A John Wayne Movie With James Arness Led To A Television Spin-Off

Throughout his 50-year filmmaking career, John Wayne was not much of a risk taker when it came to material. Once he broke through as a movie star with John Ford's template-setting Western "Stagecoach" in 1939, he mostly bounced back and forth between oaters and rah-rah war films. When he did futz with his image, he did so with great directors like Ford and Howard Hawks, whose judgment he implicitly trusted.

When it came to experimenting with emerging cinematic technology and new formats, however, Wayne was open to giving anything a whirl that would help movies stave off the stay-at-home threat of television. He made lots of films in Cinemascope and starred in "How the West Was Won," one of the first three-strip Cinerama movies. You might think the 3D fad of the 1950s would've been too sweaty for the Duke, but he actually teamed with director John Farrow to shoot the Western "Hondo" with the versatile new "All-Media Camera." And while the shoot was difficult, beset with so many technical delays that Farrow had to leave before the end of principal photography to fulfill another directing obligation (thus opening the door for Ford to finish the movie at Wayne's request), it became a favorite of the Duke's fans and, somewhat surprisingly, the Duke himself.

The film teamed Wayne with the great Geraldine Page and surrounded him with a terrific supporting cast that included Ward Bond, Michael Pate, and the soon-to-be "Gunsmoke" star James Arness. Wayne was so pleased with how it turned out that, 14 years later, he turned it into a television series via his Batjac Productions. How did that work out?

Based on the novel "The Gift of Cochise" by prolific Western novelist Louis L'Amour, Hondo" stars Wayne as Hondo Lane, a U.S. Army Cavalry rider who gets embroiled in a conflict involving a mother (Page) tending to her family's homestead with her young son while her husband is apparently on a cattle drive. The husband has been absent for some time, but is still alive and well. And when he crosses paths with Hondo, a fatal conflict is inevitable. Then there's the Apache to contend with.

There's a lot of incident packed into the tight 84 minutes of "Hondo," and while it's not in the same league as Wayne's best, Hondo himself was intriguing enough to support a film franchise if that's how Wayne wanted to play it. Instead, he brought the character to ABC in 1967 with Ralph Taeger in the title role. The "Hondo" TV show paired Taeger with veteran character actor Noah Beery, Jr., while Michael Pate returned to play the role of Chief Vittorio.

"Hondo" seemed destined for ratings success, but, despite respectable viewership, ABC hastily pulled the plug. The series' fans rallied to rescue it from cancellation (as "Star Trek" boosters did around the same time with NBC), but ABC would not grant a reprieve. "Hondo" has acquired a reputation over the years as one of the better television Westerns of that era, so maybe now is the time for a reboot. Who do you think could follow in the boot steps of Wayne and Taeger?