Westerns, works of popular fiction, radio or television programs, or motion pictures that dramatize the American experience in the lands west of the Mississippi River, particularly during the years of heaviest settlement, 1860–1890. Westerns have been a staple of American popular culture for more than 150 years, providing a rich body of myth, legend, and iconography that has evolved over time to influence and reflect American ideals and struggles.
Frontier fiction had been popular since James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking novels (1823–1841), and as Americans explored and settled westward after 1850, tales of daring adventure and the triumph of rugged individualism over nature and lawlessness emerged in the form of mass-produced fiction. The Beadle publishing house produced more than seven thousand "dime" novels between 1860 and 1898, such as Ann S. Stephens's Malaeska (1860) and Edward L. Wheeler's Deadwood Dick series (1877–1885). In the twentieth century, serious Westerns such as Owen Wister's The Virginian (1902), Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), Louis L'Amour's Hondo (1953), and Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove (1985) achieved broad popularity and critical acclaim.
Westerns were among the first motion pictures made. The Edison Company produced short documentary films of Western life throughout the 1890s, including footage of cowboys, scenic views, Native Americans, and features of William Cody's "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show," as well as brief fictional scenes such as Poker at Dawson City (1898) and Cripple Creek Bar-room (1898). Edison's The Great Train Robbery (1903), directed by Edwin S. Porter, is often considered the first motion picture in the Western genre because it established what would become common motifs, including a train robbery, fistfights, a chase on horseback, and a final shoot-out.
Early film directors William S. Hart, D. W. Griffith, and Thomas Ince shaped the Western genre in the 1910s. Hart's authentic images of Western towns and people, Griffith's technical innovations in panoramic cinematography and narrative techniques, and Ince's cast of Native American actors established the standards of Western filmmaking for decades to come. In addition to feature films, series Westerns portraying flamboyantly dressed, stunt-riding cowboys and "good bad-man" characters, played by such stars as Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson and Tom Mix, dominated the industry in the 1920s. These features paved the way for the "B" Western serials of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as later radio and television series.
John Ford achieved his first major success with The Iron Horse (1924), an epic portrayal of the building of the transcontinental railroad. He became an icon of Western filmmaking over the course of his fifty-year career. Ford's 1939 classic Stagecoach introduced Monument Valley as a standard landscape and started the young John Wayne on his path to becoming the most popular Western star of the twentieth century.
Western feature films achieved peak production during the 1940s and 1950s, with such stars as Wayne, Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, and Barbara Stanwyck appearing in increasingly complex films. At the onset of World War II, Westerns reflected nationalistic sentiments and themes of "winning the West" in such films as Santa Fe Trail (1940) and They Died with Their Boots On (1941). Yet by the war's end, Westerns developed beyond basic conflicts of good versus evil to explore intricate themes and characters in what critics have called the "adult" Western.
Many adult Westerns engaged in social critique, such as William Wellman's powerful indictment of lynching in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), the controversial sexuality of Jane Russell's character in Howard Hughes's The Outlaw (1943), Howard Hawks's blurring of hero and villain in Red River (1948), the reexamination of Native American characterization in Delmer Daves's Broken Arrow (1950), the anti-populism of Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952), and John Ford's exploration of white anxiety about miscegenation in The Searchers (1956). Yet George Stevens's Shane (1953), with its idyllic myths of self-reliance and prevailing justice, became the most popular Western of the decade.
By the 1950s, radio Westerns that had featured such "B" movie staples as The Lone Ranger, Tom Mix, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers were developed into television programs, beginning with Hopalong Cassidy (1949–1952), starring William Boyd, and The Lone Ranger (1949–1957), starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels. These early series were popular with children. With the debut of Gunsmoke (1955–1975), starring James Arness and Amanda Blake, the adult Western had come to television. Other popular shows included Maverick (1957–1962), Rawhide (1959–1966), Bonanza (1959–1973), and Have Gun, Will Travel (1957–1963).
The 1960s brought an influx of new styles and motifs to adult Western movies. Films such as Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) and the Italian-produced "spaghetti Westerns" of Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood, exemplified the cynicism and ruthless violence of the changing Western. Thematic despair and hopelessness pervaded such "mud and rags" Westerns as Philip Kaufman's The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972).
The 1970s and 1980s were a period of waning popularity for Westerns, yet the last decade of the twentieth century met with a revival of the Western after the landmark television miniseries Lonesome Dove aired in 1989. Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves (1990) and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992) won Academy Awards for best picture, and films continued to revisit and revise the Western genre in the light of changing attitudes and values.
Bibliography
Adams, Les, and Buck Rainey. Shoot-Em-Ups: The Complete Reference Guide to Westerns of the Sound Era. New Rochelle, N.Y., and New York: Arlington House, 1978.
Brown, Bill, ed. Reading the West: An Anthology of Dime Westerns. Boston and New York: Bedford Books, 1997.
Buscombe, Edward, ed. The BFI Companion to the Western. New York: Da Capo, 1991.
Cameron, Ian, and Douglas Pye, eds. The Book of Westerns. New York: Continuum, 1996.
Fenin, George N., and William K. Everson. The Western, From Silents to the Seventies. New York: Grossman, 1973.
McDonald, Archie P., ed. Shooting Stars: Heroes and Heroines of Western Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890. New York: Atheneum, 1985.
———. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Atheneum, 1992.
Yoggy, Gary A. Riding the Video Range: The Rise and Fall of the Western on Television. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1995.
