As a little boy, my most favorite thing to play was cowboy. Other loves came later on, but initially all I cared about was having a cowboy hat and a pair of 6-shooter cap guns. And I had a love of western shows, watching so many of those classic series on that old black-and-white TV I grew up with, such as The Lone Ranger, Bat Masterson, Zorro, Gunsmoke, Have Gun – Will Travel, Rawhide, Wanted Dead or Alive, Cheyenne, Maverick, Sugarfoot, The Rebel, et cetera, et cetera.

These shows featured many soon-to-be box office superstars, including Clint Eastwood in Rawhide, Steve McQueen in Wanted Dead or Alive. Then there were so many familiar character actors in them, as well. But the one thing I’ve carried over from that era is a love of the western movies. I watched so many of them on TV, too, so many there’s no way I could name them. Thing is, in so many ways they’re unrememberable, basic lame plots of good-guy, bad-guy, white-hat versus black-hat, law-and-order justice wins in the end, just like the television series shows always played out, shoot-em-up-bang-bangs with no blood and gore and certainly no eroticism other than hand-holding and a kiss on the cheek. However…in 1969, things changed.

The Wild Bunch

I’ll never forget the day me and my best friend Roger laid out of school to go see a movie some other friends had told us about. How we got in, I’ll never know, for the movie was rated R-RESTRICTED, which meant if you were under 17, you were required to be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian. But us both being 16, we faked it and somehow talked our way in, and to this day, I’m still feel the amazement I felt then, seeing a movie like I’d never seen in my life.

The movie was Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, to this day, my most favorite western of all time, and ranked 6th on the American Film Institute’s list of Top 10 Westerns. And the actors were an amazing crew: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine and Edmond O’Brien, former Academy Award Best Actor winners, Ben Johnson, a future Academy Award Best Actor winner, and Robert Ryan, once nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. And character actors galore, including Warren Oates, Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, Bo Hopkins and Dub Taylor. Those names and faces may not be familiar to all, but I’ve seen them my entire life in so many westerns, as well as other movies. To me, this was an all-star cast.

The movie itself was controversial because of graphic violence and its portrayal of crude men attempting to survive by any means available, telling of an era coming to an end, the end of the outlaw gunfighter era and the code they lived by.

The Searchers

Since that time, I’ve comprised my own Top List of Westerns. The next one on my list, though it’s considered #1 on the American Film Institute’s list of Top 10s, is The Searchers, with John Wayne, Jeffery Hunter, Ward Bond, Vera Miles and Natalie Wood, another all-star cast. This movie may have been one of the first to touch upon racism.

Spaghetti Westerns

Then no list of all-time-best westerns is complete without the classic man with no name trilogy, or the “Dollars Trilogy”, Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns starring Clint Eastwood: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, then the finale, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Later protagonists appearing in the series are Lee Van Cleef in For a Few Dollars More followed by Eli Wallach meeting up with Clint and Lee in the ending confrontation, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

One great feature of this series is the musical soundtrack from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, whose main theme was a hit in 1968 with the soundtrack album on the charts for more than a year, which was then also a hit for Hugo Montenegro, whose rendition was a No. 2 Billboard pop single. An interesting aside to these movies is that they became the inspiration of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, beginning with the first novel, The Gunslinger, which he began writing after seeing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. But at that, it took him over thirty years to complete the seven volume series.

Just the other day I viewed another Spaghetti Western by Leone, Once Upon a Time in the West, featuring Henry Fonda along with Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, Keenan Wynn and Jack Elam. It too had a haunting film score. Though an exciting movie, one of its best features is the O. Henry type of surprise ending.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Another great movie, one which I remember seeing as a kid, is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. This one stars the great Jimmy Stewart along with another great cast featuring John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles and so many other of those great character actors, some of which I’ve already mentioned.

The Magnificent Seven

Then who could forget The Magnificent Seven, featuring Yul Brenner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn and Eli Wallach, another one of those great casts of famous, or soon-to-be famous, actors. This movie, too, had a great musical score, the theme instrumental becoming the famous Marlboro cigarette commercial theme.

When it comes to westerns, I can never forget John Wayne’s Rio Bravo. Though not as fast-paced as most Wayne works, its slow-moving pace includes humor and romance, featuring Howard Hawks’ great direction. I’ve always loved seeing Walter Brennan’s hilarious performance as Stumpy, the crippled deputy. Also, I could never forget Brennan’s portrayal of Granpa Amos McCoy in the TV series The Real McCoys. And then there’s Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson, not only being cowboys, but being singing cowboys. Plus, there’s always the love interest which is provided by Angie Dickenson.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

To complete my top ten, I’ll include The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Though not a western in the classic cowboy and Indian and outlaw mode, it takes place in the 1920s, concerning a search for gold in the Mexican Sierra Madre mountain range. I had to include this movie for it features one of my all time favorite actors, Humphrey Bogart. In this one, though, Bogie’s not a good guy. Also featured were Walter Huston and Tim Holt. This movie could be called a family affair. John Huston, the director and screenplay writer, won the Academy Award for Best Director as well as for Best Adapted Screenplay. And his father, Walter, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the first father-son win in the Academy’s history.

For the moment, there’s my current Top Ten. But who knows? That could possibly change, someday. As it stands, though, all of those movies are oldie goldies, and the western genre has mostly disappeared from the silver screen. I can only hope to once again see the magic of the west ride over the horizon again. So, ride ’em, cowboy!