This movie came out when I was just a wee gal. My grandfather was a big western fan, so I am sure I saw it at his house in between episodes of Gunsmoke. I don't remember the first time I saw it, but I remember how I came to love John Wayne. When he died in the late 70s I was crushed. I still watch this movie at least once a year, (it is on TNT or some other Turner channel at least monthly). Rooster Cogburn is, to me, the archetype of all Western heroes. He is the undeniably flawed, crochety old man that hides his tenderness behind a facade of toughness. He roams all over the west in search of bad guys, and he drinks to fill the hole inside him that loneliness has created. It is important to say that he is not a killer, or interested in revenge. His whole being, his soul, rests on the cause of justice. He is the bravest character ever created in a writer's imagination. At the end, when he jumps his horse over the fence and tells Maddie to come and see an old fat man sometime, I cry. Everytime. Despite his politics, and the fact that he was just an actor, to me John Wayne is the lone western hero that will remain in my heart for all my life.
