In Red River (1948), John Wayne played Tom Dunson, a rancher who leads the first great cattle drive from Texas to Missouri, and who becomes increasingly tyrannical as the journey wears on. Directed by Howard Hawks, the film follows Dunson as he clashes with his adopted son Matt, played by Montgomery Clift, over how to treat the men and the herd.
Wayne gave Dunson a darker, more complex presence than his usual heroes. He was a man whose determination turned to obsession, and the film’s final confrontation between Dunson and Matt, which ends in reconciliation rather than killing, became one of the great western endings.
Red River remains a signature Wayne role because it showed he could play a flawed, even frightening patriarch, and because the cattle drive itself became a landmark of the western genre.