John Wayne had a long and successful Hollywood career that lasted decades, and along the way, he turned down several big movie roles. Wayne got his start as a bit actor in a lot of movies in the 1930s before John Ford discovered him and cast him in Stagecoach. That started Wayne’s career as a leading man in Hollywood.

Wayne then remained a leading man for the next four decades, starring in some of the best Westerns ever made. With movies like The Searchers, True Grit, Rio Bravo, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance to his name, Wayne remains an icon. However, to cultivate his image, John Wayne turned down several roles for personal reasons.

The Streets Of Laredo

John Wayne turned down a movie role for The Streets of Laredo, and that resulted in this specific film not getting made at the time. Larry McMurtry wrote The Streets of Laredo, and a young director named Peter Bogdanovich wanted to direct it. Considering those two names, it could have been a monster hit.

However, when John Wayne read the script, there was something to turn him off from the idea. The theme here was that it would be the “Final” Western movie, the end of the genre, and Wayne said he wanted nothing to do with ending it because he had more to give. Without Wayne, the movie never got made.

However, it didn’t die there. Two decades later, McMurtry reworked the script and turned it into a television miniseries called Lonesome Dove. This ended up as one of the best Western miniseries ever made, and it wouldn’t have happened if Wayne had accepted the role in The Streets of Laredo.

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Sometimes, John Wayne loved a script and a movie idea, but he also knew that it wasn’t right for him. This happened when Mel Brooks offered Wayne a role in his Western comedy spoof, Blazing Saddles. Wayne was initially offered the role of Jim the Waco Kid, and he loved the role when he read it.

However, Wayne said he couldn’t appear in Blazing Saddles because it was “too dirty.” However, Wayne did throw in that he would be one of the first in line to watch the movie when it hit theaters. This was another case where Wayne saying no was for the best.

While Mel Brooks said he wanted “authenticity” in the role of the Waco Kid, what he got with Gene Wilder was even better. Wilder wasn’t authentic at all for Westerns, but he was sarcastic and had just the right bite when delivering his lines. It never would have been as funny with John Wayne in the role.

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

John Wayne turned down another role because he felt it was wrong for him, but this time he had no intention of seeing it in theaters. While Wayne thought Blazing Saddles would be hilarious, he said that The Dirty Dozen was a “repulsive” story, and he refused to even consider attaching his name to it.

John Wayne had a very strong opinion on war movies, and he believed that they should all represent American troops in the highest of lights. He refused any war movie role that had soldiers shown in a disparaging manner. His big problem was the main protagonist, Major John Reisman.

However, there was a part of the story where Reisman was having an affair with the wife of another soldier. According to Wayne, the idea of a soldier betraying another soldier was “repulsive,” and he wouldn’t star in the movie unless this was changed, so the producers chose to move on to another actor.

Heaven’s Gate (1980)

John Wayne had a chance to star in the biggest commercial Western flop in Hollywood history, but turned the role down. When Michael Cimino was casting for his Western epic, Heaven’s Gate, one of the first actors he approached was John Wayne. There was one problem. This was toward the end of Wayne’s life.

When he was approached, along with Steve McQueen, he seemed interested. However, the movie ended up getting delayed, and when it was time to make it, Wayne had to turn it down for health reasons. As a result, without the star power of a Wayne or McQueen, the film was a box office flop.

Instead, John Wayne’s final movie role ended up being The Shootist in 1976, and his last public appearance was presenting him with the Oscar for Best Picture for The Deer Hunter. It was one week later when Heaven’s Gate began filming, and Wayne died two months after that.

All The King’s Men (1949)

All the King’s Men was a 1949 movie by Robert Rossen, and it would have given John Wayne a chance to play a character unlike any other in his career. Instead of playing the role of a cowboy or a war hero, he had a chance in this movie to play the role of a politician named Willie Stark.

However, Wayne rejected the part, and it went to Broderick Crawford in what was a huge Oscar success story, with seven Oscar nominations and three wins, including Best Actor for the role that Wayne turned down. However, this was one of the movies Wayne rejected because of his own personal political beliefs.

Wayne said the movie was unpatriotic and “throws acid on the American way of life.” The character Wayne would have played was an idealistic political hopeful who dreams of doing good, but ends up becoming just another corrupt politician. It was true to life, but Wayne wanted no part of the story.

The Hostiles

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The Hostiles is another movie role that John Wayne turned down that ended up never getting made into a finished film. However, the reasons behind this one involve a massive behind-the-scenes feud between John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, a war that was almost completely one-sided on Wayne’s part.

When Clint Eastwood arrived on the scene, he said he didn’t want to play “white hat” cowboys in old-school Westerns. He demanded that all his characters live in a shade of grey where they were not pure good guys, but conflicted antiheroes. John Wayne hated that and said it betrayed the spirit of Westerns.

This meant that when Wayne got a chance to star in a movie with Eastwood, he rejected it outright. The movie was about a gambler who won half the estate of an older man, with Eastwood and the gambler. Wayne refused to appear in the movie and said he wouldn’t star in a movie with the actor from High Plains Drifter.

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

John Wayne had a chance to star in a Stanley Kubrick movie, and the director wanted him in it so badly that he actually wrote the part with Wayne in mind. This movie was Dr. Strangelove, and Kubrick had written the role of Major TJ “King” Kong for the Duke. Wayne rejected it instantly.

According to the reports, while Kubrick wrote King Kong with Wayne as the model for the character, the actor wanted nothing to do with the movie. It appears that Wayne didn’t give a reason, but he just said he wasn’t going to play the role. The movie ends with Kong riding a nuclear missile into the possible end of the world.

While he never said why he didn’t want to be in the movie, the idea of him being responsible for dropping a nuclear bomb that would start World War III was likely the reason, since Wayne was very careful about any roles he took when it came to mocking the military.

1941 (1979)

Another movie that John Wayne turned down because he felt it mocked the military was Steven Spielberg’s 1941. In fact, Wayne was interested in starring in a movie with Spielberg, but when the director offered him the role in 1941, Wayne not only rejected it, but tried to convince Spielberg not to make it.

According to John Wayne, the script for 1941 was “un-American.” Wayne felt that U.S. military troops should be treated with respect, and he believed that this movie was mocking the war. Wayne said, “You’re making fun of a war that cost thousands of lives at Pearl Harbor. Don’t joke about World War II.“

Spiegelberg went on to make the movie anyway, and instead of iconic actors like John Wayne, he filled it with comedians like John Belushi and John Candy, and it ended up as Spielberg’s first major box office flop.

Dirty Harry (1971)

Not only did John Wayne refuse to star in a movie with Clint Eastwood, but Wayne also turned down the non-Western role that helped make Eastwood an even bigger star. Wayne was offered a role as the lead in Dirty Harry, a character that Eastwood ended up turning into a major cultural icon.

This was a tough role to cast. Frank Sinatra was originally cast in the role, but then he left the movie because he couldn’t hold the Magnum pistol comfortably. Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, and Burt Lancaster also passed on the role. Finally, Eastwood signed on.

Shockingly, the reported reason that John Wayne turned down the role was that he refused to take a role that Frank Sinatra turned down. Other reports indicate that Wayne was too old for the role, but for whatever reason, Eastwood rode the role to monster success.

High Noon (1952)

The most famous movie that John Wayne turned down was High Noon. This was a movie that Wayne turned down for two reasons, and both were because of his political beliefs and his anger at the Communist scare that Joseph McCarthy rallied against in his Congressional witch hunts.

Director Fred Zimmerman wanted to cast Wayne as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon. In the movie, Kane is ready to get married and retire, but a man he put in prison breaks out and is coming for a final confrontation. No one in town will help Will, so he is forced to fight alone and leaves the town at the end.

John Wayne called the entire movie’s idea “Communist” and supported his claims by pointing out that it was written by a blacklisted screenwriter, Carl Foreman. Gary Cooper took on the role instead, and he won an Oscar for his performance. In response, John Wayne made Rio Bravo to show how “real Americans” would have responded.