Martin Scorsese Revealed Why He Loved John Wayne Despite His ‘Brutally Insensitive’ Politics 

Legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese once revealed that he had a tremendous amount of respect for movie star John Wayne. Many other big names in Hollywood rejected Wayne for his conservative politics. However, Scorsese explained on multiple occasions why he found Wayne so fascinating as an artist and how the actor impacted him growing up.

John Wayne had polarizing politics

Wayne garnered a substantial following over the course of his movie career. However, he fell into hot water when he became increasingly outspoken politically. The actor considered himself to be a liberal until others informed him otherwise. Scorsese certainly didn’t hide the fact that Wayne had a spotty legacy when it came to expressing his thoughts, especially when it came to the Vietnam War.

The worst of it came from a 1971 Playboy interview, where certain segments went viral years after it took place. Wayne said that he believed in “white supremacy until the Blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.” Additionally, he didn’t have much kinder things to say about Native Americans, noting that he didn’t understand why “the government should give them something that it wouldn’t give me” in regard to reparations.

Martin Scorsese had great admiration for John Wayne as an artist

Scorsese wrote the foreword in John Wayne: The Legend and the Man, where he revealed his thoughts on the movie star. The now-iconic filmmaker remembered how the actor was the “ideal of American manhood” when he was young, which naturally earned respect. However, the country divided in ways that resulted in younger folks calling Wayne “hypocritical and brutally insensitive.”

Nevertheless, Scorsese considered Wayne to exist in two forms: a figurehead and an actor. His perspective on the Vietnam War alienated him from many people, but the filmmaker still saw him as “a genuinely great actor who had worked with several great directors.”

Scorsese reflected on the movie star in a light that many others didn’t get to see him in, calling him “dapper” in the way that he wanted to tap more into an “emotional register” for his pictures. In particular, he praised Rio Bravo and The Searchers, which showed “toughness but also tenderness.” He couldn’t imagine those films without Wayne’s involvement.

The filmmaker called ‘The Searchers’ a ‘touchstone’

Scorsese once reviewed The Searchers for The Hollywood Reporter, where he further expanded on his thoughts on Wayne and the John Ford picture. He noted that the film exists on his top 10 greatest films of all time list. He called the core of the film “deeply painful,” but thought that Wayne’s performance only got better over time. Scorsese liked his performance more here than in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

The filmmaker wrote that Ford’s film only further resonated with critics and audiences over the years. However, he noted that the film was always a “touchstone” for him, along with several other directors from his generation. It wasn’t the type of movie that remained in the past, but rather, he still regularly revisits the film that became such an inspiration for his own work.