Every time I think I've watched all John Wayne's movies, I hear of another one and realize how incredibly wrong I am. Hondo was one such movie. I've had it at the top of my BB queue for quite a while, and it finally showed up in the mail. (Almost the entire top of my queue is "very long wait" movies. Does anybody else have this problem?)
Hondo was written by Louis L'Amour (before he was a household name). It also has the distinction of starring Geraldine Page (you may know her as the star of "A Trip to Bountiful"), fresh from Broadway. This was her very first Hollywood role, and she was probably the best part of the movie for me. She plays a self-described "homely woman" who falls in love with John Wayne. There is no conflict there - he loves her back. It was refreshing to see a female lead who is not a dance hall girl, and who actually gets to act.
The movie is settlers / army versus Indians. It does not portray the Indians as all bad, nor the army as all good. I like that - both sides had issues, undoubtedly, as that's the way life is. The part that I didn't like was that everybody was all clean and pretty. GP's house was clean, and so were her clothes. John Wayne looked like he had recently seen a laundry. I prefer a movie that is more realistic, which is probably unrealistic for this period of movie making. Anyway, the movie is solid, but I like the Searchers, Stagecoach and True Grit better.
If you want to watch some grittier Westerns, try McCabe and Mrs. Miller with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. The whores are filthy, and the customers are much worse. Julie C is an addict. The HBO series Deadwood also shows the dirt and pigs and lack of teeth. The women are wrecks: skinny and dirty and ugly and sagging. Why would I like that better? It definitely feels more real, and it affirms my conviction that I am glad to live now. Then I think about the changes the next 100 years will bring, and wonder if I would like that even better.
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