Connect with us

Best Of

The Frisco Kid could very well have been John Wayne’s final Western, but Harrison Ford eventually nabbed the role

Had he signed on, The Frisco Kid could very well have been John Wayne’s final Western, but Harrison Ford eventually nabbed the role. Wayne built his career off of the Western genre and starred in no less than 80 of them. Even his last onscreen role in 1976’s The Shootist was another “Oater,” where he was directed by Dirty Harry’s Don Siegel. While The Shootist felt like a fitting final role for the actor, it wasn’t planned that way. He had several other projects in development, with Wayne rejecting Spielberg’s offer to appear in 1941. However, ill health in his final years meant Wayne never returned to the big screen.

Wayne starred in plenty of other genres during his decades-long career, including romantic dramas like The Quiet Man, but he was somewhat typecast as a cowboy. He tried to break away from that image during the 1930s and starred in a run of more contemporary roles for Universal; all of these projects bombed, however, and he swiftly returned to the genre he knew best. True Grit’s Rooster Cogburn not only won Wayne his only Oscar, but it allowed him to play a more humorous character. Wayne was very careful not to alienate his core audience, however, so he passed on more lewd material such as Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles.

One of the final projects Wayne was linked to was The Frisco Kid, a 1979 comedy Western fronted by Willy Wonka star Gene Wilder. This sees Wilder’s Polish rabbi getting involved with an outlaw cowboy named Lillard. The movie was in development for years under the title No Knife, with producer Mace Neufeld recounting to The LA Times that it was penned with Wayne in mind. Stories vary on Wayne’s reasons for passing; his salary is cited as one reason, but apparently, the “vulgarity” of The Frisco Kid’s script was another.

The latter sounds like the most plausible option, as Wayne was vocally repulsed by the violence and language in movies like The Wild Bunch or Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter. He even passed on Blazing Saddles, though “Duke” Wayne reportedly told Brooks he’d still be first in line to watch it. In truth, Wayne’s health likely played a role, with the film being shot less than a year before he would pass away from stomach cancer. The Frisco Kid went the opposite direction in terms of casting, with Harrison Ford taking the part.
Harrison Ford Was A Rising Star
Ford was hot off the shock success of 1977’s Star Wars when he was cast in The Frisco Kid, and still trying to figure out his movie star persona. He was never going to outshine Wilder in terms of comic timing, but to his credit, Ford is genuinely funny in the movie. Producer Neufeld also recalled there was tension between Ford and director Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen) making The Frisco Kid, as the latter had planned on working with Wayne in the role. Whether Wayne – whose “fight dirty” style changed action – would have been funnier is another question.
PROC. BY MOVIES

Related Topics:

Best Of

JEFF BRIDGES: I was kind of surrendering to the idea that I might die,” Bridges said of his illnesses


JEFF BRIDGES REFLECTS ON CANCER DIAGNOSIS: ‘CAME PRETTY CLOSE TO DYING’

Over three years after his lymphoma diagnosis, Jeff Bridges reflected on a harrowing set of circumstances that left him on death’s door.

“It’s amazing the way the mind can forget all that stuff,” the 74-year-old actor told Page Six. “I don’t think too much about the past.”

Bridges revealed that during one of his bouts of chemo, he ended up contracting COVID, leaving him hospitalized for five months with extreme pain and very little hope.
“I was pretty close to dying. The doctors kept telling me, ‘Jeff, you’ve got to fight. You’re not fighting,’” he told People in May 2022. “I was in surrender mode. I was ready to go. I was dancing with my mortality.”
“I had no defenses,” he added. “That’s what chemo does—it strips you of all your immune system. I had nothing to fight it. COVID made my cancer look like nothing.”
Thankfully, the chemo session before contracting COVID was his last one, and he was able to go into remission while beginning this new fight. This allowed his body to fully focus on recovering, and with help from a procedure that used blood from other patients who had already beaten the disease, Bridges was finally able to make progress.
Over three years later, the actor is now “feeling” great and fully back into the swing of things, returning to film his upcoming show THE OLD MAN. It was while he was filming this show originally that he discovered he had lymphoma.
“I was doing those fight scenes for the first episode of THE OLD MAN and didn’t know that I had a 9-by-12-inch tumor in my body,” he told AARP Magazine. “You’d think that would have hurt or something, when they were punching me and stuff. It didn’t.”
Jeff Bridges recently walked the red carpet for the premier of his FX show THE OLD MAN, and fans were overjoyed to see the actor back after a series of health struggles.
While filming the show, doctors diagnosed Bridges with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The actor underwent chemotherapy, and during treatment, contracted COVID-19.
“I was kind of surrendering to the idea that I might die,” Bridges said of his illnesses. “That this might be the end of the race kind of thing, because that’s what’s going to happen to all of us at some point and maybe this was my time to go through that and I didn’t know.”
However, Bridges began to recover. The TRUE GRIT actor said that he realized that he still wanted to fight to stay alive.

Continue Reading

Best Of

Alba will star in the lead role of Parker, who is the Special Forces commando


Netflix, Jessica Alba Team Up For Her First Movie In Five Years

Jessica Alba is coming to Netflix five years after her last feature film.

The streamer announced in a post on X this week that Alba will star in the Netflix original film Trigger Warning, which will debut on June 21.

The official description of Trigger Warning is as follows: “When a skilled Special Forces commando returns home to take over her family’s bar, she soon finds herself at odds with a violent gang running rampant in her hometown.”
Alba will star in the lead role of Parker, who is the Special Forces commando. Netflix also announced that Mark Webber, Tone Bell, Jake Weary, Gabriel Basso and Anthony Michael Hall are also starring in the film.
Trigger Warning is directed by Mouly Surya.
Alba’s last film appearance came in the 2019 crime mystery Killers Anonymous, which also starred Tommy Flanagan, Gary Oldman and Suki Waterhouse.
PROC. BY MOVIES

Continue Reading

Best Of

Yellowstone’s Kelly Reilly may have won herself a global fanbase as Beth Dutton but not everyone may realise this isn’t actually her real name


Yellowstone’s Kelly Reilly may have won herself a global fanbase as Beth Dutton but not everyone may realise this isn’t actually her real name.

Yellowstone star Kelly Reilly, unlike her counterpart Beth Dutton, shies away from the spotlight, keeping details about her personal life under wraps, including her name.

Beth Dutton is the violent, foul-mouthed, feisty only sister of the Dutton family in the Western Paramount Network drama who certainly is one to fear.

Nevertheless, she has shown her soft side with her desire to protect her dad John Dutton (played by Kevin Costner) at all costs, as well as express her love for Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser).
Fans have loved watching Beth’s development since the show launched in 2018, although Reilly did have a number of other starring roles before its existence.
Some of which included True Detective, Flight, Sherlock Holmes and various appearances in theatrical productions, one of which she received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for.
Despite all of this fame and success, some fans may be surprised to learn that Kelly Reilly isn’t actually the actress’ real name.
Yellowstone actress Kelly Reilly is actually called Jessica Kelly Siobhan Reilly but chooses to go by one of her middle names, rather than her first.
It isn’t known why she was named Jessica but with Irish grandparents, her other middle name Siobhan is thought to have been passed down to her.
The star’s mum was a hospital receptionist, her dad Jack Reilly a police officer and her older brother Neil works as a professional golfer.
It’s quite common practice for celebrities to use their middle names for their stage name.
Other famous faces who have done this are Reese Witherspoon, Brad Pitt, Rihanna, Dakota Fanning and Ashton Kutcher.
But she is believed to be the only member of the Yellowstone cast to do this.
Unfortunately for fans of the award-winning drama, the number of Beth scenes to come is few and far between.
Yellowstone was cancelled last year with the network announcing that season five would be its last.PROC. BY MOVIES

Continue Reading

Trending