Ward Bondis a beloved Western actor from the Golden Age of cinema and one ofJohn Wayne’s most frequent co-stars. Bond worked with The Duke almost from the start, as he was part of the cast inJohn Wayne’s first-ever leading man rolein Raoul Walsh’sThe Big Trail, a movie added to the National Film Registry in 2006.
Ward Bond and John Wayne collaborated on 23 films, while Bond went on to star in over 200 movies throughout his career. These included Westerns and war movies, but Bond also had roles in 13 films nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, includingIt Happened One Night,Gone with the Wind, andIt’s a Wonderful Life.
In 1949, John Ford planned a new Western movie made on a lower budget, and he decided to cast Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr. as his leads instead of John Wayne. However, even without Wayne,John Ford reached out to Ward Bond and asked him to join the projectin a supporting role.
The movie wasWagon Master, the story of a group of Mormons traveling west by wagon train to Salt Lake City. The style was different from other Westerns, with Ford choosing to shoot it quickly and cheaply, deciding to almost make it in a documentary style with single takes and a relaxed shoot.
The film only received mixed reviews, but John Ford considered it one of his favorite films of his career.Wagon Masteralso inspired the TV showWagon Train, which also starred Bond. Harry Carey Jr. credited Ward Bond with the quality of the film (via the Scott Allen Nollen book,Three Bad Men):
“The backbone ofWagon Masterwas Ward Bond… [He] was superb in the film. He really carried the picture, and of course [John Ford] had his fun with him.”
Hondowas a unique Western because it was shot in 3D, a groundbreaking technique at the time, but not generally thought of for the genre.Based on Louis L’Amour’s short story “The Gift of Cochise,“the Western follows Hondo Lane (John Wayne), a man who rides into the life of a woman and her young son.
Ward Bond plays Buffalo Baker inHondo,a fellow scout who lets Hondo know that the battles with the local Apache tribes resulted in the deaths of several soldiers, leaving settlers scared for their lives. However, the main story follows Hondo and his relationship with Angie (Geraldine Page) and her son.
The film is also known for the fact that director John Farrow left the project when filming went over schedule for another job.John Ford came in and finished shooting the film(mostly the last battle scenes), but he remains uncredited in the role.
While he isbest known for the gangster genre, James Cagney also starred in a Western in 1939, where he played the title character inThe Oklahoma Kid.Cagney plays the outlaw known as The Oklahoma Kid, who robs a gang led by Whip McCord, played in the movie by Humphrey Bogart.
Bogart is the villain, as Whip McCord is an immoral and evil man who tries to turn the new town of Tulsa, Oklahoma, into something he can control. However, he has to contend with a good man named John Kincaid (Hugh Sothern) and the Oklahoma Kid, who has a connection to John and pledges to stop McCord’s rise.
Ward Bond played Wes Handley, one of the henchmen in McCord’s gang. He was a formidable nemesis, being much larger than James Cagney, which provided the film’s star with a dangerous adversary to prove himself against.
Tall in the Saddleis another John Wayne and Ward Bond collaboration, but this has Bond in a different role. Instead of a rancher, cowboy, or soldier, he plays a crooked attorney. Bond is in rare form here as he pretends to be a judge in the town, but this is all a lie to give him and his cohorts more power.
The film is a mystery, with Wayne’s character, Rocklin, arriving in town and learning that the man who hired him as a foreman was murdered. This leads to a series of suspects, and Bond is one of the people who attempt to frame Rocklin for the murders and possibly kill him if that doesn’t work.
Also notable was the inclusion of Ella Raines as one of the female leads, Arly Harolday. Raines, who mainly appeared in noir films during this era, brought her femme fatale to the Western genre in great form. The film received mostly positive reviews and was a box office success early in Wayne’s career.
In 1946, John Ford released amovie about Wyatt Earpand the period leading up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. This is the same period that the 1990s film,Tombstone, covered. However, here, Henry Fonda played Wyatt Earp, while Victor Mature was Doc Holliday, and Ward Bond was Morgan Earp.
The movie opens with the Earp brothers driving cattle and then arriving in Tombstone, Arizona, where Wyatt agrees to take on the role of the town marshal when he realizes it is a lawless society. However, when Wyatt’s brother James is killed, they seek revenge, team with the notorious Doc Holliday, and target the Clanton gang.
My Darling Clementineis highly inaccurate, and John Ford used the script as a template while improvising and rewriting it throughout the entire shoot. What resulted was an entertaining film that remains one of the director’s best non-John Wayne Western films.
Fort Apacheis a Western war movie that was the first part of John Ford’s “Cavalry Trilogy.” Based on the James Warner Bellah short story “Massacre,“Fort Apachealso changed Westerns forever, showing Native Americans in a more authentic and sympathetic light, compared to the “savages” from previous Westerns.
Fort Apacheis one of the best Westerns John Wayne made, with The Duke starring as a local military captain who clashes with an unpredictable Civil War hero played by Henry Fonda. Ward Bond starred as a Medal of Honor-winning Sergeant Major whose son (John Agar) is part of the love story with Miss Philadelphia (played by Shirley Temple).
Fort Apachestands out as a serious examination of the mythology of the American West. It works well to show that the ideals of previous Westerns romanticized settlers and degraded Native Americans, and this went a long way to dispel those myths.
The Shepherd of the Hillswas aWestern movie with John Wayne and Harry Carey Jr.sharing the lead roles. What makesthis John Wayne revenge Westernunique is that he is not a good person in the film; instead, he is someone obsessed with murdering a man who wronged him.
Harry Carey Jr. is a man named Daniel Howitt who shows up in the Ozarks and befriends the locals, including Young Matt Matthews (Wayne), whom he becomes a mentor for. However, Matt wants to find his father and kill him because he blames the man he has never met for his mother’s early death.
Ward Bond plays Wash Gibbs, a man who gets into a brawl with Young Matt early in the film and is one of the outlaws in the town. He is part of the Baldknobbers gang, which terrorizes the countryside by wearing masks, and must be dealt with by Matt and Daniel before the end.
3 Godfathersis an adaptation of the 1913 novelette by Peter B. Kyne, which waspreviously made into a movie calledHell’s Heroesin 1929. A loose retelling of the Biblical story of the Three Wise Men, but set in the West, three rustlers find a woman dying and agree to get her baby to safety as the child’s new “godfathers.”
John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz, and Harry Carey, Jr. played the three rustlers who agreed to take on this good deed, the last that they would do in their lives. As for Ward Bond, he played Buck Sweet, a man related to the dead mother. However, he and his wife befriended Bob (Wayne) after learning how he had saved the baby.
Rio Bravo was an important moviefor John Wayne. A few years afterWayne turned down a role inHigh Noon, he madeRio Bravoas a response to that earlier film. The movie, directed by Howard Hawks, was an answer to what Wayne felt was communism seeping into the American Western genre.
Wayne stars as a Texan sheriff who arrests a man for murder and has to hold him in jail until the U.S. Marshal arrives. However, he has to fend off the man’s gang, who are closing in to rescue him. The film is the basis for figure films likeAssault on Precinct 13.Ward Bond plays Pat Wheeler, one of the sheriff’s friends.
The movie was a huge hit, and the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2014. It was also the first part of a trilogy of similar movies, followed byEl DoradoandRio Lobo.
Easily thebest Western that Ward Bond ever appeared inwasThe Searchers.This film is also John Wayne’s best movie, and themovie character after whom Wayne named his son. Wayne is a former Civil War soldier named Ethan Edwards who still harbors hatred for Native Americans.
When a Native American tribe abducts his niece, and she decides she wants to remain with them, Ethan sets out to kill her, saying she is better off dead than living as a Native American. This is easily Wayne’s darkest role, and one where he is in no way a heroic character. Ward Bond plays the man leading the troops to rescue the girl.
The Searchersis considered one of the best Westerns ever made, regardless of who stars in it. It was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1989, as one of the very first 25 films to receive the honor.
