Based on a book by Charles Portis, this classic Western put John Wayne into the unusual role of a hard-drinking, belligerent anti-hero, a role that earned Wayne the Oscar for Best Actor. The movie, directed by Henry Hathaway, played down the Biblical moralizing of the novel, but still presented a compelling picture of flawed protagonists finding their better selves.

14 year old Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) arrives in Fort Smith to identify the body of her father, Frank Ross (John Pickard). She learns that Frank was killed, over a couple of gold pieces, by Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), a man with a black powder burn on his face.

The self-assured and uncompromising Mattie looks up U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne), a one-eyed scourge to outlaws, but also given to drinking and cussing. She offers Cogburn 100 dollars (advancing him twenty-five) for his help in tracking down Chaney, who has fled into Oklahoma Indian territory.

She plays tough with a local horse trader to buy Blackie, a horse she had just the previous day sold to him. She also objects when Texas Ranger La Beouf (Glen Campbell) joins the team, aiming to take Chaney back to Texas for shooting a senator. Mattie wants to see Chaney hang in Fort Smith, not in Texas.

Cogburn and La Beouf try to ditch Mattie at a river crossing, but while they take a ferry, she determinedly rides Blackie straight across the river. The trio encounters outlaws Moon (Dennis Hopper) and Quincy (Jeremy Slate) in a riverside hideout. Moon reveals that Chaney has joined up with “Lucky” Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall). For revealing this, he is killed by Quincy, who is in turn shot dead by Rooster Cogburn.

Cogburn and La Beouf wait to ambush Ned Pepper, and kill two of his henchmen, but Pepper gets away. After a long chase, Mattie accidentally encounters Tom Chaney alone by a creek. She is soon kidnapped, and Rooster must face down Pepper and his men, four against one.

22-year-old Kim Darby made an immediate impression as young Mattie, giving the book’s prim character a tough but vulnerable attitude that could effortlessly match John Wayne’s legendary screen presence. Rising singing star Glen Campbell has an easygoing charm, and he and Kim Darby were teamed up again in Norwood.

Filmed in the mountains near Ridgeway, Colorado, the landscape doesn’t quite match the purported Oklahoma setting, but it is gorgeous. The stirring score by Elmer Bernstein, and the title song by Don Black, were both nominated for Academy Awards. John Wayne took home the statue, of course, and returned to the role in the 1975 sequel Rooster Cogburn, co-starring Katherine Hepburn. True Grit was remade for television in 1978, starring Warren Oates.