5 Great Directors of Westerns from Hollywood's Golden Age

By the time the era of sound films came along, westerns were left behind in the dust, and when they were made at all, they were considered throwaway movies. But by the end of the 1930s, they came back into style -- with a vengeance -- and they rode tall in the saddle for another two decades, thanks largely to these five filmmakers:

Budd Boetticher

Oscar Boetticher Jr. was more adventurous than his dweeby birth name might suggest: He had a stint as a matador before breaking into filmmaking, fortunate to be mentored in movies by John Ford. In the 1950s, in partnership with actor Randolph Scott -- who, curiously, started out in light comedies before finding his niche as a tough lawman type -- he churned out a series of gritty westerns.

These projects included Seven Men from Now (costarring Lee Marvin as the villain), in which Scott plays an ex-lawmen on the trail of bank robbers who killed his wife, The Tall T, about a stagecoach hijacking and resulting kidnapping, Ride Lonesome, in which a bounty hunter's mission is complicated by outlaws and Indians, and Comanche Station, a similar tale that substitutes a rescued woman for the captured criminal.

Boetticher's films were notable for spare, uncompromising style and potent story lines focusing on character. He also directed episodes of the TV westerns Maverick, Zane Grey Theater, and The Rifleman.

John Ford

Well, duh. Ford owns the western like -- well, like no one else commands a film genre. Ford's many classic westerns from Hollywood's Golden Age include Stagecoach, which spurred a renaissance in the genre, and then, after a detour into war films in the 1940s, a string of other successes: the cavalry tributes Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and Rio Grande, plus My Darline Clementine, an account of the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and 3 Godfathers, an oft-filmed tale about outlaws who rescue an orphaned infant in the desert.

After Rio Grande, in 1950, though, it was another six years before Ford directed a western. But it was worth the wait -- The Searchers is widely considered his best, the genre's best, and among the best overall. Late-career triumphs included Sergeant Rutledge, about a black soldier accused of murder and rape, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, an excellent study of the mythologizing of the gunslinger as well as an engrossing film.

Among Ford's forays into other genres are the Depression classic The Grapes of Wrath, the nostalgic and sentimental family drama How Green Was My Valley, and the romantic comedy The Quiet Man, with Wayne as a retired American boxer whose move to rural Ireland is anything but quiet.

Born John Martin Feeney to Irish immigrants, Ford followed his older brother Francis to Hollywood and after a few years of acting, writing, and production work, took up directing. (He also produced several dozen of his 150 or so films.) Half of his total output consisted of silent movies, including many short films, and the other half came during the sound era.

Ford disliked soundstages and pioneered location shooting, and he was acknowledged as the master of the long shot, often utilizing Utah's majestic Monument Valley as a backdrop. Winner of a record four Oscars for best director, he was noted for the visual poetry of his compositions and for his focus both on outsiders and on camaraderie.

Howard Hawks

Hawks directed three John Wayne films, two of them excellent and the third good enough: First came Red River, about a cattleman whose ruthlessness prompts his adopted son (Montgomery Clift) and the other cowhands to mutiny. Next up was Rio Bravo, about a sheriff who withstands a siege with the help of a drunk, a young gunslinger, and a cripple (Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson -- both of whom give creditable performances -- and the always delightful Walter Brennan). The third was its virtual (and inferior) remake El Dorado. He also directed The Big Sky, starring Kirk Douglas.

Producer Howard Hughes (yes, that Howard Hughes) fired Hawks from his first oater, The Outlaw, and took directing credit for himself (although veteran screenwriter Jules Furthman did much of the actual work) -- a good thing for Hawks, because it was a stinker -- and Hawks went on to film the classic war film Sergeant York. (The Outlaw was putatively about Billy the Kid, but its real stars were Jane Russell's breasts.)

Hawks was one of the most versatile of directors, equally at home with war films (Dawn Patrol), screwball comedies (His Girl Friday), crime (Scarface), and film noir (The Big Sleep), among others. Though he had no distinctive visual style, his work is noted for its strong female characters and for naturalistic dialogue.

Anthony Mann

Mann, born Emil Anton Bundsmann in San Diego to parents of German extraction, moved from stage acting and directing to being a talent scout and casting director for legendary producer David O. Selznick, which involved filming screen tests for Gone with the Wind and other films. Among the westerns he directed are three starring James Stewart, including Winchester '73 (Mann's first western), The Naked Spur, and The Man from Laramie, that reinvented Stewart's screen persona with tough, complicated roles.

Mann, who brought a grim, brooding, tragic sensibility to what had previously been a simplistic genre, also directed Stewart in nonwesterns The Glenn Miller Story and Strategic Air Command, but they became estranged, and the director turned to other stars: Man of the West, with Gary Cooper as an outlaw gone straight who falls in with his former gang, received rave reviews by a young French film critic named Jean-Luc Godard, and The Tin Star, featuring Henry Fonda as an ex-sheriff who takes young lawman Anthony Perkins under his wing, is also highly regarded.

He was also the original director of Spartacus, and star and producer Kirk Douglas, after replacing Mann with Stanley Kubrick, regretted his decision to replace him and was happy to work with him again in the World War II tale Heroes of Telemark.

John Sturges

Sturges had only a few superior films among his dozen or so westerns, but we'll give him a pass because he's the man who gave us The Magnificent Seven, one of the most iconic horse operas. Based on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, it stars Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn, among others, as a group of gunslingers who band together to save a village from bandits.

But this classic adventure isn't even his best film in the genre: The modern-day western Bad Day at Black Rock stars Spencer Tracy as a World War II veteran who arrives in an isolated desert town on an errand of honor; Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, and Lee Marvin stand in his way. Like many westerns, it was filmed in the area around Lone Pine, a town on the east side of California's Sierra Nevada.

Sturges's other top westerns are Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, costarring Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday (with Dennis Hopper as one of the Clanton gang and DeForest "He's Dead, Jim" Kelley as one of the Earp brothers -- most of Kelley's film and TV credits were for westerns), and Last Train from Gun Hill, with Douglas as a sheriff and Anthony Quinn as an old friend turned nemesis. Among his nonwesterns are the World War II epic The Great Escape. Sturges, though not a stylist, had a way with ensembles, though he also focused well on individuals like John J. Macreedy, Spencer Tracy's character in Bad Day at Black Rock.