Still in the Saddle: The Hollywood Western, 1969-1980

By the end of the 1960s, the Hollywood West of Tom Mix, Randolph Scott, and even John Wayne was passé—or so the story goes. Many film historians and critics have argued that movies portraying a mythic American West gave way to revisionist films that influential filmmakers such as Sam Peckinpah and Robert Altman made as violent critiques of the Western’s “golden years.”

Yet rumors surrounding the death of the Western have been greatly exaggerated, says film historian Andrew Patrick Nelson. ...