What About When the Fact Becomes Legend?

I'm not really a big fan of westerns, but I figured I should get around to watching John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). After watching Little Big Man, I thought I should take a look at what I've heard is the first of the revisionist westerns.

It starts with white-haired Senator Jimmy Stewart and wife Vera Miles arriving in the town of Shinbone by train. They are met by Andy Devine, and are headed to a funeral. A newspaperman wants to know what they are doing in town, so he tells them in a flashback.

He came to Shinbone before the railroad, a raw lawyer with nothing but a few dollars and some law books. His stage is robbed by the titular Liberty Valence, Lee Marvin, and his gang including Lee Van Cleef and Strother Martin. When he attempts to defend the honor of a lady passenger, Marvin beats him and leaves him to die. John Wayne and Woody Strode come along and rescue him, delivering him to the inn where Vera Miles is working. Wayne is clearly courting Miles, but she is intrigued by this vulnerable but principled tinhorn.

Stewart takes a job washing dishes at the inn for room and board, and wants to practice law. John Wayne lets him know that the only law in Shinbone comes from a gun. Sheriff Andy Devine is too fat and cowardly to defend the law, and Valence is the toughest man around - except Wayne. But Stewart refuses to get a gun, standing on principle.

The time comes when Marvin calls Stewart out, and he'll have to face him in a shootout. SPOILER - Marvin is shot. As many people have complained, this should be the last act. But now, Stewart is a hero and gets to be the delegate to the territorial convention. When opposition pol John Carradine says he is unfit to lead because he is nothing but a gunslinger, this destroys his confidence in himself. So Wayne tells him the truth - REAL SPOILER - Stewart missed Marvin, but Wayne shot him from a side alley at exactly the same time.

So the flashback concludes with the newspaperman throwing away his notes with the classic line, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend".

Now, I thought this was a decent Ford western. Good cast (even if you're not much of a John Wayme fan), great black-and-white cinematography, interesting story. Ms. Spenser, on the other hand, hated it. She thinks Wayne is a blowhard and a phony, was disgusted by the casual racism against Strode, and definitely didn't love the message. The whole point of the movie seems to be something like "You can have all the principles you want, but only a friendly asshole with a gun can save you."

You know, I can see her point.