The Shootist (1976) on Netflix
Gunfighter J.B. Books reaches Carson City in 1901, where Dr. Hostetler confirms his cancer is terminal. He takes a room at Bond Rogers's boarding house, where her son Gillom knows his name.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Another doctor has already told the gunfighter John Bernard Books that his cancer is terminal, so he rides into Carson City, Nevada, in January 1901 for a second opinion from Dr. Hostetler, who treated his bullet wounds years earlier. The doctor confirms the diagnosis and gives him only weeks, with laudanum for the pain. Books takes a room at a boarding house run by the widow Bond Rogers and hides his name. Her son Gillom works out who he is, and word spreads through town. Bond dislikes gunfighters, but she softens when Books speaks of his illness. Gillom asks Books to teach him to shoot, and Books answers that a killing stays with a man. Books would rather not wait for the disease to take him and searches for a quicker end.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Shootist (1976)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- John Wayne wanted the title role because of its similarities to Jimmy Ringo in The Gunfighter, a part he had turned down 26 years earlier. Paul Newman, George C. Scott, Charles Bronson, Gene Hackman and Clint Eastwood all passed before it was offered to Wayne.
- John Wayne's compromised lung capacity made breathing and moving difficult at Carson City's 4600 foot altitude, and production had to shut down for a week while he recovered from influenza, though he completed filming without further significant medical issues.
- Wayne appeared in a televised public service announcement for the American Cancer Society that began with the scene in which his character is told he has cancer, and then added that he had enacted the same scene in real life 12 years earlier.
SPOILER
Wayne maintained that in his entire film career he had never shot an adversary in the back and would not do so now, and he objected to his character being killed by Gillom, suggesting the bartender do it because "no one could ever take John Wayne in a fair fight".- Wayne had negotiated exclusive movie rights to the horse Dollar with its owner, Dick Webb Movie Productions, and requested script changes that let him say the horse's name several times.
- Filming the doctor's office sequence, John Wayne and James Stewart repeatedly muffed their lines over a long series of takes until director Don Siegel pleaded with them to try harder. "If you want the scene done better," joked Wayne, "you'd better get yourself a couple of better actors."
