When John Wayne showed up on television, he was usually playing himself in a showbiz cameo, like his “I Love Lucy” guest appearance. As one of the century’s biggest movie stars, he didn’t exactly need exposure.

But Ward Bond, Wayne’s co-star in many of legendary director John Ford’s movies, struggled over whether or not he should make a move to television. When Ford discussed it with Bond, he got blunt. According to Joseph McBride’s book “Searching for John Ford,” the director called his friend a “dumb Irishman” and asked, “Don’t you act for a living?”

Bond listened, and took a leading role in “Wagon Train,” a major TV western of the ’50s and ’60s. The show was once the highest-rated western on television, even beating out its regular competition, “Gunsmoke.” And Bond was far from the only movie star to appear in it.

The show began in 1958, and owed a great deal to John Ford’s vision of the American West. Every one of its many episodes focused on a unique character, either somebody in the wagon train or somebody the wagon train encountered, which made the show particularly supple ground for guest stars.

When Ford directed an episode of the show, 1960’s “The Colter Craven Story,” the ostensible star was Carleton Young, another Ford stock actor, who played the part of Colter Craven. But dig into the credits and you’ll find another name: Michael Morris … who was actually John Wayne, perhaps the biggest star to appear on the program. And he did it in near secret.

As televisions became more commercially available in the 1950’s, the TV western became one of its most ubiquitous genres, lovingly homaged in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” There were so many western TV shows that only a few are still widely remembered today, regardless of their contemporaneous popularity (shows like “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza” remain cultural milestones even as others vanished). Like many film westerns, these shows took place a couple of years after the Civil War, using national scars and the rocky terrain of the country’s westward expansion as raw material.

“Wagon Train” was one of those shows. It didn’t just incorporate the communal warmth and actors of John Ford’s westerns — it borrowed story beats from his 1950 film “Wagon Master,” about 19th century Mormon pioneers. When Ford came on to direct his episode, he even used the movie’s location photography to give the episode a grandeur that differentiated it from the other westerns on television, according to Joseph McBride’s “Searching for John Ford.”

Where the initial movie was more concerned with the historic transport of pacifistic Mormons across the wilderness, the TV show became more secular by cutting out the Mormon element. The premise needed to carry the show through 284 hour-long episodes. All that mattered was that the wagon train kept moving.

By 1972, Bruce Dern’s career was off to a great start. Like many actors who started in the sixties, Dern cut his teeth on small TV parts. He was on hit westerns like Rawhide and Bonanza. Dern also holds film roles in movies like Hang ‘Em High and They Shoot horses Don’t They. However, the role that had the most impact on his carer was Longhair in The Cowboys. In that film, he starred alongside John Wayne. That role almost killed his career.

Bruce Dern turned in a stellar performance in The Cowboys. That wasn’t what made it hard for him to get work. In fact, he had no control over the aspect of the role that nearly tanked his acting aspirations. After that movie came out, fans branded him “The Man Who Killed John Wayne.” He was one of the most hated men in Hollywood.

As a matter of fact, Dern’s performance alongside John Wayne may have made things worse. He is such a believable villain in the scene that you can’t help but hate him just a little bit. Fans may have forgotten a lesser actor with or a weaker performance. Bruce Dern, however, was all in. Check out the fateful scene below.

There is no denying that John Wayne and Bruce Dern both turn it all t he way up for this scene. They have an epic fight. Then, after Duke’s Wil Anderson bests Dern’s Longhair, things go south fast. Longhair pulls a pistol from his partner’s holster. After a little trash talk, he shoots Anderson in the back of his arm. Then, he puts one in the cowboy’s gut. When Anderson goes down, the villain puts another slug in him for good measure. At the same time, Dern was shooting down several future prospects.

John Wayne warned Bruce Dern that there would be consequences for taking the role. About this, Dern once said that when he showed up to the set, the Duke had already been drinking. He walked up to Dern, leaned in close, and said, “Oh, how they’re going to hate you for this.”

John Wayne was telling the truth. After The Cowboys hit screens, fans hated Bruce Dern. People would come up to him on the street and cuss him out for killing the Duke. At the same time, studios didn’t want to hire him because people hated him so much.

On one hand, that is a testament to John Wayne’s popularity. If just about anyone else died in a movie it was no big deal. It really didn’t matter who did the killing, either. However, Wayne’s characters never died. At the same time, he was a national treasure. So, his death was a little different. On the other hand, it shows how good of an actor Bruce Dern is. The goal of any kind of art, acting included, is to make the audience feel something. Dern succeeded. The emotion just happened to be rage.

John Wayne and Kirk Douglas starred together in The War Wagon. Kirk was not the first choice to play Lomax in the film but the director ended up giving up half his salary to secure Kirk for the movie. Turns out that the two big stars had very different political views and butted heads a few times during filming.

During production, Kirk was late one day because he had been filming a commercial to endorse Edmund G Brown, a Democrat, as Governor of California. Of course, John was a lifelong conservative and republican who had just filmed an endorsement for Ronald Reagan.

John Wayne and Kirk Douglas often fought about politics : With their extremely different political views, they would often bicker. However, their respect for each other never wavered.

Kirk once shared on The Dick Cavett Show, “I don’t want to get involved in a conversation about John Wayne. I’ve made quite a few pictures with John Wayne and, by the way, I’ve always called him John. Everybody calls him Duke. We have never seen eye-to-eye on a lot of things.”

He added that John was “one of the most professional actors I’ve ever worked with. We get along well, we never discuss politics. But he’s the first guy on the set, the hardest worker I’ve ever worked with, and I think he’s quite a character.”

Dick then joked that of course, they wouldn’t see eye to eye because John was a tall 6’4″ while Kirk was only around 5’9″ then. During filming, Kirk would have to wear lifts in his shoes so that they would appear to be around the same height.