Howard Hawks directed the 1959 western “Rio Bravo,” starring John Wayne and Dean Martin.
Wayne plays Texas sheriff John T. Chance, who arrests the brother of a powerful rancher for murder. With the prisoner held in the local jail, Chance and a small group of allies must withstand pressure and an armed siege while waiting for a U.S. marshal to arrive. Martin plays Dude, the sheriff’s recovering alcoholic deputy.
The film also features Angie Dickinson as Feathers, Ricky Nelson as Colorado Ryan, and Walter Brennan as Stumpy. Hawks produced the movie as well as directed it, working from a screenplay by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett and a story credited to B. H. McCampbell.
“Rio Bravo” is often discussed alongside “High Noon,” partly because Hawks conceived it as a contrasting vision of a lawman who relies on capable comrades rather than pleading with an entire town for help. Hawks later made two loose variations with Wayne: “El Dorado” in 1966 and “Rio Lobo” in 1970. The latter was Hawks’s final film as director.