The Clint Eastwood/John Wayne Movie That Never Got Made
The movie that never got made with Eastwood and Wayne was from a script called "The Hostiles" by Larry Cohen.
Page 502 of the Scott Eyeman bio of Wayne:
"Shortly after Clint Eastwood made High Plains Drifter in 1973, he optioned ('The Hostiles"), which involved a gambler to be played by Eastwood who wins 50% of ranch owned by an older man(Wayne.) The two men have to become partners , which is complicated by the fact that they can't stand each other. There's a battle coming that will destroy the ranch, so Eastwood, who knows about the situation, sells his half of the ranch back to Wayne, who is innocent of the underlying situation. At the last minute, Eastwood returns to help the older man fight off the hostiles."
Sounds interesting. But Wayne kept turning Eastwood down -- finally throwing a copy of the script off his yacht and into the ocean.
Wayne evidently didn't much like High Plains Drifter and Eastwood's "R-rated" take on the West.
Too bad. Sounds like The Hostiles could have been a good movie. But a lot of good movies never get made. Wayne also killed the original 1971 proposed version of "Lonesome Dove," to be directed by Peter Bogdanovich, which would have put Wayne, James Stewart and Henry Fonda into the roles played by Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, and Robert Urichin the 1989 mini-series FINALLY made from the book that the screenplay turned into . Interesting: Stewart and Fonda said they would do Lonesome Dove in 1971, but without Wayne, the studio would not finance.