McLintock! (Authentic Collector's Edition)

Product Description

Wayne shows off his funny side in this 1963 western, a comedy inspired by The Taming Of The Shrew. Starring as wealthy cattle baron G.W. McLintock, Wayne shows a real sense of comic timing in several scenes filled with slapstick humor. After his wife (Maureen O'Hara) and daughter leave him for the East, McLintock attempts to win them back. The dynamics between O'Hara and Wayne are the strong suit of this film, the actors having worked together previously on The Quiet Man. As this is by no means a revisionist western, McLintock's chauvinistic attempts to 'tame' his wife fit within the problematic ideology of the larger western genre. The ultimate example of this comes at the end of the film when McLintock settles his marital dispute by publicly 'spanking' his wife in what is now a notorious cinematic moment.

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John Wayne's most popular vehicle of the 1960s is a broad, boisterous comedy-Western and a family movie in every sense--in subject matter, casting, personnel, and the audience it aims to bear-hug. Wayne and his Quiet Man partner Maureen O'Hara reprise their large-boned lovers' quarrel in a Wild West variation on The Taming of the Shrew, while a cast of familiar supporting players do their best to avoid becoming collateral damage.

The picture is fascinating as an attempt to adjust and update the Duke as all-American icon. Rancher George Washington McLintock owns most of the town that bears his name, but James Edward Grant's screenplay is at didactic pains to establish the benevolence and socio-political enlightenment of his reign. G.W.'s former Indian foes have become his pals, he enjoys nothing so much as playing chess with his Jewish merchant buddy (Jack Kruschen), and he's tolerant--as his fellow landowners are not--of the homesteaders crowding into the territory. In what now seems like prescience about where things were headed in the 1960s, he even does his best to achieve rapport with (gasp!) impatient youth.

McLintock! was the first movie produced by eldest son Michael Wayne, and the first major assignment for director Andrew V. McLaglen (son of Quiet Man costar Victor). It steals like a bandit from a host of much better movies, but the Duke's great good humor and professionalism redoubtably anchor the proceedings. --Richard T. Jameson