keighley (Errol Flynn, Patrice Wymore)
Saddle Tramp - Hugo Fregonese (Joel McCrea, Wanda Hendrix, John Russell)
The Showdown - Dorrell & Stuart E. McGowan (Bill Elliott, Walter Brennan)
Sierra - Alfred E. Green (Audie Murphy, Wanda Hendrix, Burl Ives, Dean Jagger)
Sierra Passage - Frank McDonald (Wayne Morris, Lola Albright)
Stars in My Crown - Jacques Tourneur (Joel McCrea, Ellen Drew)
The Sundowners - George Templeton (Robert Preston, Robert Sterling, John Drew Barrymore)
Two Flags West - Robert Wise (Joseph Cotten, Jeff Chandler, Cornel Wilde, Linda Darnell, Dale Robertson)
Wagon Master - John Ford (Ben Johnson, Joanne Dru, Harry Carey Jr, Ward Bond)
Winchester '73 - Anthony Mann (James Stewart, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, Millard Mitchell, Shelley Winters)
1951
Across the Wide Missouri - William A. Wellman (Clark Gable, Ricardo Montalban, John Hodiak, J. Carrol Naish)
Along the Great Divide - Raoul Walsh (Kirk Douglas, Virginia Mayo, John Agar, Walter Brennan)
Cattle Drive - Kurt Neumann (Joel McCrea, Dean Stockwell, Chill Wills)
The Cimarron Kid - Budd Boetticher (Audie Murphy)
Distant Drums - Raoul Walsh (Gary Cooper)
Fort Defiance - John Rawlins (Dane Clark, Ben Johnson, Peter Graves)
Fort Worth - Edwin L. Marin
Little Big Horn - Charles Marquis Warren (Lloyd Bridges, John Ireland)
Lone Star - Vincent Sherman (Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Broderick Crawford, Lionel Barrymore)
Man in the Saddle - Andr DeToth (Randolph Scott, Joan Leslie, John Russell)
Only the Valiant - Gordon Douglas (Gregory Peck, Ward Bond, Gig Young, Barbara Payton)
Raton Pass - Edwin L. Marin (Dennis Morgan, Patricia Neal, Steve Cochran)
Rawhide - Henry Hathaway (Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Hugh Marlowe, Dean Jagger)
Santa Fe - Irving Pichel (Randolph Scott)
Sugarfoot - Edwin L. Marin (Randolph Scott, Raymond Massey, Adele Jergens)
Tomahawk - George Sherman (Van Heflin, Yvonne De Carlo, Alex Nicol)
Vengeance Valley - Richard Thorpe (Burt Lancaster, Robert Walker, Joanne Dru, John Ireland)
Westward the Women - William A. Wellman (Robert Taylor, Denise Darcel)
1952
The Battle at Apache Pass - George Sherman (John Lund, Jeff Chandler)
Bend of the River - Anthony Mann (James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Julie Adams, Rock Hudson)
The Big Sky - Howard Hawks (Kirk Douglas, Dewey Martin, Jim Davis)
Bugles in the Afternoon - Roy Rowland (Ray Milland, Hugh Marlowe, Forrest Tucker)
The Bushwhackers - Rodney Amateau (John Ireland, Wayne Morris, Dorothy Malone, Lawrence Tierney)
Carson City - Andr DeToth (Randolph Scott, Raymond Massey)
Cripple Creek - Ray Nazarro (George Montgomery, Richard Egan)
The Duel at Silver Creek - Don Siegel (Audie Murphy, Stephen McNally, Faith Domerque, Susan Cabot. Lee Marvin)
Hangman's Knot - Roy Huggins (Randolph Scott, Donna Reed, Lee Marvin)
Hellgate - Charles Marquis Warren (Sterling Hayden, Joan Leslie, Ward Bond, James Arness)
High Noon - Fred Zinnemann (Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly)
The Iron Mistress - Gordon Douglas (Alan Ladd, Virginia Mayo)
The Lawless Breed - Raoul Walsh (Rock Hudson, Julie Adams, John McIntire, Dennis Weaver, Hugh O'Brian< Lee Van Cleef)
Man Behind the Gun - Felix E. Feist (Randolph Scott, Partrice Wymore, Philip Carey))
Pony Soldier - Joseph M. Newman (Tyrone Power, Cameron Mitchell, Thomas Gomez)
Rancho Notorious - Fritz Lang (Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer)
The San Francisco Story - Robert Parrish (Joel McCrea, Yvonne De Carlo, Sidney Blackmer)
The Savage - George Marshall (Charlton Heston, Milburn Stone)
Springfield Rifle - Andr DeToth (Gary Cooper, David Brian, Paul Kelly)
Viva Zapata! - Elia Kazan (Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn, Jean Peters)
Way of a Gaucho - Jacques Tourneur (Rory Calhoun, Gene Tierney, Richard Boone, Everett Sloane)
1953
Arrowhead - Charles Marquis Warren (Charlton Heston, Jack Palance, Brian Keith, Katy Jurado, Milburn Stone)
City of Bad Men - Harmon Jones (Dale Robertson, Richard Boone, Jeanne Crain, Lloyd Bridges)
Escape from Fort Bravo - John Sturges (William Holden, Eleanor Parker, John Forsythe)
Gun Belt - Ray Nazarro (George Montgomery, Tab Hunter, John Dehner)
Gun Fury - Raoul Walsh (Rock Hudson, Donna Reed, Neville Brand, Lee Marvin)
Gunsmoke - Nathan Juran (Audie Murphy, Susan Cabot, Paul Kelly)
Hannah Lee - Lee Garmes, John Ireland (Macdonald Carey, John Ireland, Joanne Dru)
Hondo - John Farrow (John Wayne, Geraldine Page, Ward Bond, James Arness)
Horizons West - Budd Boetticher (Rock Hudson, Julie Adams, Robert Ryan, Dennis Weaver) Jack McCall Desperado - Sidney Salkow (George Montgomery, Angela Stevens, Douglas Kennedy, Jay Silverheels)
Jack Slade - Harold D. Schuster (Mark Stevens, Dorothy Malone, Barton MacLane)
Kansas Pacific - Ray Nazarro (Sterling Hayden, Barton MacLane)
The Last Posse - Alfred L. Werker (Broderick Crawford, John Derek, Charles Bickford, Wanda Hendrix)
Law and Order - Nathan Juran (Ronald Reagan, Dorothy Malone, Preston Forster)
Lone Hand - George Sherman (Joel McCrea, Barbara Hale, Alex Nicol)
The Man from the Alamo - Budd Boetticher (Glenn Ford, Julie Adams, Chill Wills, Hugh O'Brian, Victory Jory, Neville Brand)
The Naked Spur - Anthony Mann (James Stewart, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Ralph Meeker, Millard Mitchell)
Pony Express - Jerry Hopper (Charlton Heston, Rhonda Fleming, Jan Sterling, Forrest Tucker)
Ride, Vaquero! - John Farrow (Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Anthony Quinn, Howard Keel, Kurt Kasznar)
Seminole - Budd Boetticher (Rock Hudson, Barbara Hale, Anthony Quinn, Lee Marvin, Hugh O'Brian)
Shane - George Stevens (Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, Jack Palance, Brandon De Wilde, Ben Johnson, Emile Meyer, Edgar Buchanan, Elisha Cook Jr)
The Silver Whip - Harmon Jones (Dale Robertson, Rory Calhoun, Robert Wagner)
The Stranger Wore a Gun - André DeToth (Randolph Scott, Claire Trevor, Lee Marvin)
The Tall Texan - Elmo Williams (Lloyd Bridges, Lee J. Cobb, Marie Windsor)
Thunder Over the Plains - Andr DeToth (Randolph Scott, Lex Barker, Charles McGraw, Phyllis Kirk)
Tumbleweed - Nathan Juran (Audie Murphy, Lori Nelson, Chill Wills, Russell Johnson, Lee Van Cleef, Ross Elliott, Roy Roberts)
War Arrow - George Sherman (Jeff Chandler, Maureen O'Hara, John McIntire, Suzan Ball, Dennis Weaver, Jay Silverheels, Noah Berry Jr, Charles Drake)
War Paint - Lesley Selander (Robert Stack, Joan Taylor, Charles McGraw, Peter Graves, Keith Larsen)
Wings of the Hawk - Budd Boetticher (Van Heflin, Julie Adams, Abbe Lane)
1954
Apache - Robert Aldrich (Burt Lancaster, Jean Peters, Charles Bronson)
Black Horse Canyon - Jesse Hibbs (Joel McCrea, Mari Blanchard)
Border River - George Sherman (Joel McCrea, Yvonne De Carlo, Pedro Armendriz)
The Bounty Hunter - Andr DeToth (Randolph Scott, Ernest Brognine, Marie Windsor)
Broken Lance - Edward Dmytryk (Spencer Tracy, Robert Wagner, Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Katy Jurado, E.G. marshall, Hugh O'Brian)
Dawn at Socorro - George Sherman (Rory Calhoun, Piper Laurie, David Brian, Lee Van Cleef, Alex Nicol, Edgar Buchanan)
Destry - George Marshall (Audie Murphy, Mari Blanchard, Lyle Bettger, Thomas Mitchell, Edgar Buchanan, Lori Nelson, Wallace Ford)
Drums Across the River - Nathan Juran (Audie Murphy, Walter Brennan, Lyle Bettger, Hugh O'Brian, Mara Corday, Jay Silverheels)
Drum Beat - Delmer Daves (Alan Ladd, Robert Keith, Charles Bronson)
The Forty-Niners - Thomas Carr (Bill Elliott, Harry Morgan, Virginia Grey)
Garden of Evil - Henry Hathaway (Gary Cooper, Richard Widmark, Susan Hayward, Hugh Marlowe, Cameron Mitchell, Rita Moreno)
Johnny Guitar - Nicholas Ray (Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Scott Brady, Mercedes MacCambridge, Ward Bond, Ben Cooper, Ernest Borgnine, Royal Dano)
The Outcast - William Witney (John Derek, Jim Davis, Joan Evans)
The Raid - Hugo Fregonese (Van Heflin, Lee Marvin, Richard Boone, Anne Bancroft, Peter Graves, Tommy Rettig)
Ride Clear of Diablo - Jesse Hibbs (Audie Murphy, Susan Cabot, Dan Duryea, Denver Pyle, Jack Elam, Russell Johnson, Abbe Lane)
Riding Shotgun - Andr DeToth (Randolph Scott, Wayne Morris, Joan Weldon, James Millican, Charles Bronson)
River of No Return - Otto Preminger (Robert Mitchum, Marilyn Monroe, Rory Calhoun, Tommy Rettig)
Saskatchewan - Raoul Walsh (Alan Ladd, Shelley Winters, J. Carrol Naish, Hugh O'Brian, Jay Silverheels, Robert Douglas)
Silver Lode - Allan Dwan (John Payne, Dan Duryea, Lizabeth Scott)
Taza, Son of Cochise - Douglas Sirk (Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, Rex Reason)
Three Hours to Kill - Alfred L. Werker (Dana Andrews, Donna Reed, Dianne Foster)
Track of the Cat - William A. Wellman (Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright, Tab Hunter)
Vera Cruz - Robert Aldrich (Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Cesar Romero, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Denise Darcel, Jack Elam, Henry Brandon)
The Yellow Tomahawk - Lesley Selander (Rory Calhoun, Peggie Castle, Noah Beery Jr, Warner Anderson, Peter Graves, Lee Van Cleef, Rita Moreno)
1955
At Gunpoint - Alfred L. Werker (Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Malone, Walter Brennan, Skip Homeier, Whit Bissell, Tommy Rettig)
Chief Crazy Horse - George Sherman (Victor Mature, Suzan Ball, John Lund, Ray Danton, Keith Larsen, David Janssen)
Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier - Norman Foster (Fess Parker, Buddy Ebsen)
The Far Country - Anthony Mann (James Stewart, Walter Brennan, Ruth Roman, Corinne Calvet, John McIntire, Jay C. Flippen, Harry Morgan, Jack Elam, Royal Dano)
The Far Horizons - Rudolph Mat (Fred MacMurray, Charlton Heston, Donna Reed)
Fort Yuma - Lesley Selander (Peter Graves, John Hudson)
The Indian Fighter - Andr DeToth (Kirk Douglas, Walter Matthau, Elsa Martinelli)
The Kentuckian - Burt Lancaster (also Walter Matthau, Dianne Foster, John McIntire, John Carradine)
The Last Command - Frank Lloyd (Sterling Hayden, Richard Carlson, Ernest Borgnine, J. Carrol Naish, John Russell, Anna Maria Alberghetti, Arthur Hunnicutt)
The Last Frontier - Anthony Mann (Victor Mature, Guy Madison, Robert Preston, James Whitmore, Anne Bancroft)
A Lawless Street - Joseph H. Lewis (Randolph Scott, Angela Lansbury)
The Lonesome Trail - Richard Bartlett (John Agar, Wayne Morris)
A Man Alone - Ray Milland (also Ward Bond, Mary Murphy, Raymond Burr, Lee Van Cleef)
The Man from Laramie - Anthony Mann (James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, Cathy O'Donnell, Alex Nicol, Jack Elam, Wallace Ford)
Man Without a Star - King Vidor (Kirk Douglas, Richard Boone, Jeanne Crain, Claire Trevor, William Campbell)
Man with the Gun - Richard Wilson (Robert Mitchum, Jan Sterling, John Lupton, Karen Sharpe, Henry Hull, Emile Meyer, Ted de Corsia)
The Naked Dawn - Edgar G. Ulmer (Arthur Kennedy, Betta St. John)
Rage at Dawn - Tim Whelan (Randolph Scott, Forrest Tucker, Mala Powers)
Run for Cover - Nicholas Ray (James Cagney, John Derek, Viveca Lindfors, Jean Hersholt, Ernest Borgnine)
Santa Fe Passage - William Witney (John Payne, Faith Domergue, Rod Cameron, Slim Pickens)
The Silver Star - Richard Bartlett (Earle Lyon, Edgar Buchanan, Marie Windsor, Lon Chaney Jr, Barton MacLane)
The Spoilers - Jesse Hibbs (Jeff Chandler, Rory Calhoun, Anne Baxter, Ray Danton))
Stranger on Horseback - Jacques Tourneur (Joel McCrea, Kevin McCarthy)
Strange Lady in Town - Mervyn LeRoy (Dana Andrews, Greer Garson, Cameron Mitchell)
Tall Man Riding - Lesley Selander (Randolph Scott, Dorothy Malone)
The Tall Men - Raoul Walsh (Clark Gable, Robert Ryan, Jane Russell, Cameron Mitchell)
Tennessee's Partner - Allan Dwan (John Payne, Ronald Reagan, Rhonda Fleming)
Ten Wanted Men - Humberstone (Randolph Scott, Richard Boone, Jocelyn Brando)
Top Gun - Ray Nazarro (Sterling Hayden, William Bishop)
The Treasure of Pancho Villa - George Sherman (Rory Calhoun, Gilbert Roland, Shelley Winters, Joseph Calleia)
Untamed - Henry King (Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Richard Egan, Rita Moreno, Agnes Moorehead)
The Vanishing American - Joseph Kane (Scott Brady, Forrest Tucker)
The Violent Men - Rudolph Mat (Glenn Ford, Edward G. Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck, Dianne Foster, Brian Keith, Warner Anderson, Richard Jaeckel, May Wynn)
White Feather - Robert D. Webb (Robert Wagner, John Lund, Debra Paget, Jeffrey Hunter, Virginia Leith, Milburn Stone, Hugh O'Brian, Noah Berry Jr, Emile Meyer, Eduard Franz)
Wichita - Jacques Tourneur (Joel McCrea, Vera Miles, Lloyd Bridges, Carl Benton Reid, John Smith, Jack Elam, Wallace Ford, Peter Graves, Edgar Buchanan)
1956
Backlash - John Sturges (Richard Widmark, John McIntire, Donna Reed, William Campbell, Harry Morgan, Barton MacLane)
Bandido - Richard Fleischer (Robert Mitchum, Gilbert Roland, Zachary Scott, Henry Brandon, Ursula Thiess, Rodolfo Acosta, Dougles Fowley)
The Burning Hills - Stuart Heisler (Tab Hunter, Natalie Woods, Skip Homeier)
Dakota Incident - Lewis R. Foster (Dale Robertson, Linda Darnell, John Lund, Ward Bond, Whit Bissell, John Doucette, Skip Homeier, Regis Toomey)
A Day of Fury - Harmon Jones (Dale Robertson, Jock Mahoney, Mara Corday)
Drango - Hall Bartlett (Jeff Chandler, Ronald Howard, Joanne Dru, Donald Crisp, Julie London, John Lupton, Milburn Stone)
The Fastest Gun Alive - Russell Rouse (Glenn Ford, Broderick Crawford, Jeanne Crain, Russ Tamblyn)
The First Texan - Byron Haskin (Joel McCrea, Felicia Farr, Jeff Morrow, Jody McCrea, William Hopper)
Johnny Concho - Don McGuire (Frank Sinatra, Keenan Wynn, William Conrad, Phyllis Kirk)
Jubal - Delmer Daves (Glenn Ford, Rod Steiger, Felicia Farr, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Valerie French)
The King and Four Queens - Raoul Walsh (Clark Gable, Eleanor Parker, Jo Van Fleet, Jean Willis, Sara Shane, Barbara Nichols, Jay C. Flippen)
The Last Hunt - Richard Brooks (Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Lloyd Nolan, Debra Paget, Russ Tamblyn)
The Last Wagon - Delmer Daves (Richard Widmark, Felicia Farr, Susan Kohner, Tommy Rettig, Nick Adams, Carl Benton Reid, James Drury)
Love Me Tender - Robert D. Webb (Richard Egan, Elvis Presley, Debra Paget, Robert Middleton, William Campbell, Neville Brand, Mildred Dunnock, Bruce Bennett)
Pillars of the Sky - George Marshall (Jeff Chandler, Dorothy Malone, Lee Marvin)
The Proud Ones - Robert D. Webb (Robert Ryan, Jeffrey Hunter, Virginia Mayo, Robert Middleton, Walter Brennan, Arthur O'Connell, Whit Bissell, Edward Platt)
Red Sundown - Jack Arnold (Rory Calhoun, Martha Hyer, Dean Jagger, Robert Middleton, Grant Williams, Leo Gordon)
Run of the Arrow - Samuel Fuller (Rod Steiger, Sara Montiel, Brian Keith, Ralph Meeker, Jay C. Flippen, Charles Bronson, Tim McCoy)
The Searchers - John Ford (John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Natalie Wood, Ward Bond, Tom Tyler)
Seven Men from Now - Budd Boetticher (Randolph Scott, Lee Marvin, Gail Russell, John Larch, Stuart Whitman)
7th Cavalry - Joseph H. Lewis (Randolph Scott, Barbara Hale, Denver Pyle, Harry Carey Jr, Michael Pate, Leo Gordon, Frank Faylen)
Stagecoach to Fury - William F. Claxton (Forrest Tucker, Mari Blanchard) Stranger at My Door - William Witney (Macdonald Carey, Skip Homier, Patricia Medina, Slim Pickens)
Tension at Table Rock - Charles Marquis Warren (Richard Egan, Dorothy Malone, Cameron Mitchell, DeForrest Kelley, Royal Dano, Angie Dickinson, John Dehner, Joe De Santis, Edward Andrews, Paul Richards)
Tribute to a Bad Man - Robert Wise (James Cagney, Don Dubbins, Stephen McNally, Irene Papas, Vic Morrow, James Bell, Lee Van Cleef, Royal Dano)
Walk the Proud Land - Jesse Hibbs (Audie Murphy, Anne Bancroft, Charles Drake, Jay Silverheels)
1957
The Badge of Marshal Brennan - Albert C. Gannaway (Jim Davis, Arleen Whelan, Lee Van Cleef, Marty Robbins, Harry Lauter, Douglas Fowley)
The Big Land - Gordon Douglas (Alan Ladd, Edmund O'Brien, Virginia Mayo, David Ladd, Julie Bishop, Anthony Caruso)
Decision at Sundown - Budd Boetticher (Randolph Scott, John Carroll, Karen Steele, Valerie French, John Archer, Andrew Duggan, John Litel, Noah Berry Jr)
Forty Guns - Samuel Fuller (Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Barry, Dean Jagger, John Ericson, Barry Sullivan, Robert Dix)
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral - John Sturges (Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, John Ireland, Jo Van Fleet, Lyle Bettger, Dennis Hopper, Earl Holliman)
Guns of Fort Petticoat - George Marshall (Audie Murphy, Kathryn Grant, Hope Emerson)
The Halliday Brand - Joseph H. Lewis (Joseph Cotten, Betsy Blair, Viveca Lindfors, Ward Bond, Bill Williams, Jeanette Nolan, Jay C. Flippen)
Joe Dakota - Richard Bartlett (Jock Mahoney, Luana Patten, Charles McGraw, Lee Van Cleef, Claude Akins, Barbara Lawrence, Paul Birch, Anthony Caruso)
The Lonely Man - Henry Levin (Jack Palance, Anthony Perkins, Neville Brand, Robert Middleton, Elisha Cook Jr, Claude Akins, Lee Van Cleef, Denver Byle)
Night Passage - James Neilson (James Stewart, Audie Murphy, Dan Duryea, Dianne Foster, Elaine Stewart, Brandon De Wilde, Jay C. Flippen, Jack Elam, Paul Fix)
The Oklahoman - Francis D. Lyon (Joel McCrea, Barbara Hale, Gloria Talbott, Verna Felton, Michael Pate, Brad Dexter)
Quantez - Harry Keller (Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Malone, John Larch, John Gavin, Sydney Chaplin, James Barton, Michael Ansara)
The Restless Breed - Allan Dwan (Scott Brady, Anne Bancroft, Jim Davis, Myron Healey, Scott Marlowe, Rhys Williams, Jay C. Flippen, Leo Gordon)
The Ride Back - Allen H. Miner (William Conrad, Anthony Quinn, Lita Milan)
Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend - Richard L. Bare (Randolph Scott, James Craig, Angie Dickinson, James Garner, Gordon Jones, Myron Healey)
3:10 to Yuma - Delmer Daves (Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, Felicia Farr, Henry Jones, Richard Jaeckel, Leora Dana)
The Tall Stranger - Thomas Carr (Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo, Leo Gordon)
The Tall T - Budd Boetticher (Randolph Scott, Richard Boone, Maureen O'Sullivan, Arthur Hunnicutt, Skip Homeier, Henry Silva)
Three Violent People - Rudolph Mat (Charlton Heston, Anne Baxter, Gilbert Roland, Tom Tryon, Forrest Tucker, Bruce Bennett, Robert Blake, Barton MacLane)
The Tin Star - Anthony Mann (Henry Fonda, Anthony Perkins, Neville Brand, Betsy Palmer, Michel Ray, John McIntire, Lee Van Cleef)
Trooper Hook - Charles Marquis Warren (Joel McCrea, Barbara Stanwyck, Eal Holliman, Edward Andrews, John Dehner, Royal Dano, Susan Kohner, Rodolfo Acosta)
The True Story of Jesse James - Nicholas Ray (Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, Hope Lange, Agnes Moorehead, Alan Hale Jr, John Carradine)
1958
The Badlanders - Delmer Daves (Alan Ladd, Ernest Borgnine, Katy Jurado, Kent Smith, Claire Kelly, Nehemiah Persoff)
The Big Country - William Wyler (Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, Burl Ives, Charles Bickford, Carroll Baker, Chuck Connors)
The Bravados - Henry King (Gregory Peck, Joan Collins, Henry Silva, Stephen Boyd, Lee Van Cleef, Albert Salmi, Andrew Duggan, Gene Evans)
Buchanan Rides Alone - Budd Boetticher (Randolph Scott, Craig Stevens, L. Q. Jones)
Cattle Empire - Charles Marquis Warren (Joel McCrea, Gloria Talbott, Don Haggerty, Phyllis Coates)
Cowboy - Delmer Daves (Glenn Ford, Jack Lemmon, Anna Kashfi, Brian Donlevy, Dick York, Richard Jaeckel)
The Fiend Who Walked the West - Gordon Douglas (Hugh O'Brian, Robert Evans, Linda Cristal, Stephen McNally, Edward Andrews, Dolores Michaels, Ron Ely)
From Hell to Texas - Henry Hathaway (Don Murray, Diane Varsi, Dennis Hopper, Chill Wills, R. G. Armstrong, Jay C. Flippen, Harry Carey Jr, John Larch)
Good Day for a Hanging - Nathan Juran (Fred MacMurray, Robert Vaughn, Margaret Hayes, Joan Blackman, James Drury, Emile Meyer, Denver Pyle)
Gunman's Walk - Phil Karlson (Van Heflin, Tab Hunter, Chief Blue Eagle, James Darren, Mickey Shaughnessy, Edward Platt, Kathryn Grant, Paul Birch)
The Last of the Fast Guns - George Sherman (Jock Mahoney, Gilbert Roland, Linda Cristal, Eduard Franz, Lorne Greene, Carl Benton Reid, Edward Platt)
The Law and Jake Wade - John Sturges (Robert Taylor, Richard Widmark, Patricia Owens, Robert Middleton, Henry Silva, DeForest Kelley)
The Left Handed Gun - Arthur Penn (Paul Newman, John Dehner, Lita Milan, Hurd Hatfield, Denver Pyle, James Congdon, James Best)
Man of the West - Anthony Mann (Gary Cooper, Lee J. Cobb, Julie London, Arthur O'Connell, Jack Lord, John Dehner, Royal Dano)
Man or Gun - Albert C. Gannaway (Macdonald Carey, James Craig, Audrey Totter, James Gleason, Warren Stevens)
The Proud Rebel - Michael Curtiz (Alan Ladd, Brandon De Wilde, Olivia de Havilland, Dean Jagger, Cecil Kellaway, John Carradine, Harry Dean Stanton)
Ride a Crooked Trail - Jesse Hibbs (Audie Murphy, Walter Matthau, Henry Silva, Gia Scala)
Saddle the Wind - Robert Parrish, John Sturges (Robert Taylor, John Cassavetes, Julie London, Donald Crisp, Charles McGraw, Royal Dano)
The Sheepman - George Marshall (Glenn Ford, Shirley MacLaine, Leslie Nielsen, Mickey Shaughnessy, Edgar Buchanan, Slim Pickens)
Terror in a Texas Town - Joseph H. Lewis (Sterling Hayden, Sebastian Cabot)
1959
Day of the Outlaw - Andr DeToth (Robert Ryan, Burl Ives, Tina Louise)
The Hanging Tree - Delmer Daves (Gary Cooper, Karl Malden, Maria Schell, George C. Scott, Ben Piazza)
The Hangman - Michael Curtiz (Robert Taylor, Jack Lord, Tina Louise, Fess Parker, Gene Evans)
The Horse Soldiers - John Ford (John Wayne, William Holden, Hoot Gibson, Strother Martin, Ken Curtis, Constance Towers)
The Jayhawkers! - Melvin Frank (Jeff Chandler, Fess Parker, Henry Silva, Nicole Maurey, Leo Gordon, Don Megowan, Robert Shayne)
Last Train from Gun Hill - John Sturges (Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, Carolyn Jones, Earl Holliman, Brad Dexter)
No Name on the Bullet - Jack Arnold (Audie Murphy, Charles Drake, Joan Evans, Warren Stevens, R. G. Armstrong, Whit Bissell, Jerry Paris, Virginia Grey)
Ride Lonesome - Budd Boetticher (Randolph Scott, Lee Van Cleef, Pernell Roberts, James Coburn, James Best, Karen Steele)
Rio Bravo - Howard Hawks (John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, John Russell)
These Thousand Hills - Richard Fleischer (Don Murray, Richard Egan, Lee Remick, Patricia Owens, Stuart Whitman)
They Came to Cordura - Robert Rossen (Gary Cooper, Rita Hayworth, Van Heflin, Tab Hunter, Richard Conte, Michael Callan, Dick York, Robert Keith)
Warlock - Edward Dmytryk (Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, Anthony Quinn, Dorothy Malone, Dolores Michaels, Wallace Ford, Tom Drake, Richard Arlen, DeForest Kelley)
Westbound - Budd Boetticher (Randolph Scott, Virginia Mayo, Michael Dante, Andrew Duggan, Michael Pate, Karen Steele)
The Wild and the Innocent - Jack Sher (Audie Murphy, Joanne Dru, Gilbert Roland, Jim Backus, Sandra Dee, Strother Martin)
The Wonderful Country - Robert Parrish (Robert Mitchum, Gary Merrill, Albert Dekker, Julie London, Jack Oakie, Leroy 'Stachel' Paige, Victor Manuel Mendoza)
1960
The Alamo - John Wayne (Wayne, Laurence Harvey, Richard Widmark)
Cimarron - Anthony Mann (Glenn Ford, Maria Schell, Arthur O'Connell, Mercedes McCambridge, Vic Morrow, Russ Tamblyn, Robert Keith)
Comanche Station - Budd Boetticher (Randolph Scott, Claude Akins)
Flaming Star - Don Siegel (Elvis Presley, Dolores Del Rio)
Hell Bent for Leather - George Sherman (Audie Murphy, Stephen McNally, Felicia Farr, Robert Middleton)
The Magnificent Seven - John Sturges (Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, Horst Buchholz)
One Foot in Hell - James B. Clark (Alan Ladd, Don Murray)
The Plunderers - Joseph Pevney (Jeff Chandler, John Saxon)
Sergeant Rutledge - John Ford (Jeffrey Hunter, Woody Strode)
Seven Ways from Sundown - Harry Keller (Audie Murphy, Barry Sullivan)
The Unforgiven - John Huston (Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy, Lillian Gish, John Saxon, Charles Bickford, Albert Salmi, Joseph Wiseman)
1961
The Comancheros - Michael Curtiz (John Wayne, Stuart Whitman, Lee Marvin)
The Deadly Companions - Sam Peckinpah (Maureen O'Hara, Brian Keith, Steve Cochran, Chill Wills, Strother Martin)
The Last Sunset - Robert Aldrich (Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Malone, Neville Brand)
One Eyed Jacks - Marlon Brando (Brando, Karl Malden, Katy Juardo, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens)
Posse from Hell - Herbert Coleman (Audie Murphy, John Saxon, Vic Morrow)
Two Rode Together - John Ford (James Stewart, Richard Widmark, Shirley Jones)
1962
How the West Was Won - John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, Richard Thorpe (James Stewart, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Karl Malden, George Peppard, Richard Widmark, Walter Brennan, Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Robert Preston, Carolyn Jones, Debbie Reynolds, Eli Wallach, Raymond Massey, Spencer Tracy)
Lonely Are the Brave - David Miller (Kirk Douglas, Walter Mattau, Gena Rowlands, Carroll O'Connor, George Kennedy)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - John Ford (James Stewart, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles)
Ride the High Country - Sam Peckinpah (Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea)
1963
The Man from Galveston - William Conrad (Jeffrey Hunter, James Coburn, Preston Foster)
1964
Cheyenne Autumn - John Ford (Richard Widmark, James Stewart, Karl Malden, Sal Mineo, Dolores del Rio, Ricardo Montalban, Gilbert Roland, Arthur Kennedy)
A Fistful of Dollars {Per un Pugno di Dollari} - Sergio Leone (Clint Eastwood)
Invitation to a Gunfighter - Richard Wilson (Yul Brynner, Janice Rule, George Segal)
The Outrage - Martin Ritt (Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson, William Shatner, Howard Da Silva, Albert Salmi, Paul Fix)
1965
For a Few Dollars More {Per Qualche Dollaro in Pi} - Sergio Leone (Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef)
Major Dundee - Sam Peckinpah (Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, James Coburn, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, L. Q. Jones, Slim Pickens, Jim Hutton)
Ride the Whirlwind - Monte Hellman (Jack Nicholson, Cameron Mitchell, Millie Perkins, Harry Dean Stanton)
Shenandoah - Andrew V. McLaglen (James Stewart, Doug McClure, Glenn Corbett, Patrick Wayne, Katharine Ross, Rosemary Forsyth, George Kennedy, Denver Pyle, Paul Fix)
The Sons of Katie Elder - Henry Hathaway (John Wayne, Dean Martin, Martha Hyer, Earl Holliman, George Kennedy, Dennis Hopper)
1966
Alvarez Kelly - Edward Dmytryk (William Holden, Richard Widmark, Janice Rule, Patrick O'Neal)
The Appaloosa - Sidney J. Furie (Marlon Brando, John Saxon)
A Big Hand for the Little Lady - Fielder Cook (Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward, Jason Robards, Charles Bickford, Paul Ford, Burgess Meredith)
Duel at Diablo - Ralph Nelson (James Garner, Sidney Poitier, Dennis Weaver)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly {Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo} - Sergio Leone (Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef)
Nevada Smith - Henry Hathaway (Steve McQueen, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Arthur Kennedy, Raf Vallone, Martin Landau, Suzanne Pleshette, Pat Hingle)
The Professionals - Richard Brooks (Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Jack Palance,Woody Strode, Claudia Cardinale, Ralph Bellamy)
1967
El Dorado - Howard Hawks (John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, James Caan)
Hombre - Martin Ritt (Paul Newman, Fredric March, Richard Boone)
Hour of the Gun - John Sturges (James Garner, Jason Robards, Robert Ryan)
The Long Ride Home {A Time for Killing} - Phil Karlson (Glenn Ford, George Hamilton)
The Shooting - Monte Hellman (Jack Nicholson, Will Hutchins, Millie Perkins, Warren Oates)
The War Wagon - Burt Kennedy (John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Howard Keel)
The Way West - Andrew V. McLaglen (Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark)
Welcome to Hard Times - Burt Kennedy (Henry Fonda, Janice Rule, Keenan Wynn, Warren Oates, Aldo Ray)
1968
Bandolero! - Andrew V. McLaglen (James Stewart, Dean Martin)
Blue - Silvio Narizzano (Terence Stamp, Karl Malden)
Day of the Evil Gun - Jerry Thorpe (Glenn Ford, Arthur Kennedy)
Firecreek - Vincent McEveety (James Stewart, Henry Fonda)
Five Card Stud - Henry Hathaway (Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum)
Guns for San Sebastian {La Bataille de San Sebastian} - Henri Verneuil (Anthony Quinn, Charles Bronson)
Hang 'em High - Ted Post (Clint Eastwood, Pat Hingle)
Lonesome Cowboys - Andy Warhol (Viva, Tom Hompertz)
Once Upon a Time in the West {C'era Una Volta il West} - Sergio Leone (Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, Claudia Cardinale)
Scalphunters - Sydney Pollack (Burt Lancaster, Telly Savalas, Ossie Davis, Shelley Winters)
The Stalking Moon - Robert Mulligan (Gregory Peck, Eva Marie Saint)
Villa Rides - Buzz Kulik (Robert Mitchum, Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson)
Will Penny - Tom Cries (Charlton Heston, Joan Hackett, Bruce Dern)
1969
Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid - George Roy Hill (Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross, Strother Martin)
Death of a Gunfighter - Don Siegel & Robert Totten as Alan Smithee (Richard Widmark, Lena Horne, Carroll O'Connor)
The Good Guys and the Bad Guys - Burt Kennedy (Robert Mitchum, George Kennedy, David Carradine)
Heaven with a Gun - Lee H. Katzin (Glenn Ford, Carolyn Jones)
Mackenna's Gold - J. Lee Thompson (Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif, Telly Savalas, Keenan Wynn, Camilla Sparv, Julie Newmar, Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Massey, Burgess Meredith, Anthony Quale, Edward G. Robinson, Eli Wallach)
100 Rifles - Tom Cries (Jim Brown, Burt Reynolds, Raquel Welch)
Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here - Abraham Polonsky (Robert Redford, Robert Blake, Katharine Ross)
True Grit - Henry Hathaway (John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glenn Campbell, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper)
The Undefeated - Andrew V. McLaglen (John Wayne, Rock Hudson)
The Wild Bunch - Sam Peckinpah (William Holden, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Edmond OBrien)
1970
The Ballad of Cable Hogue - Sam Peckinpah (Jason Robards, Stella Stevens, Storther Martin, L. Q. Jones)
The Cheyenne Social Club - Gene Kelly (James Stewart, Henry Fonda)
Chisum - Andrew V. McLaglen (John Wayne, Forrest Tucker, Ben Johnson)
El Topo - Alejandro Jodorowsky (Jodorowsky)
The Intruders - William A. Graham (Don Murray, Edmond OBrien, John Saxon)
Little Big Man - Arthur Penn (Dustin Hoffman, Chief Dan George)
A Man Called Horse - Elliot Silverstein (Richard Harris)
Madron - Jerry Hopper (Richard Boone, Leslie Caron)
Monte Walsh - William A. Fraker (Lee Marvin, Jack Palance, Jeanne Moreau)
Rio Lobo - Howard Hawks (John Wayne, Jack Elam)
Soldier Blue - Ralph Nelson (Candice Bergen)
There Was a Crooked Man - Joseph L. Mankiewicz (Henry Fonda, Kirk Douglas)
Two Mules for Sister Sara - Don Siegel (Clint Eastwood, Shirley MacLaine)
1971
Big Jake - George Sherman (John Wayne, Richard Boone)
Chato's Land - Michael Winner (Charles Bronson, Jack Palance, James Whitmore)
Doc - Frank D. Gilroy, Frank Perry (Stacy Keach, Faye Dunaway)
Gi la Testa {A Fistful of Dynamite} - Sergio Leone (Rod Steiger, James Coburn)
A Gunfight - Lamont Johnson (Kirk Douglas, Johnny Cash)
Hannie Caulder - Burt Kennedy (Raquel Welch, Robert Culp, Ernest Borgnine)
The Hired Hand - Peter Fonda (Fonda, Warren Oates, Verna Bloom)
Lawman - Michael Winner (Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Lee J. Cobb, Robert Duvall)
Man in the Wilderness - Richard C. Sarafian (Richard Harris, John Huston)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller - Robert Altman (Warren Beatty, Julie Christie)
One More Train to Rob - Andrew V. McLaglen (George Peppard)
Red Sun (Soleil Rouge) - Terence Young (Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune)
Shoot Out - Henry Hathaway (Gregory Peck)
A Time for Dying - Budd Boetticher (Audie Murphy)
A Town Called Hell - Robert Parrish (Robert Shaw, Telly Savalas, Martin Landau)
Valdez Is Coming - Edwin Sherin (Burt Lancaster)
Wild Rovers {Missouri} - Blake Edwards (William Holden, Ryan O'Neal, Karl Malden, Tom Skerritt, Joe Don Baker, Lynn Carlin)
1972
Bad Company - Robert Benton (Jeff Bridges, Jim Davis)
Buck and the Preacher - Sidney Poitier (Poitier, Harry Belafonte)
The Cowboys - Mark Rydell (John Wayne, Bruce Dern, Roscoe Lee Brown)
The Culpepper Cattle Company - Dick Richards (Gary Grimes, Bo Hopkins)
Dirty Little Billy - Stan Dragoti (Michael J. Pollard)
The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid - Philip Kaufman (Cliff Robertson, Robert Duvall)
Kung Fu - Jerry Thorpe (David Carradine, Barry Sullivan, Albert Salmi)
Jeremiah Johnson - Sydney Pollack (Robert Redford)
Joe Kidd - John Sturges (Clint Eastwood, Robert Duvall, John Saxon)
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean - John Huston (Paul Newman, Huston, Richard Farnsworth, Ava Gardner, Tab Hunter, Stacy Keach, Roddy McDowell, Anthony Zerbe, Jacqueline Bisset, Michael Sarrazin, Ned Beatty, Anthony Perkins)
The Revengers - Daniel Mann (William Holden, Ernest Borgnine)
Ulzana's Raid - Robert Aldrich (Burt Lancaster)
The Wrath of God - Ralph Nelson (Robert Mitchum, Rita Hayworth)
1973
Cahill U.S. Marshal - Andrew V. McLaglen (John Wayne)
High Plains Drifter - Clint Eastwood (Eastwood)
Un Hombre Ilamado Noon (The Man Called Noon) - Peter Collinson (Richard Crenna, Stephen Boyd, Farley Granger, Rosanna Schiaffino)
Kid Blue - James Frawley (Dennis Hopper, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Peter Boyle)
The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing - Richard C. Sarafian (Burt Reynolds)
Il Mio Nome Nessuno {My Name Is Nobody} - Tonino Valerii (Henry Fonda, Terence Hill)
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid - Sam Peckinpah (Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, Slim Pickens, Katy Juardo, Jason Robards)
Showdown - George Seaton (Rock Hudson, Dean Martin)
The Train Robbers - Burt Kennedy (John Wayne, Ann-Margret, Ben Johnson)
1974
Little House on the Prairie - Michael Landon (Landon)
Zandy's Bride - Jan Troell (Gene Hackman, Liv Ullmann)
1975
Bite the Bullet - Richard Brooks (Gene Hackman, James Coburn)
Breakheart Pass - Tom Cries (Charles Bronson, Ben Johnson)
Posse - Kirk Douglas (Douglas, Bruce Dern)
Rooster Cogburn - Stuart Millar (John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn)
1976
Buffalo Bill and the Indians - Robert Altman (Paul Newman, Burt Lancaster)
The Last Hard Men - Andrew V. McLaglen (Charlton Heston, James Coburn)
The Missouri Breaks - Arthur Penn (Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson)
The Outlaw Josey Wales - Clint Eastwood (Eastwood, Chief Dan George, John Vernon)
The Return of a Man Called Horse - Irvin Kershner (Richard Harris)
The Shootist - Don Siegel (John Wayne, James Stewart, Lauren Bacall, Richard Boone, Ron Howard, Hugh O'Brian)
1977
The White Buffalo - J. Lee Thompson (Charles Bronson, Jack Warden)
1978
Comes a Horseman - Alan J. Pakula (James Caan, Jane Fonda, Jason Robards, Richard Farnsworth, George Grizzard, Jim Davis, Mark Harmon, James Keach)
Goin' South - Jack Nicholson (Nicholson, Mary Stenburgen, Christopher Lloydk, John Belushi, Danny DeVito, Luana Anders, Veronica Cartwright)
1979
Eagle's Wing - Anthony Harvey (Martin Sheen, Harvey Keitel, Sam Waterson)
Heartland - Richard Pearce (Rip Torn, Conchata Ferrell)
The Last Ride of the Dalton Gang - Dan Curtis (Randy Quaid, Jack Palance)
The Sacketts - Robert Totten (Sam Elliott, Tom Selleck, Glenn Ford, Ben Johnson)
1980
Heaven's Gate - Michael Cimino (Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterson, Joseph Cotten, Jeff Bridges)
The Long Riders - Walter Hill (David, Keith & Robert Carradine, Stacy & James Keach)
The Mountain Men - Richard Lang (Charlton Heston, Brian Keith)
Tom Horn - William Wiard (Steve McQueen, Richard Farnsworth)
Windwalker - Kieth Merrill (Trevor Howard)
1981
Cattle Annie and Little Britches - Lamont Johnson (Burt Lancaster, Rod Steiger, Scott Glenn, Redmond Gleeson, Diane Lane, Amanda Plummer)
The Legend of the Lone Ranger - William A. Fraker (Jason Robards, Christopher Lloyd, Klinton Spilsbury)
1982
The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez - Robert M. Young (Edward James Olmos)
Barbarosa - Fred Schepisi (Willie Nelson, Gary Busey, Gilbert Roland)
The Grey Fox - Philip Borsos (Richard Farnsworth, Jackie Burroughs)
The Legend of Walks Far Woman - Mel Damski (Raquel Welch, Bradford Dillman)
The Man from Snowy River - George T. Miller (Tom Burlinson, Kirk Douglas)
The Shadow Riders - Andrew V. McLaglen (Tom Selleck, Sam Elliott, Ben Johnson)
1984
Draw! - Steven Hilliard Stern (Kirk Douglas, James Coburn)
1985
Pale Rider - Clint Eastwood (Eastwood, Michael Moriarty, Carrie Snodgress, Sydney Penny, John Russell, Richard Kiel)
Silverado - Lawrence Kasdan (Scott Glenn, Kevin Kline, Kevin Costner, Danny Glover, John Cleese, Jeff Goldblum, Linda Hunt, Brian Dennehy, Rosanna Arquette)
1986
Kung Fu: The Movie - Richard Lang (David Carradine, Brandon Lee, Martin Landau)
The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James - William A. Graham (Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson)
Stagecoach - Ted Post (The Highwaymen: Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings)
1987
Alamo: Thirteen Days to Glory - Burt Kennedy (James Arness, Brian Keith, Alec Baldwin)
Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge - Vincent McEveety (James Arness, Amanda Blake)
The Quick and the Dead - Robert Day (Sam Elliott, Kate Capshaw)
1988
The Tracker - John Guillermin (Kris Kristofferson, Scott Wilson)
Young Guns - Christopher Cain (Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen, Terence Stamp, Jack Palance, Brian Keith, Patrick Wayne)
1989
Lonesome Dove - Simon Wincer (Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Urich, Danny Glover, Diane Lane, Frederic Forrest, Angelica Huston, Rick Schroder)
Old Gringo - Luis Puenzo (Gregory Peck, Jane Fonda, Jimmy Smits)
1990
Dances with Wolves - Kevin Costner (Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene)
Quigley Down Under - Simon Wincer (Tom Selleck, Alan Rickman)
Thousand Pieces of Gold - Nancy Kelly (Rosalind Chao)
Young Guns II - Geoff Murphy (Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland)
1991
Conagher - Reynaldo Villalobos (Sam Elliott, Katharine Ross)
Son of the Morning Star - Mike Robe (Gary Cole, Rosanna Arquette)
1992
Unforgiven - Clint Eastwood (Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Richard Harris, Morgan Freeman)
1993
The Ballad of Little Jo - Maggie Greenwald (Suzy Amis, Bo Hopkins, Ian McKellen)
Geronimo: An American Legend - Walter Hill (Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Wes Studi)
Posse - Mario Van Peebles (Van Peebles, Stephen Baldwin, Charles Lane)
Return to Lonesome Dove - Mike Robe (Jon Voight, Barbara Hersey, Rick Schroder, Louis Gosset Jr, William Petersen, Oliver Reed, Dennis Haysbert, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Cooper)
Tombstone - George P. Cosmatos (Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton)
1994
Blind Justice - Richard Spence (Armand Assante, Elisabeth Shue)
The Desperate Trail - P.J. Pesce (Sam Elliott, Linda Fiorentino)
Frank and Jesse - Robert Boris (Rob Lowe, Bill Paxton, Randy Travis)
The Last Outlaw - Geoff Murphy (Mickey Rourke)
Maverick - Richard Donner (Mel Gibson, James Garner, Jodie Foster)
Wyatt Earp - Lawrence Kasdan (Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman)
1995
The Avenging Angel - Craig R. Baxley (Tom Berenger, James Coburn, Charlton Heston)
Black Fox - Steven Hilliard Stern (Christopher Reeve, Tony Todd, Raoul Trujillo, Janet Bailey, Nancy Sorel)
Buffalo Girls - Rod Hardy (Anjelica Huston, Melanie Griffith, Gabriel Byrne, Jack Palance)
Children of the Dust {A Good Day to Die} - David Greene (Sidney Poitier, Michael Moriarty, Shirley Knight)
Dead Man - Jim Jarmusch (Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, John Hurt, Robert Mitchum, Gabriel Byrne, Billy Bob Thornton)
The Good Old Boys - Tommy Lee Jones (Jones, Frances McDormand, Sam Shepard, Sissy Spacek)
Gunfighter's Moon - Larry Ferguson (Lance Henriksen)
In Pursuit of Honor - Ken Olin (Don Johnson, Rod Steiger)
The Quick and the Dead - Sam Raimi (Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman)
Streets of Laredo - Joseph Sargent (James Garner, Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepard)
Tashunga {North Star} - Nils Gaup (James Caan, Christopher Lambert)
Wild Bill - Walter Hill (Jeff Bridges, David Arquette)
1996
Dead Man's Walk - Yves Simoneau (F. Murray Abraham, Edward James Olmos, Keith Carradine, Brian Dennehy, Harry Dean Stanton, David Arquette, Patricia Childress)
The Lazarus Man {series} - Johnny E. Jensen, Norman S. Powell (Robert Urich)
Riders of the Purple Sage - Charles Haid (Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Henry Thomas, Robin Tunney)
1997
Buffalo Soldiers - Charles Haid (Danny Glover)
Dead Man's Gun - Neill Fearnley, Joseph L. Scanlan, Brad Turner (Kris Kristofferson)
Ebenezer - Ken Jubenvill (Jack Palance, Rick Schroder)
True Women - Karen Arthur (Dana Delany, Annabeth Gish, Angelina Jolie)
1998
Dollar for the Dead - Gene Quintano (Emilio Estevez, William Forsythe)
Duelo ao Por-do-Sol {Sunset Duel} - Gustavo Schneider (Alexandre Buaes
Il Mio West {My West} - Giovanni Veronesi (Harvey Keitel, David Bowie, Leonardo Pieraccioni)
Two for Texas - Rod Hardy (Kris Kristofferson, Tom Skerritt, Peter Coyote, Scott Bairstow, Irene Bedard)
Wind River - Tom Shell (Blake Heron, Russell Means, Wes Studi, Karen Allen, A Martinez)
1999
The Jack Bull - John Badham (John Cusack, John Goodman, L. Q. Jones, John Savage, Miranda Otto)
Purgatory - Uli Edel (Sam Shepard, Eric Roberts, Randy Quaid)
Ravenous - Antonia Bird (Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, David Arquette)
Ride with the Devil - Ang Lee (Tobey Maguire, Jeffrey Wright, Jewel, Skeet Ulrich, Simon Baker, James Caviezel)
2000
The Claim - Michael Winterbottom (Nastassja Kinski, Peter Mullan, Wes Bentley, Sarah Polley, Milla Jovovich)
South of Heaven, West of Hell - Dwight Yoakam (Yoakam, Vince Vaughn, Billy Bob Thornton, Bridget Fonda, Peter Fonda, Paul Reubens, Bo Hopkins, Bud Cort)
2001
American Outlaws - Les Mayfield (Colin Farrell, Scott Caan, Ali Larter, Gabriel Macht)
Crossfire Trail - Simon Wincer (Tom Selleck, Virginia Madsen)
Dust - Milcho Manchevski (Joseph Fiennes, David Wenham, Anne Brochet, Adrian Lester, Rosemary Murphy)
The Journeyman - James Crowley (Brad Hunt, Daniel Lapaine, Willie Nelson)
2003
And Starring Poncho Villa As Himself - Bruce Beresford (Antonio Banderas, Eion Bailey)
The Missing - Ron Howard (Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett, Val Kilmer)
Monte Walsh - Simon Wincer (Tom Selleck, Isabella Rossellini, Keith Carradine)
Open Range - Kevin Costner (Costner, Robert Duvall, Annette Bening)
2004
Deadwood {series} - Walter Hill, Davis Guggenheim, Edward Bianchi, etc. (Timothy Olyphant, Ian McShane, Molly Parker, Powers Booth, Keith Carradine)
2005
The Proposition - John Hillcoat (Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Richard Wilson, John Hurt, Danny Huston, Emily Watson)
2006
Seraphim Falls - David Von Ancken (Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan)
2007
Avenging Angel - David S Cass Sr (Kevin Sorbo, Wings Hauser)
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Yves Simoneau (Aidan Quinn, Adam Beach, August Schellenberg, Gordon Tootoosis, Anna Paquin, Wes Studi)
3:10 to Yuma - James Mangold (Chistian Bale, Russell Crowe, Peter Fonda)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - Andrew Dominik (Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard)
2008
Appaloosa - Ed Harris (Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Jeremy Irons, James Gammon, Renée Zellweger)
Comanche Moon - Simon Wincer (Val Kilmer, Steve Zahn, Karl Urban, Wes Studi)
Six Reasons Why - Jeff & Matthew Campagna - music by Laurence Correa & Nick Name (Dan Wooster)