True Grit (1969 film)

For other uses, see True Grit.

True Grit
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Henry Hathaway
Written by	Marguerite Roberts
Produced by	Hal B. Wallis
Starring	John Wayne Glen Campbell Kim Darby Robert Duvall Jeff Corey Dennis Hopper Strother Martin John Fiedler
Cinematography	Lucien Ballard
Edited by	Warren Low
Music by	Elmer Bernstein
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	June 11, 1969 (1969-06-11)
Running time	128 minutes
Country	Template:Film US
Language	English
Box office	$31,132,592

True Grit is a 1969 American Western film written by Marguerite Roberts and directed by Henry Hathaway. It is the first adaptation of Charles Portis' 1968 novel True Grit. John Wayne stars as U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn and won his only Academy Award for his performance in this film. Wayne reprised his role as Cogburn in the 1975 sequel Rooster Cogburn.

Plot

After Frank Ross (John Pickard) is murdered in January 1878 by his hired hand, Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), in Fort Smith, Arkansas, Ross' 14-year-old daughter Mattie (Kim Darby) travels to Fort Smith and hires the aging U.S. Marshal Reuben "Rooster" J. Cogburn (John Wayne). Mattie has heard that, despite his vices and missing eye, Cogburn has "true grit". She gives Rooster a down payment to track down Chaney, who has taken up with "Lucky" Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall), a gang leader whom Rooster once shot in a gunfight.

The pair must head into Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Mattie buys a horse for this, after collecting money from a horse trader. They are joined by a young Texas Ranger, La Boeuf (Glen Campbell), who hopes to collect a $1,500 reward for capturing Chaney, much more than Mattie is offering Cogburn. The ranger says Chaney also killed a Texas Senator named Bibbs, and Bibbs' dog. Mattie dislikes the boastful La Boeuf and refuses his assistance, but the ranger joins forces with Cogburn, who agrees to split the reward with him. The two try to abandon Mattie, but they learn that she is determined to join their posse.

After several days, the three plan to spend the night at a cabin which Cogburn had said would be empty. At the cabin, they discover Emmett Quincy (Jeremy Slate) and Moon (Dennis Hopper), two horse thieves waiting for Pepper. Moon's leg is badly injured and Cogburn uses the injury as leverage to get information about Pepper from them. To prevent Moon from telling too much, Quincy fatally stabs Moon with a knife, and Cogburn kills Quincy. Before Moon dies, he tells Cogburn that Pepper and his gang are due at the hideout that night; the posse lays a trap.

The following morning, Pepper and his men arrive at the hideout. La Boeuf mistakenly fires and a shootout ensues, during which Cogburn and La Boeuf kill two of the gang, but Pepper and the rest escape. Cogburn, La Boeuf and Mattie make their way to McAlester's store, where the marshal arranges for the four dead men to be buried.

The three continue their pursuit. After a few days, Mattie slips down a steep hill one morning on her way to bathe in a river and finds herself face-to-face with Chaney. She shoots and wounds him, calling out to her partners. Pepper and his gang capture her, and he forces Cogburn and La Boeuf to abandon the girl.

Cogburn doubles back and attacks Pepper and his gang. La Boeuf finds Mattie and moves Chaney to an area he thinks is secure. La Boeuf and Mattie move to an outcropping and watch as a mounted Cogburn confronts Ned and his three gang members. Cogburn tells Pepper he has a choice of getting killed or surrendering and being hanged at Judge Isaac Parker's convenience. Pepper replies that is "bold talk for a one-eyed fat man." Cogburn shouts "Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!" just as he begins charging the four gunmen firing a rifle in one hand and a pistol in the other and holding the horse's reins in his mouth. Rooster shoots down three of the gang and wounds Pepper, but Rooster is trapped under his fallen horse which has been shot by Ned. As Pepper prepares to shoot Rooster, La Boeuf kills Pepper from the outcropping located a great distance away.

As La Boeuf and Mattie return to Pepper's camp, Chaney comes out from behind a tree and smashes a rock over La Boeuf's head, knocking him unconscious and fatally wounding him. Mattie shoots and wounds Chaney in the arm, but is driven back from the recoil, falls into a pit and breaks her arm. Cogburn arrives and fatally shoots Chaney, sending him into the pit. In the pit, Mattie is bitten by a rattlesnake, which Cogburn shoots dead as he descends into the pit on a rope. La Boeuf, thought to be dead, peers over the pit and helps them get out by pulling them out with a rope tied to his horse. After Mattie and Cogburn are safely out of the pit, La Boeuf falls off his horse and dies.

In a hurry to get help for Mattie's snakebite, they have to leave La Boeuf's body. They both must ride Mattie’s horse, but the overloaded horse collapses and succumbs before they reach their destination. Undaunted, Cogburn gathers Mattie in his arms and carries her until they encounter some horsemen with a wagon. Cogburn steals the wagon and they ride it the rest of the way to McAlester's. There, an Indian doctor treats Mattie's snakebite and splints her broken arm.

Days later, Mattie's attorney, J. Noble Daggett (John Fiedler) arrives. Throughout the plot, Mattie has frequently used his name as a legal threat on occasions when she fails to get her way. He pays Cogburn a $75 reward for Chaney's capture, plus an additional $200 for saving Mattie (at her request). Mattie is still ill from the snakebite and Cogburn offers to bet the attorney the $275 that Mattie will make it back to her home, but Daggett declines to bet against her.

Weeks later, Mattie, arm in a sling, is recovered and at home. She shows a visiting Cogburn her family burial plot on the land. Cogburn was there to receive all the reward money offered for Chaney in Texas, which was apparently more than the $75 he initially received. She promises that he can be buried next to her family after his death. Cogburn reluctantly accepts, hoping his burial will not be too soon. She offers him her father's pistol which he reluctantly accepts, stating that it misfired once. He leaves, jumping over a fence with his horse to disprove her claim that he was too old and fat. He heads off into the valley below as the film ends.

Cast

• John Wayne as Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn
• Kim Darby as Mattie Ross
• Glen Campbell as La Boeuf
• Jeremy Slate as Emmett Quincy
• Robert Duvall as Lucky Ned Pepper
• Dennis Hopper as Moon
• Strother Martin as Col. G. Stonehill
• Jeff Corey as Tom Chaney
• Donald Woods as Barlow
• James Westerfield as Judge Parker

Production

Filming took place mainly in Ouray County, Colorado, in the vicinity of Ridgway (now the home of the True Grit Cafe), around the town of Montrose (Montrose County), and the town of Ouray. (The script maintains the novel's references to place names in Arkansas and Oklahoma, in dramatic contrast to the Colorado topography.) The courtroom scenes were filmed at Ouray County Courthouse in Ouray.

Ouray County Courthouse, constructed in 1888.

The scenes that take place at the "dugout" and along the creek where Pierce and Moon are killed, as well as the scene where Rooster carries Mattie on her horse Little Blackie after the snakebite, were filmed at Hot Creek on the east side of the Sierra Nevada near the town of Mammoth Lakes, California. Mt Morrison and Laurel Mountain form the backdrop above the creek. This location was also used in North to Alaska. Filming was done from September to December 1968.

Mia Farrow was originally cast as Mattie and was keen on the role. However, prior to filming she made a film in England with Robert Mitchum, who advised her not to work with director Henry Hathaway because he was "cantankerous." Farrow asked producer Hal B. Wallis to replace Hathaway with Roman Polanski, who had directed Farrow in Rosemary's Baby, but Wallis refused. Farrow quit the role, which went to Kim Darby.

Wayne called Marguerite Roberts' script "the best script he had ever read." He particularly liked the scene with Darby where Rooster tells Mattie about his life in Illinois (where he has a restaurant, his wife Nola leaves him because of his degenerate friends, and has a clumsy son named Horace), calling it "about the best scene I ever did."

Veteran John Wayne stunt-double Chuck Hayward does the stunt in the meadow, where "Bo" goes down, on his long time horse Twinkle Toes. In the last scene, Mattie gives Rooster her father's gun. She comments that he's gotten a tall horse, as she expected he would. He notes that his new horse can jump a four-rail fence. Then she admonishes him, "You're too old and fat to be jumping horses." Rooster responds with a smile, saying, "Well, come see a fat old man sometime," and jumps his new horse over a fence. Although many of Wayne's stunts over the years were done by Hayward and Chuck Roberson, it is Wayne on Twinkle Toes going over the fence. Darby's stunts where done by Polly Burson.

The horse shown during the final scene (before he jumps the fence on Twinkle Toes) of True Grit was Dollor, a two-year-old (in 1969) chestnut Quarter horse gelding, Dollor ('Ole Dollor) had been Wayne's favorite horse for 10 years. Wayne fell in love with the horse, which would carry him through several more Westerns, including his final movie, The Shootist. Wayne had Dollor written into the script of The Shootist because of his love for the horse; it was a condition for him working on the project. Wayne would not let anyone else ride the horse, the lone exception being Robert Wagner, who rode the horse in a segment of the Hart to Hart television show, after Wayne's death.

Reception

Awards and nominations

John Wayne won a Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Actor. Upon accepting his Oscar, Wayne said, "Wow! If I'd known that, I'd have put that patch on 35 years earlier." The title song, by composer Elmer Bernstein and lyricist Don Black, and sung by Glen Campbell who co-starred in the movie, received nominations for both the Academy Award for Best Song and the Golden Globe.

Differences from the novel

See also: True Grit (novel)

Unlike the book, the movie doesn’t introduce Mattie as an old woman telling a story of her childhood, but instead begins and ends in early 1878, when Mattie is 14. In the book, Mattie remains the central character throughout; in the movie Rooster Cogburn gets an equal share of the limelight. The film also downplays the novel's biblical tone and adds a hint of romance between Mattie and La Boeuf. La Boeuf also does not die in the novel, but survives his head injury. Another significant difference from Portis' tale is that Mattie has her arm amputated as a result of the rattlesnake attack, in contrast to the final scene in the film where Kim Darby is seen with only a sling on her arm—indicating that she is recovering from the snake bites and intact physically. The novel's conclusion makes the reader aware that the story has been recounted by Mattie as an elderly, one-armed woman who never married. Also in the book, Mattie takes LaBeouf's Sharps Carbine and kills Chaney, in the movie, Rooster kills Chaney (*actually, this isn't strictly true: in the book Mattie shoots Chaney but he survives. Rooster kills Chaney and he falls into the pit with the rattlesnake).

In the book, Tom Chaney was a young man; Mattie guessed his age to be around 25. Jeff Corey, who played Chaney in the movie, was 55 at the time. In the movie, La Boeuf claims to have a girl in Texas who would "look with favor" on his capture of Tom Chaney. In the book, La Boeuf made no mention of a girlfriend; his motive for capturing Chaney was purely financial.

In the book the store Rooster goes to regularly is called Bagby's. In the movie it's called McAllister's.

In the book, Rooster Cogburn had a mustache and did not wear an eye patch, though he had only one eye. In his fight with Ned Pepper, he wielded two Navy six-shooters. In the movie, Wayne carried a six-shooter in his left hand and his trademark large-loop rifle in the other. The character of Rooster was supposed to be around 40 in the novel; in the film, he was played by 61-year-old Wayne.

In the book, Mattie has her arm amputated due to the snakebite and break. Rooster pays her a visit while she is recovering from the procedure, but she is too sedated to remember. She tries to meet him 25 years later while he is traveling in a wild west show but he passes away a few days before they can meet. She has his remains exhumed and re-interred in her family plot.

Also, the film's Colorado location and mountain scenery are in sharp contrast to the script's references to place names in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Further, the film is set in autumn, while the book clearly sets the story in winter, with snow on the ground outside the dugout where Quincy and Moon awaited Pepper's gang. In the book, when Mattie falls into the snake pit she faces a ball of snakes and disturbs them in their winter quarters. In the film Mattie faces a single rattlesnake.

Sequels and other film versions

A film sequel, Rooster Cogburn, was made in 1975, with Wayne reprising his role and Katharine Hepburn as an elderly spinster, Eula Goodnight, who teams up with him. The plot has been described as a rehash of the original True Grit with elements of the Bogart-Hepburn film The African Queen. A further made-for-television sequel entitled True Grit: A Further Adventure, appeared in 1978, starring Warren Oates and Lisa Pelikan, and featured the further adventures of Rooster Cogburn and Mattie Ross.

In 2010, Joel and Ethan Coen directed another adaptation of the novel. Their adaptation focuses more on Mattie's point-of-view, as in the novel, and is more faithful to its Oklahoma setting. Hailee Steinfeld portrays Mattie Ross, Jeff Bridges portrays Rooster Cogburn, and the cast also includes Matt Damon as LeBeouf and Josh Brolin as Tom Chaney.

External links

• True Grit at IMDb
• True Grit at the TCM Movie Database
• True Grit at AllMovie
• True Grit at Rotten Tomatoes
• "The Real Fort Smith: the Fact and Fiction Behind True Grit" Posted on AwardsDaily, 11/17/2010. A look at the veracity of the novel and both film adaptations, from a Fort Smith history perspective.