The Greatest Westerns Ever Made and the People Who Made Them

In this ho-hum study, Parke, an editor at True West, expounds on the history and appeal of film and TV westerns. Among other insights, Parke details how director John Ford transformed John Wayne from a B-lister into a star with the 1939 film Stagecoach and how screenwriter William Goldman researched and wrote the first drafts of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid while teaching at Princeton University in the 1950s. Much of the volume repurposes Parke’s articles for True West, and their various forms can make this feel like a hodgepodge. For instance, a section on film actors includes profiles of Kevin Costner and Tom Selleck, obituaries of Sam Shepherd and Powers Boothe, and an interview with Robert Duvall. The films, shows, and actors highlighted provide an incomprehensive overview of the genre, with numerous pages devoted to the little-watched AMC show The Son (2017–2019), while Clint Eastwood’s collaborations with Sergio Leone are almost entirely overlooked. Nonetheless, the attention paid to relatively minor works does yield some gems, as when Return to Lonesome Dove screenwriter John Wilder discusses how the best westerns “are about right and wrong, meeting challenges, [and] maintaining integrity and honor.” This works better as a collection of musings than a primer on the genre. (Feb.)