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These five Californians, including John Wayne and Robert Duvall, have made great Texans in movies.
The full transcript of this episode of Stories from Texas is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
WF Strong [00:00:00] There’s a good deal of anti California rhetoric flying around these days here in Texas with omnipresent bumper stickers and T-shirts saying Don’t California me Texas. Of course, some have moved here to Texas either. Californication, but the former concern seems dominant. They are the new Yankees, attracting more vitriol than modern Yankees used to. Before we go too far afield from our state motto friendship, I’d like to point out this fact some of the finest Texans we’ve ever had have been Californians, at least on film. I’m making no effort to be comprehensive here, but I’d like to highlight five Californians who made great Texans in the movies. The big daddy of them all was, of course, John Wayne. I doubt the Alamo film, along with Wayne’s celebrated depiction of Davy Crockett, would ever have been made without his unequaled Hollywood clout and his money. The movie was a financial disaster, and Wayne lost a disturbing amount of money on the film. Steven Harrigan wrote in 2015 for Texas Monthly that Wayne’s appeal as a Texan was that he had this habitual on screen character meshed with our fun Texas dream of ourselves in almost every carefully curated role Wayne played. He was a big, friendly, open handed presence, but there was also a concealed carry component to his personality. For all his many films in which he played Texans, Wayne was made an honorary Texan by the Texas Legislature in 2015. Clint Eastwood played the Texas Ranger in A Perfect World. Eastwood directed the film, in which he pursues escaped convict Butch Haynes. Kevin Costner, who kidnaped a young boy to aid his life on the run. A good deal earlier, Clint Eastwood played the Most Wanted Man in Texas in Outlaw Josey Wales. Though Wills was not a Texan in the film, after seeing his family killed and his fellow Confederate soldiers massacred by a Union false surrender ambush, he exacted revenge and headed for Texas to start anew. He represented the lethal self-reliance of the men who populated Texas in those years. It was also an extension of the Man with No Name persona that he cultivated in the Spaghetti Westerns, one of which was For a Few Dollars More, which took place in El Paso and the surrounding region. Robert Duvall, a Californian for the first 17 years of his life, depicted the most memorable Texas Ranger of all when he played the lovable and lethal Captain Gus McCrae in the 1989 mini series Lonesome Dove. He won a Best Actor award for a TV movie for the role. Duvall animated in McRae the Self-Reliance, adaptability, Love of justice, loyalty to friends, and fearlessness in battle that all Texans admire. When he was dying in Montana. He made his friend Cole promise to bury him in an orchard near San Antonio. He knew Carl was like him. A promise had to be honored, no matter how dangerous the enterprise. Robert Duvall was also made an honorary Texas Ranger, along with Tommy Lee Jones, for his role as captain W.S. Cole. Tommy Lee Jones, though, is a native Texan, and it showed wonderfully in his authentic and coached accent. Robert Duvall was also superb in Tender Mercies. For that role, he traveled thousands of miles around Texas studying the accents to get it right in the film, which served him well in Lonesome Dove and later in Second Hand Lions. Kevin Costner, pretty much a lifelong Californian, played Texas Ranger Frank Hamer in The Highwaymen, along with Woody Harrelson in their pursuit of Bonnie and Clyde. Now, I personally loved watching Jeff Bridges roll in hell or high water. Jeff plays an aging Texas Ranger, Marcus Hamilton, one week from retirement. He is on the trail of West Texas bank robbers. Jeff got help with his Ranger persona from Pernell McNamara, the then 70 year old sheriff of McLennan County. Though close to retirement, Ranger Hamilton does not take it easy or shirk away from his dangerous task. Even after retirement, his good Texas character can’t let go. The job is not done until it’s done, at least to his satisfaction. And if you want the finest example of an unadulterated West Texas accent, you’ll hear it from the waitress in the cafe who says, so lyrically, what don’t you want? That was Margaret Bowman, and she was from Texas. Since we’ve talked about all these Californians playing Texas Rangers, it’s rather cool, I think, to recognize that our real life most famous Texas Ranger of all time, Jack Coffee Hays, left Texas in 1849 and became the first elected sheriff of San Francisco, California, in 1850. Can’t make this stuff. I’m a strong. These are stories from Texas. Some of them are true.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
