IMDb > True Grit (1969)
True Grit
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True Grit (1969) More at IMDbPro »

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True Grit (1969) -- A drunken, hard-nosed U.S. Marshal and a Texas Ranger help a stubborn young woman track down her father's murderer in Indian territory.
True Grit (1969) -- A drunken, hard-nosed U.S. Marshal and a Texas Ranger help a stubborn young woman track down her father's murderer in Indian territory.
True Grit (1969) -- MattTrailer.com - Trailer (Flash)

Overview

User Rating:
7.3/10   7,433 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Down 4% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Henry Hathaway
Writers:
Charles Portis (novel)
Marguerite Roberts (screenplay)
Contact:
View company contact information for True Grit on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
11 June 1969 (USA) more
Genre:
Adventure | Western | Drama more
Tagline:
The strangest trio ever to track a killer. more
Plot:
A drunken, hard-nosed U.S. Marshal and a Texas Ranger help a stubborn young woman track down her father's murderer in Indian territory. full summary | full synopsis
Plot Keywords:
more
Awards:
Won Oscar. Another 6 wins & 5 nominations more
NewsDesk:
(114 articles)
Gold Derby nuggets: 411 on 'Nine' | Two perspectives on 'Avatar' | Four toons top 50 Oscars snubs
 (From Gold Derby. 13 November 2009, 3:04 PM, PST)
Matt Damon, from private campaigner to Hollywood's biggest star
 (From The Guardian - Film News. 9 November 2009, 1:59 AM, PST)
User Comments:
Beware The One-Eyed Duke more (91 total)

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

John Wayne ... Marshall Reuben J. 'Rooster' Cogburn

Glen Campbell ... La Boeuf

Kim Darby ... Mattie Ross
Jeremy Slate ... Emmett Quincy

Robert Duvall ... Ned Pepper

Dennis Hopper ... Moon
Alfred Ryder ... Mr. Goudy (Defense attorney)
Strother Martin ... Colonel G. Stonehill
Jeff Corey ... Tom Chaney
Ron Soble ... Capt. Boots Finch
John Fiedler ... Lawyer Daggett
James Westerfield ... Judge Parker

John Doucette ... Sheriff
Donald Woods ... Barlow
Edith Atwater ... Mrs. Floyd
more
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Additional Details

Parents Guide:
Add content advisory for parents
Runtime:
128 min
Country:
USA
Language:
English
Color:
Color (Technicolor)
Aspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono
Certification:
Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PG (Ontario) | Canada:PG (Manitoba) | USA:G (edited for re-rating) | USA:M (original rating) | Australia:M (TV rating) | Iceland:12 | Brazil:14 | Finland:K-15 (2002) (DVD) | Finland:K-16 (cut) (1969) (theatrical) | Australia:PG | Spain:T | Sweden:15 | UK:PG | West Germany:12 | Singapore:PG
Filming Locations:
Bishop, California, USA more
Company:
Paramount Pictures more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
John Wayne did not get along with Robert Duvall during filming, and at one point threatened to punch the young Method actor if he argued with the director again. more
Goofs:
Continuity: After La Boeuf succumbs to his head injury and falls off his horse, Rooster turns him over to look at his face. La Boeuf rolls over with his feet crossed. As Rooster and Mattie are riding off and look back at him, his feet are now splayed out. more
Quotes:
Mattie Ross: Who's the best Marshall they have?
Sheriff: Bill Waters is the best tracker. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn, a pitiless man, double tough, fear don't enter into his thinking. I'd have to say L.T. Quinn is the straightest, he brings his prisoners in alive.
Mattie Ross: Where would I find this Rooster?
Sheriff: He'll be at the federal court this afternoon, he's bringing in a load of prisoners from the territories.
more
Movie Connections:
Referenced in Broken Trail: The Making of a Legendary Western (2006) (TV) more
Soundtrack:
True Grit more

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User Comments

   (Comment on this title)
33 out of 47 people found the following comment useful.
Beware The One-Eyed Duke, 8 May 2006
8/10
Author: Bill Slocum (slokes@optonline.net) from Norwalk, CT USA

"Come see a fat old man sometime!"

John Wayne's parting comment in this film is directed as much at us the viewers as it is at the young woman his Rooster Cogburn character is addressing. In a way, Wayne throughout the film plays off the image he cemented in dozens of great and near-great westerns, with a nod that by 1969, he along with the western genre had fallen behind the times, that his shoot-first approach to law and order had worn thin with the critical establishment just as it does in Judge Parker's courtroom.

In that way, playing a character of such dogged homicidal cussedness as the hard-drinking, one-eyed ex-Quantrill Raider Rooster Cogburn and giving him a teenaged girl seeking justice to play off so as to showcase his essential decency seems a clever means to win Wayne an Oscar, which he finally did here, a sentimental triumph over some more heralded performances. With such an attitude, you might think "True Grit" would come off a bit of a one-trick pony 37 years on. But it doesn't. In many ways, both the film and Wayne's performance come off better than ever.

Helping matters a lot is the support Wayne receives from two women. As the heroine, Matty Ross, Kim Darby provides Wayne with a fantastic foil, doughty to the point of rudeness, forever finding fault in others but earning your good will through her simple faith in justice and loyalty to the memory of her slain father, for whom she wants Rooster's help avenging. As she is told by a horse dealer she banters with: "I admire your sand."

The other is Marguerite Roberts, whose adaptation of Charles Portis' novel bristles with good humor and an ear for the period. "If ever I meet one of you Texas waddies who ain't drunk water from a hoofprint, I think I'll... I'll shake their hand or buy 'em a Daniel Webster cee-gar," Rooster tells his braggart riding companion, a young Texas Ranger played by country singer and ex-Beach Boy Glen Campbell.

Campbell may be a novice and a third wheel in the interplay between Wayne and Darby, but he acquits himself well and delivers a worthy performance in a cast stacked with talented actors like Robert Duvall, Jeremy Slate, and Strother Martin, not to mention Dennis Hopper, hiding the long hair he made famous in "Easy Rider" that same year. Some of these actors portray bad guys, but Roberts' script and director Henry Hathaway's languid pacing allow them to present some humanizing qualities that go a long way toward making "True Grit" more than your typical shoot-em-up oater.

Even Jeff Corey, who plays a no-account named Chaney who shot Matty's father, has a funny scene when he tells Matty how to cock her pistol, then whines after she shoots him with it: "Everything happens to me!"

About the only fault I can find with the film is Elmer Bernstein's bombastic score, which employs overly ornate orchestration like kettledrums when Matty has her showdown with Chaney and is tuneless apart from the title song, which is Campbell's best moment here. Hathaway's direction is somewhat pedestrian but serves the script, and showcases some incredible autumnal vistas of tall birch and pine where Rooster and Matty search for Chaney, photographed by Lucien Ballard in a style akin to (but more dreamy than) his work on the same year's "The Wild Bunch."

1969 was the last great year for westerns, with this, "The Wild Bunch," "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid," "Support Your Local Sheriff" and "Once Upon A Time In the West," and its interesting how Ballard, Corey, and Strother Martin turned up in more than one of them. But good westerns never really go out of style, they just sit on the shelf awhile like an old Stetson waiting to be rediscovered. Nobody wore a Stetson better, or deserved an Oscar more, than John Wayne. "True Grit" does the double duty of showing why he was a star and further burnishing his luster.

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