Kim Darby is what makes this movie more than just a John Wayne Western. She is what made this movie stand out to me when I was a kid.
I have heard people say Darby was unbearably annoying in this movie and is a terrible actress in general. I personally think she was adorable and charming and perfect as Mattie. She's stubborn, brave, a pain in the ass, savvy and naive at once. As an actress, Darby is more than capable of handling Wayne in each and every scene. Their relationship development is charming to behold.
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My favorite John Wayne role is in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”. It is basically is a supporting actor role, but it is perfect for him. The complex character is James Stewart’s who has an idealized notion of civil society but no ability to impose it on the wilds of the West. Wayne’s character is at home in the lawless world, and he possesses the key to make Stewart’s world possible. The interaction between the two is one of many good things about this movie.
Likewise, I thought the interaction between Mattie and Cogburn is one of the strengths of “True Grit”. Either character could be rather annoying in a different movie, but they played off each other well here.
Interesting tidbit from IMDB: Mia Farrow, among other well-known actresses, was approached to play Mattie, but she turned it down. She later said it was one of the biggest professional mistakes of her career.
I bet letting Woody Allen baby sit her daughter was another.
I liked Kim Darby in this role, even though there were several places where I thought the director really should have reshot the scene because she sounded like she was reading her lines. The conversation between her and Glen Campbell at the boarding house, when they first meet, is a spectacularly bad piece of acting all around. They both looked and sounded like they were being fed their lines and were just dutifully — and woodenly — repeating them. That whole scene should have been redone. It could have been a lot punchier and a lot funnier, and it deserved to be well done because of its place in the movie: the meeting point of two major players.
In other parts of the film, mainly her interactions with Rooster, I thought she was effective. She sort of reminded me of Tatum O'Neal from "Paper Moon" (whose name was Addie, not Mattie) all grown up. Except Addie would have shared whiskey and smokes with Rooster and would never have let the men see her cry.
I found that Mattie's weaknesses made her more believable, but I also sort of wondered whether the filmmakers softened her a bit with the intention of making her "less butch." Like it's OK that she has boy hair as long as she still wears a skirt. I don't know. Maybe her pluckiness is more noticeable if it occurs in an unmistakably feminine backdrop. Thoughts?
I think it was IMDB also where I saw that John Wayne had wanted Karen Carpenter to play Mattie, but they went with Kim Darby because she had more acting experience. But they went ahead with Glen Campbell for some reason. I agree that the scene with those two in the boarding house was terribly acted. It's a shame because there are some great lines in there.
Apparently in the book Mattie is an old spinster recounting this adventure from her youth. She's a Puritanical Bible-beater and the story is full of Biblical references and themes. She's still rather up-tight in the movie, but it's more about good breeding or respectability than godliness.
Oh, that's interesting about the book. I detected a sort of muffled Puritan streak in Mattie (like when she compares alcohol to a thief stealing the brain). I think they needed a little bit of that to create dramatic tension between her and Rooster, and you're right, it comes off more like respectability and decency than busybody fundamentalism, which I think would have ruined the movie.
I saw the "Rooster Cogburn" film (with K. Hepburn) when I was a kid, and didn't she play a do-gooder religious type? There was sort of a tedious theme in westerns that men were by nature unbridled and prone to every kind of sin (They couldn't help it, being men — wink, wink) and women were uptight killjoys who were always tasked with "civilizing" the morally weaker sex. I found that very off-putting as a kid, because in my life it was generally men who were wagging their fingers and being puritanical and women who were calling for more joy, less shame.
I liked that Mattie’s sense of proprieties didn’t lead to proselytizing or even excessive judgment. She seems to realize that everybody has some sort of limits. She doesn’t like Cogburn’s boozing, but she knows that he has other traits that she needs. She didn’t go looking for an upstanding Baptist for her manhunt.
And then they played a funny sight gag off her by having her reroll Cogburn’s cigarette.
Kc, here’s one to consider on “toning down” Mattie. Before they start out on the manhunt, Mattie retrieves her father’s big old six-shooter. But oddly, she carries it around in a pillow case. And she does manage to shoot Chaney twice, but to poor effect: the first time leads to her capture, the second time knocks her down the snake pit. It is left to Cogburn to kill Chaney which he does perfunctory. And, of course, Cogburn has to rescue her from the snakes.
So why doesn’t Mattie get to get her man?
Oh yeah, rolling the cigarette! That was a nice touch. It was calculated to say, "I'm not like the girls you're used to meeting."
And I liked how he always seemed respectful, instead of sexist and judgmental, of how she bucked stereotypes. He recognized her as a soulmate, someone with grit — a connection emphasized at the end when he came to visit her and there was talk of being buried together.
DW, I thought it was a bit odd that the filmmakers let Chaney essentially get the better of Mattie and that she had to be bailed out. I think it would have been better as a coming-of-age story (which it really wasn't, but it could have been) to let Mattie get the guy herself.
This bit of dialogue set up an expectation for me:
Rooster Cogburn: Why, by God, girl, that's a Colt's Dragoon! You're no bigger than a corn nubbin, what're you doing with all this pistol?
Mattie Ross: It belonged to my father, he carried it bravely in the war, and I intend to kill Tom Chaney with it if the law fails to do so.
I would have LOVED the irony of Mattie hiring the biggest, meanest badass in the West to avenge her father's death and then realizing that she was "man enough" to accomplish the task herself.
I do like, though, that she carries the gun in a pillowcase, and that Rooster makes that remark about her "drawing" her lawyer like a gun. Anytime there's trouble, her first resort is to the law — I'll call my lawyer on you! — and yet she is not prepared to let the law have the last say if it doesn't say what she wants it to. That's moxie.
Other than the fact that Wayne got paid a few bucks more than Darby did, I kind of expected that she would kill her man herself.
I agree that that would have been a good way to do the movie. Since Robert Duvall’s Ned Pepper is the main bad guy, Cogburn or La Boeuf can get him. So it would of been cool if Mattie got Chaney.
It's odd, I agree, that Mattie doesn't take care of Chaney. Throughout the movie Mattie is hellbent on getting Chaney, but at the end, Chaney becomes an afterthought. Cogburn has to save Mattie from the snakes and get her to a doctor. That whole bit, as KC pointed out as we were watching, was rather anticlimactic.
Is that bit from the book? I agree that it was anticlimactic. For the film, it does little more than provide the pretext for Cogburn to go visit Mattie in the epilogue segment.
I loved Kim Darby and her character. I think maybe the end was anticlimactic because the plot was written to make Mattie a catalyst character rather than a leading role, and Darby played her as both and stole the show.
I loved Kim Darby and her character. I think maybe the end was anticlimactic because the plot was written to make Mattie a catalyst character rather than a leading role, and Darby played her as both and stole the show.
According to Wikipedia, yes, that bit is in the book. The film follows it pretty religiously.
It's interesting that you say that, Ben, because (according to Wikipedia again) Mattie is the central character throughout the book, whereas in the movie Rooster takes an equal share of the limelight once his character is introduced.
Hmm. Then maybe it was a poorly constructed book. It seems like the plot is designed with her providing momentum but not with the focus on her.
I'm sorry to report that I almost immediately identified Kim Darby as the mom in "Better Off Dead." So for a while I kept waiting for her to say, "I put raisins in it. You like raisins."
She annoyed me at first, but I thought initially the cameras would focus on her too long after speech as if to reinforce her precociousness.
I also thought that if she were your typical young, agreeable film sweetheart, she wouldn't have brought out the complexity and unpredicatbility of Rooster's responses. She was annoying, but she was a foil that brought out the best in John Wayne.
Also, your “typical young, agreeable film sweetheart” wouldn’t have started the manhunt and insisted on going along. So she had to be a bullheaded, feisty girl or you would wonder what the hell she was doing on the trail with the gunslingers.
Erin pointed out that Mattie was an uptight, sermonizing Bible-thumper type in the book. Touching on our earlier discussion of Mattie, I think it's interesting that a man wrote the book and to see what the female screenplay writer, Marguerite Roberts, did with that material.
I think that would be a fun film school thesis: to see how women writers (there were a lot of them, including such luminaries as Dorothy Parker) transformed source material by men. And vice versa would be really interesting too.
It would be especially interesting to do during that timeframe, when the women's movement was picking up steam. I think Hollywood was pretty conservative, and I'm guessing the women screenplay writers were equally so, by nature or by orders, but I bet there's a lot of subtle stuff that sneaked in. Like I think John Wayne's line that Glen Campbell was "enjoying it too much," referring to his switching Mattie's bottom, was an unmistakably feminist sentiment.
Or a feminist joke? It was put in a funny line, but maybe if you want to slip something past the censors, you frame it as a gag.
Kc, your thesis sounds a lot more robust than the typical bit of criticism done using “feminist theory”. In fact, your project wouldn’t need to wheel out any theory at all. You can do it just by a close reading. I’d love to read this. So, kc, you are not busy this winter? Why don’t you write?
Sure, DW, I'll winter in sunny California and we can do it together.
(Seriously, that would be totally great. Just keep me in coffee and fresh fruit).
Fine. But this part of California won’t be very sunny for a month or two. And you like citrus? The fresh fruit is limited now too. But coffee I can do.
So you might want an umbrella, but leave your ice scraper at home.
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