Title: The Shootist
This book recently came up as a good example of the Western genre. Since the film adaptation is famed, if nothing else, for being John Wayne's last film, I thought that I'd take a look at both.
John Bernard Books is a famed gunman that allegedly has killed thirty men. His reputation is equal to other Western legends like Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickock, and John Wesley Hardin. However, it's now 1901. The world has changed. The West is no longer quite so wild. Time seems to have passed him by.
Books is fifty-two years old. Not only is he getting old, but he's not feeling well. Not trusting the diagnosis of a doctor, he heads to El Paso to get the verdict of another doctor, Doc Hostetler, who once saved his life when Books was seriously shot. Unfortunately, Hostetler cannot save him this time. Books has a serious, advanced case of prostrate cancer. Other than giving Books laudanum for the ever increasing pain, there is not much else that Hostetler can do. Books has, at most, six weeks to two months to live.
Books settles in at a local boarding house to await his death. The landlady, Bond Rogers, is an upstanding lady that's horrified to have a gunslinger at her house. When she learns that Books is dying, her heart softens to him. Her son, Gillom, is a wild youth that immediately treats Books as a hero.
Meanwhile, word has spread around the town that the legendary Books is in town and that he's dying. Various people come to try to profit off of him. Books literally gives the boot to a reporter trying to write a salacious biography of him. He does make deals with the undertaker, the stable owner, and the second hand clothes dealer, even though he knows that they all plan to profit off of his death, so that he can get a pile of cash to give Mrs Rogers for her troubles.
Later, Books asks Hostetler for more details about how he's going to die. When Hostetler expounds, at length, of the indignities and agonies that Bond will suffer, Bond is aghast. Hostetler makes an offhand remark that, if he was a gunfighter, that he wouldn't die of cancer but would choose a more direct method.
Inspired, Books asks Gillom to tell the three most notorious gunmen in the area to meet him at the town's most posh bar. Since all three of them would glory in being the one to kill the legendary Books, they all eagerly accept. That sets up the final denouement, when Books walks into the bar with three gunmen all waiting for him.
How do the novel and the film compare?
Even though this is The Duke's last film, I definitely have to give the edge to the novel. It is a much grimmer portrayal of a dying man. Books hangs on to living as long as he can. By the end, he can barely get out of bed. He's horrified by what he sees in the mirror. He is a gaunt skeleton of a man that barely has the energy to even step into the bar.
The boy, Gillom, is much darker in the novel. He's an outright thug. There is no question that he's not going to be a good man when he grows up. He steals the money that Books left for his mother. At another point, seeing that Books is weakened, he beats him. Spoiler alert for a nearly fifty year old novel, it is Gillom, at the dying Books request, that shoots him in the head.
In the film, Gillom is portrayed by Ron Howard. You know, Opie from Mayberry RFD or Richie Cunningham from Happy Days (in fact he was still playing Richie when this film was made). Given that, you can guess that Gillom is probably not going to end up a hard case. Instead, Books teaches him some life lessons that makes him a better man. In the bar, it's the bartender gives Books his mortal wound by shooting him in the back. In a fury, Gillom picks up Books' gun and kills the bartender in response. Gillom then throws the pistol away in disgust while Books, with his dying breath, smiles in approval. The film ends with Gillom and his mom walking away together.
As I said, this is John Wayne's last film. He would be dead of cancer himself within a couple of years. Ten years earlier, he'd suffered from lung cancer. One lung and several ribs were removed. Therefore, taking this role, knowing that he was near the end of his career, along with his health history, gives this role a special poignancy. Even so, Wayne was so deep into his decades long persona as the tough, indomitable man of the West, that he wouldn't allow much weakness to show. John Wayne is heavyset and has a ruddy complexion. He does not look like a dying man. At best, he sighs, groans and moves slowly. Ironically, the cancer survivor that would succumb to cancer in a few years could not convincingly portray a cancer victim.
Wayne had script approval. He made several changes. For some reason, he changed the setting from El Paso to Carson City. I can think of no earthly reason why. In the novel, Books shoots one man in the back. Wayne said that, in his entire career, he'd never shot a man in the back and was not about to start now. He also changed the ending to have the bartender shoot the fatal shot instead of Gillom. He claimed that no one could ever take John Wayne in a fair fight.
John Wayne was responsible for many of the castings as well, Bond Rogers was played by Lauren Bacall. Doc Hostetler was played by James Stewart. The undertaker was played by John Carradine. The marshal was played by Harry Morgan.
It was probably appropriate that so many of these actors had long histories acting in Westerns. This film, released in 1976, must be close to the swan song for the old school style of Western. The differences in The Shootist compared to revisionist Westerns like Unforgiven are stark. The town's main street is obviously a movie set. The blood is an unrealistic red that almost glows it's so bright. It's a film that looks like it could have easily been made in 1956.
As I was reading the novel, I was struck by Swarthout's depiction of celebrity culture in 1901. Just like now, people were obsessed with larger than life figures. Knowing that, shysters on the make were looking for every opportunity to make a profit on that celebrity, dead or alive. Whether it's the undertaker letting people look at Books' corpse at fifty cents a throw, or the barber selling clippings of Books' hair, or the journalist looking to write a violent, sensationalistic biography, the curse of celebrity is that there will always be people that will attach themselves to you like remora fish do to sharks.
Regarding the title of this post, I found it amusing that, given a fatal diagnosis, Books thought it would be a good idea to take out as many people as he can. After all, if he really wanted to avoid the pain of cancer, he could have just shot himself. It was already established that he's not a man of God. Somehow, doing so is a weakness, maybe? If so, he probably could have just paid any one of the three gunmen to kill him. Anyway, to avoid these much more obvious solutions, he ended up killing six people in the novel and five people in the film. I found the whole idea of that being his solution to his fatal diagnosis to be pretty amusing.
In short, neither the film nor the novel will ever make my personal top ten list or anything like that. I preferred the novel although watching the last role of John Wayne's long career was also worthwhile.
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