John Wayne Gave Bruce Dern A Warning Before Shooting Their Climactic Scene In The Cowboys

For a long time, John Wayne was  angry about losing out on an Academy Award. Then, he finally won the Oscar for his performance as U.S. Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn in "True Grit," adding yet another achievement to his already legendary career. But the following year, his reputation took a hit when he gave what became an infamous Playboy interview in which he said some things that haunted until his death. Those things included criticizing the Civil Rights movement and claiming to support "white supremacy," before labelling Native Americans selfish for trying to retain their land and "keep it for themselves." It's not hard to see why this interview has lived in infamy ever since, and why it continues to recrudesce every few years, even though the man himself passed away in 1979.

The year after the interview was published, Wayne seemingly allowed his legacy as the archetypal American hero to take another blow, though this time it had nothing to do with his politics. Wayne had been killed in movies multiple times, perishing at the tentacles of a giant squid in 1942's "Reap The Wild Wind" and dying after being shot by a Japanese soldier in 1949's "Sands of Iwo Jima." Wayne even succumbed to being stabbed in "The Alamo," in which his Davy Crockett blows up a supply of gunpowder and takes a troop of Mexican soldiers with him. But there was something undeniably distressing about his character's death in 1972's "The Cowboys" — a movie he nearly lost out on due to his politics.

The man who took his life was Bruce Dern. Rather, Bruce Dern's unhinged cattle rustler Asa Watts, who shoots Wayne's rancher Will Andersen multiple times. For whatever reason, this particular on-screen death struck a somber chord with audiences, who were not used to seeing the Duke felled in such a tragic, unfair, and violent manner. Such an event even changed the course of Dern's own career, with the actor being typecast as a villain for a time as well as becoming known as the man who killed John Wayne. In fairness, though, the Duke did warn him.

"The Cowboys" was based on the 1971 novel of the same name by William Dale Jennings and directed by Mark Rydell, marking his and Wayne's only collaboration. The film sees Wayne in one of his many paternal roles as rancher Wil Andersen, who hires a group of young boys to help him on a 400-mile cattle drive. He then teaches the boys the skills necessary for the long journey — alongside some life lessons that basically amount to "toughen up" — before setting off with his new crew.

On the journey they encounter Bruce Dern's Asa Watts, the leader of a group of cattle rustlers who ostensibly want to work for Andersen. But after the rancher refuses Watts and his men's request, they seemingly disappear only to trail Andersen and his boys, ultimately confronting them and stealing their herd. But before they can make off with the cattle, Anderson and Watts come to blows in a fight that is one of the greatest John Wayne movie moments. Wayne's character overcomes Dern's, which audiences were certainly expecting. But the truly shocking development comes directly afterwards. After Andersen turns to walk away from a downed Watts, Dern's character then shoots Andersen in the arms, leg and back and the young boys' adoptive father falls to the floor before slowly succumbing to his wounds.

Such a moment was always going to shock audiences used to seeing Wayne overcome the bad guys. Even when he'd died on-screen before, it was in a truly heroic fashion or he'd at least been able to take out a swathe of bad guys in the process. Here, though, he's simply gunned down while his back is turned. The fact he was 55 years old at the time probably made the whole thing more difficult to watch. Given the man had already damaged his reputation with the Playboy interview, seeing an older Wayne crumpling from gunfire probably hit a little too close to home for fans of the man who were starting to sense they were witnessing the end of an era.

Wayne himself likely knew as much, and evidently warned Dern — albeit in a lighthearted way — before they shot his death scene. In a 1996 interview for the film "Last Man Standing," Dern was asked about being one of the only actors to kill John Wayne on-screen, saying, "[Wayne] said to me, just before I pulled the trigger and did the first take, 'Oh how they're going to hate you for this,' and I said, 'Maybe, but in Berkeley, I'm a goddamn hero.'" Berkeley is the University of Berkeley, a known liberal stronghold sure to have been enraged by Wayne's comments to Playboy. Dern continued, "You have to remember that was 1972. He'd just done a Playboy interview in which he'd ripped everybody in America that wasn't waspy white a new behind."

"The Cowboys" isn't one of the best Westerns ever made, but it is arguably one of the most significant due to its shocking death scene and the resulting type casting that Bruce Dern experienced. But it seems at the time, all was well on-set. Dern elaborated on his experience of filming the scene in question in a 2015 Cowboys and Indians interview, saying that Wayne laughed at his joke about Berkeley. According to the actor, Wayne then put his arm around his co-star's neck, turned to the crew of 90 or more and said, "That's why this is in my film." Dern explained, "He understands that bad guys can be funny. If they weren't, why would we be talking about them 150 years later?" It seems Wayne was eager to get the best out of Dern from the outset, and even instructed the young actor to treat him with disrespect on the set so as to create an image of himself as a bad guy for the kids who were playing the young ranch hands. As Dern explained in his Cowboys and Indians interview:

"Right at the start, [Wayne] says to me, 'I want you to do us a favor.' He was including himself, [director] Mark Rydell, and the scriptwriters. He said, 'From now on, consider me to be somebody you can publicly kick the s**t out of 24 hours a day on the set. Because I want these little kids [playing the cowboys of the title] to be absolutely terrified of you.'"

The young Dern, who must have found the prospect of disrespecting the legendary John Wayne a tad vertiginous, recalled embracing the actor's request nonetheless. "He gave me carte blanche to just treat him like a turd," he said. "So I was on him, talking back to him and stuff, for the few days I was there. And he would do things like call out: 'Hey, Mr. Dern, would you get over here?' I thought, Hey, John Wayne gives you a 'mister' status. My first day, he's calling me mister. How about that? That's pretty cool."