John Wayne: This is one of his most unknown westerns and you would be wrong not to discover it

During the 1940s, John Wayne was already a Hollywood star, but the Second World War had cut Europe from American cinema, and most of his films at that time were only discovered years later. And this month, the publisher Sidonis Calysta came out one of them, and it’s a western!

John Wayne in professional cheat

Republic Pictures

With the fantastic ride in 1939, John Wayne reveals that he is a talented actor and capable of bringing big. He became a star and from 1940 to 1948, filmed around twenty films, including only a few westerns, including the pioneer’s wife, also known as Dakota.

The film begins like a comedy of mores with a certain Sandy (Vera Ralston, great star of the time) marrying with John (John Wayne) without talking to his father, a railway magnate. A fairly comical prosecution follows then, little by little, the genus Western settles when John and Sandy decide to settle in the state of Dakota, a land full of promises for a young couple with a business sense.

All his friends are there

Republic Pictures

In the pioneer’s wife, John Wayne is the star and brought his friends: Walter Brennan, whom he had known on two westerns with Tim McCoy in 1932 and will find on Rio Bravo, but also Ward Bond (met with John Ford) or Grant Withers, close friend with whom he had just turned the girl and his Cowboy and the bloody rush (1943) Marine alert (1944).

The film recounts the way in which extreme greed comes to trample individual freedom. Businessmen try to scam the farmers so that they sell their land at low prices, becoming the owners of vast land that will be worth a fortune when the railroad has arrived in Dakota. The fight between the two camps also offers a beautiful but tragic fire sequence with the farmers fleeing their fields burning.

Wayne interprets a character with a little troubled past – inveterate player, brawler and willingly irreverent – but who, in contact with a real injustice, will prove to be a valuable knight without fear and without reproach as he will play a lot afterwards. The pioneer’s wife remains an interesting curiosity produced by the unequal Joseph Kane, who the same year will stage another Western with Wayne, the beautiful of San Francisco. Again, an unknown nugget, also published by Sidonis Calysta.