Tonight, just as I was cranking up a VHS copy of Ric Burns' New York for my wife and me to watch, I channel-surfed through Rooster Cogburn, being shown on one of the movie channels. This 1975 release, starring John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn, was the sequel to Wayne's 1969 movie, True Grit, for which he received his only Oscar.
But, as I watched the raft sequence in which Wayne and Hepburn negotiate fierce rapids, it dawned on me that the film was also a remake of sorts. The movie is very similar to Hepburn's 1951 film, The African Queen, in which she played opposite Humphrey Bogart.
In that first film, directed by John Huston, Hepburn plays the puritanical daughter of a missionary to Africa. In the latter, she plays the puritannical sister of a frontiersman pastor. In both, a strong-willed woman falls for a tough-as-nails, irreligious loner.
Rooster Cogburn, which I remember seeing with my wife when it was released to the theaters, is certainly not as artistically successful as either True Grit or The African Queen. The latter is, to my mind, one of the truly great films of all time. But it was fun seeing Wayne and Hepburn in their only screen pairing.
Now though, I realize that there was something truly extraordinary about Rooster Cogburn: It was sequel and remake at the same time!
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