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It takes a lot to vanquish John Wayne in a two-fisted free-for-all brawl—as several generations of filmgoers have learned by now. Furthermore, when it comes to a sparring partner for Mr. Wayne in a battle of the sexes, no one has ever approached the vigor of titian-haired Maureen O'Hara.

Putting them together once again in "McLintock," the broadly comic Western that arrived yesterday at the Astor and other theaters, sounded like a promising idea. Particularly so, since the scenery is opulent and the action out-of-doors, the color lush and the cast made up almost entirely of recruits from John Ford's long cinematic cycle commemorating the tradition of the American frontier.

The only thing missing to make a rousing Western variation of "The Quiet Man" is Mr. Ford himself. Instead, the direction was entrusted to a relative newcomer, Victor McLaglen's television-trained son, Andrew V. McLaglen. His style, casual and picturesque, shows a likable influence from his actors' erstwhile colleague, but good intentions, when the task at hand is as difficult as lusty farce, are not enough.

George Washington McLintock (John Wayne) has a saddlebag full of trouble. The owner of the largest ranch in the territory, which also includes a mine and a lumber mill that he built up himself, should be a happy, fulfilled man, but he isn't. His wife, Katherine (Maureen O'Hara), walked out on him two years ago without a word of explanation and has been living back east and running in very fancy circles. He's getting older, a fact of which he's constantly reminded as friends around him decline in health. He's being challenged by their sons, eager to make their mark on the territory, and by the homesteaders who are pouring in with the support of the government, hoping to farm on land that's just barely adequate for cattle to graze on; he's got government officials underfoot, including an inept Indian agent (Strother Martin) and a corrupt land agent (Gordon Jones); the thick-headed, longwinded territorial governor, the honorable Cuthbert H. Humphrey (Robert Lowery), and the government back east are trying to push the Indians -- whose chiefs are some of McLintock's oldest enemies and his best and most honored friends -- by shipping them off to a reservation, where they'll be cared for like old women; and to top it all off, Katherine is coming back to secure a divorce and take custody of their 17-year-old daughter, Rebecca (Stefanie Powers), who's been at school back east and no longer likes anything to do with the West, any more than her mother does. All of that -- plus the presence of a young hired hand (Patrick Wayne) who's interested romantically in McLintock's daughter -- is the setup for a sprawling comedy Western with serious overtones, part battle-of-the-sexes and part political tract.

McLintock! was made mostly to keep John Wayne's production company solvent in the wake of the losses incurred from the production of The Alamo. Wayne needed a film that could be made quickly and have mass appeal, and he got more than he bargained for in James Edward Grant's screenplay, which owed a little to both The Taming of the Shrew and The Quiet Man. Shot in the spring of 1963 and premiered in late November of that year, McLintock! proved to be one of the star's most popular and successful films of the '60s.

Gary Tooze

April 12th, 2013