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| ROOSTER COGBURN (1975) |
A Hal Wallis Production
A Universal Pictures Release
In Panavision and Technicolor, 107 minutes
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CAST
Rooster Cogburn: John Wayne
Eula Goodnight: Katharine Hepburn
Breed: Anthony Zerbe
Hawk: Richard Jordan
Judge Parker: John McIntyre
McCoy: Strother Martin
Hawk's Gang: Paul Koslo, Lane Smith, Jack Colvin, Jerry Galtin, Mickey Gilbert, Chuck Hayward, Gary McLarty
Wolf: Richard Romancito
Bagby: Warren Vanders
Chen Lee: Tommy Lee
Reverend Goodnight: Jon Lormer
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CREDITS
Director: Stuart Miller
Producer: Hal B. Wallis
Associate Producer: Paul Nathan
Scenarist: Martin Julien
Based on a character from the novel True Grit by: Charles Portis
Photographer: Harry Stradling Jr.
Second Unit Photography: Rexford Metz
Art Director: Preston Ames
Set Decorator: George Robert Nelson
Editor: Robert Swink
Sound Recorders: Leonard S. Peterson, John Carter
Musical Score: Laurence Rosenthal
Second Unit Director: Michael Moore
Stunt Coordinator: Jerry Gatlin
Assistant Director: Pepi Lenzi
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SYNOPSIS
Boozing, over-the-hill Marshal Rooster Cogburn finds his badge appropriated by federal judge Parker because of excessive force Rooster exerted in his rounding up of outlaws. Thrown out on his own, Rooster, who had an exciting career as a Confederate soldier in the long-distant past, feels frustrated at the lack of action in his life. Soon, however, he is back in action on a government assignment to waylay the outlaw Hawk and his gang who have stolen the Army's nitroglycerin for use in a planned bank robbery. Enroute, Rooster meets up with a stern, hard-edged New Englander, Eula Goodnight, who has seen her missionary father killed along with her Indian friends, and by the same Hawk gang Rooster is out to get. With a young Indian, named Wolf, they team up and set off in pursuit of the outlaws, her motivation being justice and his the promised reward money.
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CRITIQUES
"Rooster Cogburn will certainly never be ranked anywhere near the top, or even the middle, among the achievements of John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn in their respective dramatic careers. By reason of their presence alone, however, it stands apart from its cinematic contemporaries, and deserves to be noted if not saluted by those viewers whose memories provide the only context within which it might be appreciated."
- Michael McKegney, The Village Voice, 1975
"One watches Hepburn and Wayne through eyes glazed with sentiment. It doesn't much matter what they do or say - their lines have plenty of starch to them and, occasionally, some humor - it's just such a pleasure to see how little they've changed. If you are content to watch the minor fireworks caused by this Senior Citizens' love match, if you appreciate the fun of watching Hepburn challenge the rapids with someone other than Bogart...or if you're simply fond of nice scenery and still mountain lakes and tall pines, I suppose Rooster Cogburn is worth crowing about."
- Kathleen Carroll, New York Daily News, 1975
"Pretty bad. A Western shoot-'em-up, with John Wayne wallowing in the role of the one-eyed U.S. marshal carried over from True Grit. Katharine Hepburn - her role lifted bodily from
The African Queen - plays the schoolteacher-daughter of a missionary to the Indians. When Wayne and Hepburn spar, it's mortifyingly blunt vaudeville, and their inevitable mutual admiration comes all too coyly soon. Stuart Millar directed, from a script written by the producer Hal B. Wallis, his wife, Martha Hyer, and others; they all hid - as well they should have - under the pseudonym Martin Julien."
- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
"Obviously meant to cash in on the success of True Grit - the Wayne vehicle that won him a sentimental Oscar - this pairing of two Hollywood veterans is forced to rely totally on their performances and personalities, in the absence of any other interesting features. Wayne repeats his role as the ornery ol' crittur of a marshal, teaming up with the Bible-pounding spinster Hepburn in an attempt to bring her father's killers to justice. Like The African Queen (to which it bears a strong resemblance), and to a lesser extent On Golden Pond, it's the sort of film whose raison d'être consists in manipulating an audience's familiar sympathies with its ageing stars. In this case, however, it fails dismally."
- Geoff Andrew, Time Out
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HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY
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Katharine Hepburn, John Wayne
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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