McClintock!

A cattle baron runs half the territory, can’t run his own marriage, and ends up chasing his runaway wife through town with a coal shovel. Andrew V. McLaglen’s 1963 comic Western — John Wayne producing and starring opposite Maureen O’Hara, their most knockabout pairing after The Quiet Man — is The Taming of the Shrew on a ranch. Wayne is G.W. McLintock, rich, loud, and tired of homesteaders, politicians, and Katherine’s temper; O’Hara matches him shout for shout. Chill Wills, Yvonne De Carlo, and a young Stefanie Powers fill out the circus. McLaglen, son of Wayne’s old co-star Victor and a house director for Batjac, keeps it broad, dusty, and unapologetically old-school. The mud-pit brawl and the public spanking made it a Saturday-matinee legend and a periodic lightning rod. Big Wayne, big sky, bigger arguments.