John Wayne and His GunsWayne was an extra and played an unnamed American officer in the 1928 World War I silent film Four Sons, but he was never seen holding a firearm despite the film’s wartime setting. He continued to have bit parts, many of which were uncredited, until he starred in the 1930 film The Big Trail. Largely overlooked today, the film still deemed to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress in 2006 and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

It also marked the first time Wayne carried a firearm on screen; in this case an Enfield Pattern 1853, a percussion fired rifled musket that saw use in the Crimean War and later in the American Civil War. In the film, Wayne’s character—a young trapper and scout—also carried a Remington 1858 New Army. He never used either weapon again, however.

The Single Action ArmyOf the firearms that John Wayne used the most in movies, nothing even comes close to the Colt 1873 Single Action Army Revolver, which appeared in some 25 films. While not the first to use the infamous revolver in a movie – that would be the unnamed “Bandit” in 1903’s The Great Train Robbery – Wayne was arguably the first household name to use the Single Action Army in a film, it was in 1931’s The Range Feud.

Over the nearly five decades following that film, the Duke carried Single Action Army Revolvers. He carried them in such films as The Trail Beyond (1934), Red River (1948), Rio Grande (1950), Hondo (1953) and The Sons of Katie Elder (1965).He also carried the revolver as Deputy U.S. Marshal Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn in his Oscar winning performance True Grit, as well as in the sequel Rooster Cogburn. It’s also fitting that his character carries a “Great Western Revolver”; it’s a specially engraved replica made especially for Wayne, in his final movie The Shootist (1976).

The Winchester Model 1892The Winchester Model 1892 was first seen in the 1939 film Stagecoach. Winchester’s rifle—notably the large lever loop version—has become practically synonymous with Wayne. The lever-action repeating rifle, which the legendary John Browning designed to be a smaller and lighter version of the large-frame Model 1886, is almost always an anachronism, but because of Wayne it was associated with Hollywood westerns for decades.
Wayne used the Winchester Model 1892 in a dozen films. The Saddle Ring Carbine version appeared about half of the time.
As with the Colt Single Action Army, Winchester’s rifle appeared in some of the Duke’s most remembered and beloved films. Those include Red River, The Searchers (1953), True Grit and The Shootist.
Only in a few films did Wayne ever use the more period correct rifles. A good example is the Winchester Model 1866 “Yellow Boy,” which appears in the 1948 film Fort Apache. Meanwhile, he used a Springfield Model 1873 Cavalry Carbine in Red River. However, those are the exceptions, and while not historically accurate, Wayne just seems correct carrying the Model 1892.
John Wayne With Military GunsIn addition to being known for playing U.S. Marshals and other lawmen—as well as gun fighters and cowboys—in countless westerns, Wayne’s character roster also included many war films. As noted, his first role was playing a U.S. military officer during the First World War. However, it was during the Second World War that he made the transition to portraying a modern soldier.
In 1944’s The Fighting Seabees, Wayne carried a Colt M1911A1 .45 pistol and Springfield M1903A3 rifle. Meanwhile, in 1949’s Sands of Iwo Jima he first carried and actually fired an M1 Garand. Wayne carried the M1 Garand again, but never fired it in the 1962 World War II epic The Longest Day.
The Green BeretsBy the end of the 1960s, John Wayne had the somewhat dubious distinction of appearing in The Green Berets. It was the only Vietnam War film to have the full support of the U.S. military.
The film essentially comes off as a western with the Viet Cong taking the role of the American Indians attacking a besieged frontier outpost. In the film, Wayne carries an XM16E1; it’s the Army variant of the original M16 (SP1).
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Made in 1976, three years before he died, John Wayne’s last picture, The Shootist, in which he plays an aging cowboy dying of cancer, became a most appropriate swan song to his illustrious 50-year screen career.

Wayne was seemingly the natural, but not first, choice for the part. Surprisingly, the role had been first offered to Paul Newman, who reportedly pulled out for personal reasons. The part was then offered to George Scott, who demanded too many changes in the script. Both Newman (“The Sting”) and Scott (“Patton”) were very popular in the 1970

However, in retrospect, producer Mike Frankovich was delighted with the casting, claiming, “Nobody could have been better for the part than the Duke. He’s perfect.”

There were many advantages in casting Wayne as John Bernard Books, as director Don Siegel wanted to show the progression of the protagonist gunfighter from his early heroic and glorious days to his very tragic death. What better strategy to use than actually borrowing old clips from Wayne’s own great Westerns, Stagecoach, Red River, and Hondo, all cult films.

The movie thus became a self-conscious invocation of the Wayne screen, and an unintentional tribute to his lengthy career, as, among other things, the most significant screen image in Hollywood history. For some, who knew the actor was ill, it looked as if The Shootist had been consciously designed as an epitaph, though Wayne was planning at the time to continue making movies.
There were many parallels between the fictional narrative and Wayne’s personal life. John Bernard Books is dying of cancer, a theme that was unpalatable and unmentionable to many actors, but not to Wayne. “Hell, no. It means nothing to me,” he told an interviewer, “I’m a member of the club, after all.” However, Wayne refused to make cancer the film’s major concern and, accommodating his request, the subject was mentioned in the text just twice.
Moreover, the conversation between Wayne and the physician (played by Republican peer and Wayne pal Jimmy Stewart), confirming his fear of having cancer, was in harmony with his image. Stewart has the burden to inform Brooks the grim truth about cancer. Ahead of its time, the conversation even hints and suggests the possibility of suicide as a way of avoiding the growing and excruciating pain. Indeed, upon being told the bad news, an upset Wayne protests, “You told me I was strong as an ox,” to which Stewart’s doctor replies, “Even oxen die.”
At the center of the yarn is Wayne’s relationship with a widowed landlady, Bond Rogers (Lauren Bacall), and her son, Gillom (Ron Howard). At first, Howard resents Wayne, but gradually he learns to respect him, admiring him for being “the most celebrated” shootist in the West. Howard, like other children in his films, learns how to behave properly by observing and emulating Wayne’s behavior.
For example, spying on Wayne from the window, he gets his first lesson, “If you want to see me, knock on the door, like a man.” Later, Wayne sums up his philosophy of life to Howard, deeming it useful to the younger generation: “I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to others, and I require the same of them.”
When Howard asks for a shooting lesson, Wayne agrees but instructs him: “A man should know how to handle a gun–with discretion.” The film’s assumption, like Hondo,” is that every child, let alone an orphan, needs a sociological father in order to become a man. And, in similar manner to The Cowboys, Howard adopts his master’s style and philosophy. In the last scene, he avenges Wayne’s death in the saloon by using the latter’s gun, then throws it away.
With all my praise for its artistic and acting qualities, ideologically speaking, The Shootist also was one of Wayne’s most self-righteous and self-aggrandizing movies. At various scenes, he’s described as, “the most celebrated shootist in the West,” and as a gunslinger “who never killed a man who didn’t deserve it.”
As in the earlier and far inferior film, Big Jake, Wayne shows a self-conscious concern with his increasing age and the coming of modernization to the West–the movie takes place in Carson City circa 1901.
A man of the past, Wayne’s hero is out of place, an outsider not in tune with his times. When he first rides into town and obstructs the traffic, Brooks is told, not too gracefully, “Get out of the way, old man!”
In another scene, he is greeted as “Hey, Methuselah!” We also learn that the old, famous Queen Victoria is also and already dead. The Queen like Wayne the actor and Brooks the character, is a symbol of the past. Wayne says he likes the Queen, because she had dignity: “She’s the kind of gal I’d like to meet.”
Moreover, when Serpeta (Sherre North), a woman of his past, unexpectedly comes to visit him and suggests they get married so that she can gain some money from writing a book about him after his death, Brooks calls her bluff, claiming, “I won’t be remembered for a pack of lies.” However, as real and old-fashioned gentleman, Brooks gives her money for her travel and sends her back home.
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YUL BRYNNER famously feuded with everyone from Steve McQueen to Ingrid Bergman, with an ego to match The King of Siam. His temper was legendary, his affairs were numerous – with men and women – and he famously flaunted his body in nude pictures. Even the reason behind his famous bald head was part of the man and the myth.

Whether thundering across the screen in The Magnificent Seven or scowling at the world in the King and I, Brynner was a unique screen presence. The self-proclaimed “Mongolian” star fought his way up from being an immigrant circus performer and loved to elevate himself to epic levels. When asked about his various conflicting dates of birth, he grandly replied, “Ordinary mortals need but one birthday.” He liked it to be known that he prepared breakfast in a silk kimono, other stars commented how he was “never far from a mirror” and his on-set demands and dramas were legendary. But then, his whole life had been extraordinary, from nearly dying in a youthful trapeze accident to numerous bisexual affairs along the way to becoming more famous than the Siamese king he played so many times on stage and screen.

Brynner’s iconic look was even a calculated ploy. He did not lose his hair but kept his head shaved because he enjoyed the attention he got for it when he debuted The King and I on Broadway in 1951. After that, he also demanded that he was never photographed with another bald man so that he always stood out in pictures.

The musical made his name but he chafed at taking second billing behind Gertrude Lawrence. When she died in 1952, he notoriously wept – but with joy because it meant his name would, at last, be top of the bill.

It was somehow fitting that he died just on October 10, 1985, just a few months after performing The King and I on Broadway – his 4,625th time taking the stage in his regal, spotlight role. For an actor who was obsessed his whole life with having top billing, he would have been far less pleased to know that he passed away on the same day as Orson Welles, and so was overshadowed in his final hour.
Brynner had grafted hard for his success and fought even harder to keep it. Raised in Beijing and abandoned by his father, his mother fled with her children to Paris in 1932, where talented acrobat Yul became a trapeze artist with the Cirque d’Hiver.
A horrifying fall in 1937 broke many bones in his body and left him unable to walk for eight months. He turned his attention to the stage and set sail for America in 1940.
During that first Hollywood decade of bit parts and odds jobs, he had an affair with handsome heartthrob Hurd Hatfield, who starred in 1945’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as 1961’s El Cid opposite Charlton Heston.
Married four times, he also had affairs with men and women alike, from Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Judy Garland to artist Jean Cocteau.
Brynner’s enormous success on Broadway brought him back to Hollywood as a star and he was determined to impress in every way. His obsession with his own appearance meant that he increased his work-out regime when he learned he was playing Pharaoh Ramses II opposite Heston’s Moses in 1956’s The Ten Commandments, so as not to be overshadowed by the strapping actor.
This meant he was in phenomenal shape when he starred as King Mongkut of Siam in the film version of The King and I that same year, going on to win the Best Actor Oscar.
His impressive physique was also bared for all to see when pictures surfaced of a naked shoot he had down with gay photographer George Platt Lynes.
In turn, Brynner was an accomplished photographer himself, taking noted snaps of famous friends like Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Anthony Quinn, Sophia Loren, Mia Farrow and Audrey Hepburn.
From the mid-1950s he instantly became established as a major Hollywood star, with roles, salary and ego to match. Unfortunately, he did not have the corresponding physical height, which lead to two of his most infamous showdowns with fellow Tinseltown legends.
Bergman was over an inch taller in flat feet than his own 5ft 6½in. When the Swedish actress politely asked him if he would like to use any props to stand on, Brynner hissed back: “I am not going to play this on a box, I’m going to show the world what a big horse you are.” Horselike or otherwise, the actress went on to win her own Oscar for that role, her second of three in total.
Brynner’s behaviour hit new “heights” on the 1960s sets for The Magnificent Seven, particularly centering on a running battle with co-star Steve McQueen, who wasn’t particularly tall himself at 5ft 8in.
Whenever they were shooting outside, Brynner would scuff the earth and dirt into low mounds for him to stand on. McQueen, in return, would causally flatten them as he walked past.
Increasingly amused and irritated by Brynner’s behaviour, McQueen would also play with his hat or belt whenever his co-star was talking in a scene to subtly pull focus. All those iconic shots of the square-jawed
star taking off his hat to shade his face or using it to scoop up water from river were mainly shameless scene-stealing tactics.
He later said: “We didn’t get along. Brynner came up to me in front of a lot of people and grabbed me by the shoulder. He was mad about something. He doesn’t ride well and knows nothing about guns, so maybe he thought I represented a threat. I was in my element. He wasn’t. When you work in a scene with Yul, you’re supposed to stand perfectly still, 10 feet away. Well, I don’t wBrynner even hired an assistant with the sole job of monitoring McQueen’s misdemeanours and counting how many times he fidgeted during scenes, playing his hat, belt or gun. The antics increasingly infuriated the rest of the cast, leading to considerable friction on set. Decades later, dying of cancer, McQueen called to apologise. Brynner forgave him but Charles Bronson never did.
That said, Brynner’s own notorious behaviour never changed. In his early days of stardom, he insisted a special lift was installed at the Broadway theatre where The King and I was playing. Not just for him, but big enough for his white limousine – so he could drive in and out without being bothered by fans.
In 1965, he starred with Marlon Brando in the World War II ocean-bound action thriller Morituri and managed to eclipse his co-star by demanding a landing pad be built onboard the ship where they were filming, so his private helicopter could fly him back at the end of each day while his castmates were left, literally, all at sea..
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