This is one of the greatest westerns of all time…and John Wayne hated it!

John Wayne is probably the biggest star in Western history. The man nicknamed Herzog left his mark on the industry and Hollywood forever. But there was one controversial genre film he hated with all his might, a film he was first offered to star in but turned down – and yet he took the Oscar on behalf of a friend. And the main character of the film is Gary Cooper! We are obviously talking about the legendary The Train Will Whistle Three Times.

Released in 1952 Gary Cooper As a small-town sheriff whose life is turned upside down when he discovers that the criminal he arrested has been released from prison, he seeks revenge. She desperately tries to find help, but no one shows the slightest interest in coming to her side.

The film, directed by Fred Zinemann, is considered one of the greatest Westerns of all time, but Wayne was against the project from the very beginning. The main reason is that he believed that the script written by Carl Forman was an allegory against the Hollywood blacklists promoted by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Blacklists, which until the 1960s were lists of artists, communist or not, that studios refused to hire. Big names like Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles had to leave the United States because of it.

He also stated that the film was “The most un-American thing he had ever seen in his entire life”, believing that it portrayed Americans as cowards and unwilling to confront evil, a sentiment completely at odds with the principles Wayne valued, especially in the context of the Cold War.

Gary Cooper, awarded

The role eventually ended up in the hands of Wayne’s friend Cooper, who received the best reviews of his career for his role as Sheriff Will Kane. So much so that he won an Oscar for Best Actor The train whistles three times. The problem was that he was filming in Europe and couldn’t attend the gala, so he asked John Wayne himself to receive it on his behalf. Herzog then had to keep quiet about his hatred for the film…

“I am glad that this award was given to a person who not only deserves it, but has done things in our company over the years in a way that we can be proud of. Now that I’m done losing, I’m going back to my sales manager and my agent to find out why they didn’t give me The Train Will Whistle Three Times instead of Cooper.“

A bit of humor that went completely against what he actually thought of the movie. A few years after Cooper’s death, Wayne gave an interview to Playboy magazine in 1971, in which everything became clear:

“Everyone says The Three Whistle Train is a great movie because Tiomkin wrote a great score for the movie and because it stars Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. So he has it all. In this movie, four guys come to take down the sheriff. He goes to the church and asks for help, and the guys are like, “Oh, well, oh, oh, oh, whoah.” And the women stand up and say: You are rats. You are rats. You are rats. So Cooper goes out alone. This is the most un-American thing I have ever seen in my life. The last thing on film is my old Cooper getting a United States Marshal’s badge underfoot and stomping on it. I will never regret helping Forman out of this country.“

John Wayne For several years he was president of the MPA, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, which actively collaborated with McCarthy on blacklisting—hence his recent comment. Carl ForemanThe screenwriter, who then spent six years without work in Hollywood, had to move to Great Britain in 1952 to continue making films.

Answer by Howard Hawks and John Wayne

Besides, Wayne’s disdain for this film had at least one brilliant artistic result. Director Howard Hawks also did not understand its success The train whistles three times :”I didn’t think a good sheriff would act like a chicken with its head cut off screaming in the village for help to finally save his Quaker wife.For him to see the sheriff asking for help was not only unrealistic, but it went against the very essence of the Western.

This was one of the driving forces that led Wayne and Hawkes to collaborate on 1959’s Rio Bravo, also considered one of the greatest Westerns of all time. After four years of inactivity, the director returned behind the camera and was able to realize his idea that a true American hero would never ask for help and would fight any threat with a small group of allies or go it alone.

Finally, we have two famous films that started with completely opposite ideas, but still remain classics in the field!

The train whistles three times and you can watch Rio Bravo on VOD.