Which John Ford film is the only one to star both John Wayne and James Stewart?

The John Ford film that starred both John Wayne and James Stewart was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Released in 1962, the black-and-white Western cast Stewart as Ransom Stoddard, an idealistic lawyer, and Wayne as Tom Doniphon, a tough rancher whose actions shape the story.

The film is built around the conflict between law, violence, and political myth. Stoddard becomes famous for supposedly defeating the outlaw Liberty Valance, but the film gradually reveals that the public version of the story is not the whole truth. Its famous idea that legend can become more powerful than fact is central to Ford’s later vision of the American West.

The wording can cause confusion because Wayne and Stewart also appeared together in How the West Was Won, released the same year. However, that was an anthology film directed by several filmmakers, including Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall—not a single John Ford feature in the same sense. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is their defining Ford collaboration.