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DVR Alert - Turner Classic Movies is showing John Wayne pictures all day long. Some of the Duke's best are on tonight, all directed by the great John Ford.
8 pm eastern Stagecoach - the 1939 film that made Wayne a star and cemented the conventions for the Western genre.
10 pm eastern The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - Co-starring Jimmy Stewart, Lee Marvin and Vera Miles. Maybe his most heroic role.
12:15 am. Eastern Fort Apace - perhaps the best of Wayne's "Calvary Trilogy," co-starring Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple and John Agar.
2:30 am eastern - The Searchers One of the best if not the best Westerns ever shot and perhaps Wayne's best performance. True Grit does not compare. It co-stars Jeff Hunter, Natalie Wood and Ward Bond. The film had a great influence on the Tattooine portions of Star Wars, and Wayne's conflicted performance influenced every literary or film anti-hero since.
If you've never seen these films, you're missing out. They're not just great Westerns but great movies.
The Wayne theme continues on TCM through Saturday morning with wall to wall Duke.
8 pm Thursday [B]Red River[B] airs. co-starring Montgomery Clift and Walter Brennan and directed by Howard Hawkes, Red River is another classic and among Wayne's best films. My personal favorite of Wayne's that's not directed by Ford.
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