TOP COWBOYS

Ransom Stoddard: You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?
Maxwell Scott: No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
-The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Guyism recently tried to create a list of the top twelve TV and movie cowboys ever depicted. As you'd expect, nobody was really happy with the list. They looked over movies and primarily found guys from the last twenty years, ignoring many older characters. However, the list was pretty good offering up this dozen:

1. William Munny, Unforgiven
2. The Man with No Name, several movies
3. Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn, True Grit
4. Boss (aka Bluebonnet Spearman), Open Range
5. Wyatt Earp, Tombstone
6. Josey Wales, The Outlaw Josey Wales
7. Harmonica, Once Upon A Time in the West
8. Will Kane, High Noon
9. Seth Bullock, Deadwood
10. Marshall Matt Dillon, Gunsmoke
11. Charlie Burns, The Proposition
12. Sherriff Bart, Blazing Saddles

Now those are some great characters from westerns, but as a commenter named Alamo pointed out that of this list, the only real cowboy is Boss Spearman from Open Range, the rest being assorted gunmen and lawmen. And he's right, if you want a list of actual cowboys, this list comes up pretty short. But I guess we probably all know what he's talking about here.

I really do like Sherriff Bart from Blazing Saddles if for no other reason than its such a funny movie I cry laughing while watching it. So many great lines and hilarious situations, this movie is only flawed by being almost painfully dated and the bizarre, wandering ending.

Also the list is missing a few really great characters, probably due to the writer being a bit too young to remember some of them. For example, leaving out McCall and McCrae from Lonesome Dove probably is an unforgivable sin. Both of them were actually cowboys and they are amazing characters in what is otherwise a post modernist deconstruction of westerns.

Its hard to pick just one or two characters from Clint Eastwood's career, so I can understand leaving out his ghosts from Pale Rider and High Plains Drifter. But one of the most iconic and awesome characters ever written for a western is John Wayne's character Tom Doniphon, and he should be on that list for being both a cowboy and an amazing, character. I think Chuck Connor's Lucas McCain from The Rifleman probably belongs as well, and you probably should include at least a few of the Magnificent Seven, such as Chris Larabee Adams (Yul Brynner) and Vin Tanner (Steve McQueen). John Wayne alone played dozens of cowboys, and many of them stand out powerfully such as Sheriff John Chance (Rio Bravo) or Wil Anderson (The Cowboys). The entire cast of Silverado should probably be in there, at least Paden (Kevin Klein) and Emmett (Scott Glenn).

This is a list that can't really make anyone happy, like most of its kind, because "great" and even "cowboy" is pretty subjective. And I haven't seen movies like The Proposition so I can't comment on it, but for Australian western-style movies, its hard to do better than Quigley Down Under. I never liked Deadwood for its excessive profanity and absurdly overwrought, Shakespearean dialog, but I do suspect Timothy Olyphant did a terrific job as he always does.