In 1976, 69-year-old John Wayne offered his farewell to Hollywood and the Western genre withThe Shootist, which tells the tale of an aging gunfighter dying of cancer in Nevada at the turn of the 20th century. The film would become Wayne’s final screen performance, as the actor himself pᴀssed away from stomach cancer just three years later,following a half-century career that spanned 80 Westerns. In addition to being his last Western, The Shootist is now remembered as one of John Wayne’s best movies.

What makes The Shootist such a poignant send-off for John Wayne has nothing to do with its gunslinging or its action: it has to do with a man symbolic of his genre facing his own mortality. By the time the film hit theaters, Westerns had largely shifted away from the classic trope of good vs. evil toward favoring more morally complex antiheroes like Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name. In this light, John Wayne’s role in The Shootist isn’t merely just an old gunslinger facing death: it’s an icon coming to grips with the changing landscape of the genre he defined.

What Happened To John Wayne’s Character In The Shootist

Wayne’s J.B. Books Goes Out On His Own Terms

In The Shootist, John Wayne plays John Bernard “J.B.” Books, an infamous lawman turned gunslinger responsible for the deaths of over 30 men. In 1901, Books rides into Carson City, Nevada, seeking a second opinion from “Doc” Hostetler (James Stewart) after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. After learning that he might have only weeks to live, Books uses a fake name to rent a room from the widow Bond Rogers (Lauren Bacall), and begins to act as a mentor to her son, Gillom, played by future director Ron Howard.

However, Books’ time in Carson City is anything but uneventful, as enemies old and new come looking for trouble. Therefore, Books takes matters into his own hands and arranges a meeting with three adversaries at the local saloon, The Metropole, at 11:00 a.m. on his birthday, January 29th. After ordering a drink at the bar, Books kills the three men but is fatally wounded after the bartender shoots him in the back, dying on the bar floor with Gillom at his side.

The Shootist Is A Great Farewell To John Wayne – And His Type Of Western

John Wayne Was Synonymous With The Genre

One aspect of The Shootist that’s often not discussed is the film’s opening, which compiles several clips of John Wayne’s from some of his previous films, including Red River, Rio Bravo, and El Dorado. Narrated by Gillom, this montage is framed as a catalog of Books’ exploits in the decades before his time in Carson City. In this sense, the compilation blends the character’s past with the legend of John Wayne himself, creating a loving tribute to both the actor and his image as the de facto gunslinger in some of Hollywood’s greatest Westerns.

The Shootist isn’t Wayne’s fastest-moving picture, nor is it trying to be. The film understands its lead actor is an icon in a genre that’s rapidly evolving beyond the type of Westerns he helped define. Instead of trying to follow the times, The Shootist acknowledges the shift in culture, leaning into Wayne’s status as a myth of a bygone era and shaping the plot around that archetype as he embarks on one last journey before his final sunset.