By Mary Shaffer
and Jerry Bunin
The Tribune

"The Western" defined America, a land of opportunity and new frontiers for self-reliant, rugged individuals to conquer.

First told in dime store novels, the Western saga became the lifeblood of TV and movies, making international icons of John Wayne, Roy Rogers, Clint Eastwood, "Gunsmoke" and "Bonanza."

In 1969 alone, Hollywood made three great Westerns: "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Wild Bunch" and "True Grit."

But after thriving for 70 years, Westerns nearly vanished. Few were made in the '80s and even fewer attracted audiences. But Westerns seem to be coming back.

A 10-hour documentary on "The Wild West" was on TV recently, and Eastwood's "Unforgiven" just became the third Western ever and the second this decade to win the Best Picture Academy Award.

Six decades separated previous winners "Cimarron" (1930/31) and "Dances with Wolves" (1990). Including "Unforgiven," Westerns have claimed a total of 53 Academy Awards for acting, writing, directing and technical achievements in the 65 years Oscars have been presented.

"Unforgiven" is really an anti-Western, a revisionist tale that undercuts the myths while celebrating them, painting a truer picture of the Old West, but firmly rooted in its film traditions.

A quiet, explosive and independent hero with a terrible past and his own moral code journeys on a mission of personal vengeance through an untamed land and a lawless, violent society. It's a voyage of discovery in which everyone knows history is being made and legends created.

The Western story is about being the first to do something or go some place and risking everything on a chance to find something better.

It is about ambition and greed, about noble and not so noble savages, about struggling in a harsh and uncivilized land, and about finding and losing freedom because the free spirits who settled the wilderness paved the way for society to follow.

"Cimarron," based on Edna Ferber's epic story of Oklahoma statehood, starts with the 1889 Land Rush and ends in 1929 with the death of its restless, visionary hero who opened trails for others and then moved on in search of new frontiers.

"It's men like him that build this world," a friend explains. "The rest of us...come along and live in it."

Sometimes the rest include women, but mostly just cows and nags.

Film classics like "Red River" (1948) and the epic TV miniseries "Lonesome Dove" (1989) deal with cowboys battling themselves, the elements and loneliness on long cattle drives.

Romance was rare and women even scarcer--mostly virtuous wives, sympathetic whores, spinster schoolmarms, or mail-order brides.

Women do play pivotal roles in two classics John Ford directed on location in Arizona's spectacular Monument Valley.

In "Stagecoach," a cross-section of the West (driver, gambler, salesman, drunkard, banker, outlaw, sheriff, military wife and whore) must cooperate to survive a rugged ride through hostile Indian territory.

In "The Searchers" (1956), a frontiersman and a half-breed spend years tracking a young girl kidnapped by Comanches.

As the romantic outlaw in "Stagecoach," Wayne became a star, but he gives a richer performance as the bitter Civil War veteran in "The Searchers," living by his own rules on society's fringes, as distant from the law-abiding settlers as he is contemptuous of the strong but savage Indians.

Like most Western heroes, he is a maverick and a loner. He prefers actions to words and passionately believes in freedom, justice and fighting to preserve his ideals and way of life.

He's like Gary Cooper's sheriff in "High Noon," a McCarthy-era allegory about a man of integrity standing up to a gang of cutthroats after being abandoned by his community. He's like the hired guns in "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), who teach a community the value of standing together to defend themselves.

And he's like Eastwood's avenging dark angel in the mythic and moody "High Plains Drifter" (1973).

Vengeance is often the catalyst for delivering Western justice, which is more concerned with doing what is moral than what is legal.

Wayne's Ringo Kid in "Stagecoach" avenges his brother's death in a classic showdown as the sheriff looks the other way.

In "Barbarosa" (1982), a bloody family vendetta against the title character (played by Willie Nelson) destroys generations of men and enhances his outlaw image through stories and songs.

The creation of tall tales and legends is an essential to Western lore and larger-than-life figures like Buffalo Bill Cody.

The difference between fact and fiction shows up in "Butch Cassidy" and "The Grey Fox" (1982). Each opens with a fictional silent film about their character before the movie reveals the real men behind the legend.

Both films are about the end of the West and men whose time is passing. As a sheriff tells Butch, "Your time is over. You're gonna die bloody and all you can do is choose where." Director Sam Peckinpah rides this theme for all it's worth in "The Wild Bunch," which begins with a scorpion being devoured by ants and then being set on fire by children. The image foreshadows the spectacular shootout that closes the film, the closing of the frontier and a future without heroes.

The Western lived on even after the Old West died. Pick-up trucks and buses replaced ponies and stagecoaches, but the images and ideals remained.

In "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962) and "The Electric Horseman" (1979), Kirk Douglas and Robert Redford play modern cowboys turned into outlaws on horseback by a society that sacrifices individual freedom for comfort and commerce.

Nostalgia for frontier values motivates the characters in novelist Thomas McGuane's witty "Rancho Deluxe" (1975), a wacky Western where would-be cattle rustlers torment a former beauty parlor owner turned rancher until an old-timer and his beguiling female partner ride to the rescue.

The same spirit inspires modern Indian warriors in "Powwow Highway" (1989), the story of two misunderstood braves riding a beat-up Buick across the West in a quest for personal salvation.

They seek a time and place that are now easier to find in video stores and darkened theaters than in real life.

Mary Shaffer works at Cal Poly. Jerry Bunin is a Telegram-Tribune reporter. Both are city slickers who can't ride horses, but know a good Western when they see it.

• "Cimarron" (1930/31)
• "Dances With Wolves" (1990)
• "Unforgiven" (1992)

• Warner Baxter, "In Old Arizona" (1928/29)
• Gary Cooper, "High Noon" (1952)
• Patricia Neal, "Hud" (1963)
• Lee Marvin, "Cat Ballou" (1965)
• John Wayne, "True Grit" (1969)
• Robert Duvall, "Tender Mercies" (1983)

• Thomas Mitchell, "Stagecoach" (1939)
• Walter Brennan, "The Westerner" (1940)
• Walter Huston, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948)
• Burl Ives, "The Big Country" (1958)
• Melvyn Douglas, "Hud" (1963)
• Ben Johnson, "The Last Picture Show" (1971)
• Cloris Leachman, "The Last Picture Show" (1971)
• Jack Palance, "City Slickers" (1991)
• Gene Hackman, "Unforgiven" (1992)

• John Huston, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948)
• George Stevens, "Giant" (1956)
• Kevin Costner, "Dances With Wolves" (1990)
• Clint Eastwood, "Unforgiven" (1992)

• "Cimarron" (1930/31)
• "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948)
• "Broken Lance" (1954)
• "How the West Was Won" (1963)
• "Tender Mercies" (1983)
• "Dances With Wolves" (1990)

• "High Noon" (1952)
• "How the West Was Won" (1963)
• "Dances With Wolves" (1990)
• "Unforgiven" (1992)

• "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949)
• "Shane" (1953)
• "Hud" (1963)
• "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969)
• "Days of Heaven" (1978)
• "Dances With Wolves" (1990)

• "Cimarron" (1930/31)

• "The Cowboy and The Lady" (1938)
• "Oklahoma" (1955)
• "The Alamo" (1960)
• "How the West Was Won" (1963)
• "Dances With Wolves" (1990)

• "Stagecoach" (1939)
• "High Noon" (1952)
• "Oklahoma" (1955)
• "Dances With Wolves" (1990)

• "Paleface" (1948)
• "High Noon" (1952)
• "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969)

• "The Great American Cowboy" (1973)

"Unforgiven" was nominated in all but the last three categories.

Other Westerns worth seeing (not published due to lack of space)

• "The Covered Wagon" (1923)
• "Iron Horse" (1924)
• "The Virginian" (1929)
• "Destry Rides Again" (1939)
• "The Ox-Box Incident" (1943)
• "My Darling Clementine" (1946)
• "Broken Arrow" (1950)
• "Wagonmaster" (1950)
• "The Gunfighter" (1950)
• "Rancho Notorious" (1952)
• "Johnny Guitar" (1954)
• "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955)
• "3:10 to Yuma" (1957)
• "Cowboy" (1958)
• "Man of The West" (1958)
• "Rio Bravo" (1959)
• "One-Eyed Jacks" (1960)
• "The Unforgiven" (1960)
• "Ride the High Country" (1962)
• "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962)
• "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964)
• "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" (1967)
• "Will Penny" (1968)
• "Little Big Man" (1970)
• "Monte Walsh" (1970)
• "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" (1971)
• "The Shootist" (1976)
• "Heartland" (1979)
• "Death Hunt" (1981)
• "The Last of His Tribe" (1992)