He was most famous for his films directed in Hollywood, typical westerns and adventure films and for his many collaborations with the most important actors of western films, John Wayne and James Stewart



Director Andrew V. McLaglen, originally British, born in the London neighborhood Wandsworth, who passed away at the age of 94 in September 2014, was most famous for his films directed in Hollywood, typical westerns and adventure films. He often worked with the most important actors of western films, John Wayne and James Stewart. His father was the actor Victor McLaglen, who won an Oscar in John Ford’s masterpiece The Informer, and the director often stated that his idol was the great Ford. He worked with Wayne in five films, most famous and most significant in the determination of his career as a director being the western-comedy McLintock from 1963. In it Wayne stars as the energetic George Washington McLintock, the biggest landowner and cattleman in the area who is trying to settle his relationship with his temperamental ex-wife Katherine with whom he has the attractive and stubborn daughter Becky. At the same time he has to deal with problems caused by another cattleman and his biggest opponent Matt Douglas, as well as take care of the endangered Indian tribe of the Apache who live nearby. After his previous film, historical western The Alamo, failed miserably at the box offices, with the help of the production house Batjac and his oldest son William, Wayne wanted to make an easygoing, unpretentious and entertaining film for the wide audiences. The result is this film that was bitterly criticized due to its anti-feminist and openly right-winged attitudes. Nevertheless, it was very successful and well accepted by the audiences, probably thanks to the fact that it was loosely based on the famous comedy by Shakespeare "The Taming of the Shrew", and partly because it was influenced by Ford’s masterpiece The Quiet Man as well as Howard Hawks’s great western Rio Grande, from which it quite openly borrowed certain elements. (Josip Grozdanić)