John Wayne in The Shootist against a background of Lonesome Dove.
Summary The most acclaimed Western of the 1980s only came to pass because John Wayne originally turned it down. When Heaven's Gate bombed it killed Westerns during the 1980s, with the Michael Cimino epic barely taking in $4 million against its $44 million budget . Of course, the genre had been fading with audiences for some time. Westerns used to be one of the biggest genres in Hollywood, but by the 1960s, younger audiences began to find them old-fashioned.
While Henry Fonda and James Stewart said yes, John Wayne passed on The Streets of Laredo, disliking its end of the Western premise. The Streets Of Laredo Was Pitched As The "Final" Western John Wayne wasn't ready to "hang up his spurs" when McMurthy's script came his way Even if Westerns were waning in popularity, Wayne was one of the few actors still pumping them out during the 1970s. However, Bogdanovich believed that all the great Western stories had already been made and wanted Streets of Laredo to be a finale for the genre.
Lonesome Dove Became The Best Western Of The 1980s CBS' Lonesome Dove was peerless during the genre's worst decade It sounds like damning with faint praise, but the CBS' Lonesome Dove miniseries would become the best Western of the 1980s by some distance. This all-star adaptation of McMurthy's novel cast Robert Duvall as Gus and Tommy Lee Jones as Call, the character John Wayne passed on.
Lonesome Dove Became A Long-Running Franchise None of Lonesome Dove's follow-ups came close in terms of quality Author McMurthy wrote several more books in the Lonesome Dove series, including Streets of Laredo, which reused the title intended for the John Wayne movie version. The miniseries itself was such a major event that CBS has made several follow-ups, though the first sequel Return to Lonesome Dove was mildly controversial for not being based on McMurtry's writing.
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