John Wesley Hardin

[law dawg]

I'm curious why a movie hasn't been made about this gunfighter.  I've been doing some research and this guy is the standard for a shootist.  I don't know what the actors name is but on the t.v. show Lost, he plays Sawyer I think he could play the part brilliantly.  Would anyone care to see a movie about this guy made with the same quality as Kurt Russell's Tombstone?


I would!

[Johnny McCrae]

I'm just speculating but maybe a movie was not made about John Wesley Hardin because he was a bit of a bad guy. I wouldn't mind watching a historically accurate movie about him. He gets some coverage as a cameo in Larry McMurtry's "Streets of Laredo" and is played by Randy Quaid

[tarheel mac]

Gotta be more than just "bad guy" thing..they've made plenty of movies featuring Billy the Kid and Jesse James...Might be because outside of Western period historians, and folks like us...he ain't really that well known...of course, neither were Bonnie and Clyde until the movie was made...Ah hell, the honest answer would have to be..I have no idea...

[Advertising]

[Major 2]

As I recall , his is also portrayed by Max Perlich in "Maverick" with Mel Gibson

 Billed as Johnny Hardin

[Pukin Dog]

an excellent book is "The pistoleer"  I thought it was a quite accurate depiction of his life although it is a novel.  Would make a great movie.

[Mogorilla]

well,
One of the problems to an accurate portrayal would be that they would have to accurately portray the reconstruction period.  No one wants to show how the North behaved after the war and to show that behavior led men to do evil things.   Some of Hardin's kills were former slaves.  Maybe he was plain evil, minister's kid gone real bad, or maybe a young man full of anger and frustration at poor treatment from an occupying army.  Funny, how history so often repeats...

[RowdyBill]

I'm curious why a movie hasn't been made about this gunfighter.  I've been doing some research and this guy is the standard for a shootist.  I don't know what the actors name is but on the t.v. show Lost, he plays Sawyer I think he could play the part brilliantly.  Would anyone care to see a movie about this guy made with the same quality as Kurt Russell's Tombstone?


I would!

They ought to make an historically accurate account of his life, including his brutal time in Huntsville prison.  Hardin was a man who led a very rough life and they have lots of his prison correspondence on file they can use to get into his thinking.

Not a DiCaprio fan, but that guy is an effective actor and would make a good Wes Hardin.

[dakotaranger]

I'd like to see one too.  My Dad was a Wesleyan Pastor (the Wesleyan Church split from the Methodist Church around the 1940's) so I kind of have always have had weird PK connection with that killer and always marvelled at why he would become a drinker and a killer (John Wesley founding the Methodist Church founded the Holiness movement which held drinking as a huge sin, even today in the Wesleyan Church it's really frowned down on)

[Cyrille]

I don't want to rain on anybody's parade, but J.W. Hardin is hardly the type of charater I would want to expose my grandson to. Now if the child was doing research into that realm of western history that would be a bit diffrent but to make a sympathetic movie charater portrayal of him would just be wrong; no matter what drove him to live as he lived.
I mean one incident that is credited to him that stands out in my mind is the murder of a sleeping man for snoreing too loud.
 I know Billy the Kid, Jessie and Frank James, Belle Starr, Butch and Sundance as well as a host of other western "outlaws" have been portrayed in a sympathetic light by Hollywierd and weren't very historically accurate.
Shucks Even John Wayne's movie "Chisholm" portrays Wm. Bonty in a sympathetic light. But Wayne's charater "Chisholm"
even while he is understands why Billy did as he did does not approve his doing it. I don't know if J.W. Hardin had any redeeming qualities or not. But I believe that he was not evil incarnate although the little I do know about him is not admireable in any sense of the word. Heck even Captian Call had his "dark side!"

[dakotaranger]

I don't want to rain on anybody's parade, but J.W. Hardin is hardly the type of charater I would want to expose my grandson to. Now if the child was doing research into that realm of western history that would be a bit diffrent but to make a sympathetic movie charater portrayal of him would just be wrong; no matter what drove him to live as he lived.
I mean one incident that is credited to him that stands out in my mind is the murder of a sleeping man for snoreing too loud.
 I know Billy the Kid, Jessie and Frank James, Belle Starr, Butch and Sundance as well as a host of other western "outlaws" have been portrayed in a sympathetic light by Hollywierd and weren't very historically accurate.
Shucks Even John Wayne's movie "Chisholm" portrays Wm. Bonty in a sympathetic light. But Wayne's charater "Chisholm"
even while he is understands why Billy did as he did does not approve his doing it. I don't know if J.W. Hardin had any redeeming qualities or not. But I believe that he was not evil incarnate although the little I do know about him is not admireable in any sense of the word. Heck even Captian Call had his "dark side!"

There was a point when he was in the penn he turned his life around.  He earned his law licence and was President of the Prison's Sunday School...in the 19th century that meant a lot more than it does now. 

Unfortunately eventually after he was released he went back to drinking (which to a Methodist in those days was a great sin). 

If there was a movie it would be like the Spagetti Westerns that Eastwood did.  I get what your saying about making him a sympathetic character, but for me being a Wesleyan Pastor's Kid like JWH I'm just intrigued by him.  In no way would I want anyone to emulate or look up to.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

There was a legthy chapter in STREETS OF LAREDO where JWH was the major character, as President of the crow town chamber of commerce

[Rusty Johnson]

Yep he was played by Randy Quaid..
Sir George Have you been to Concordia Cemetery to see his grave yet?

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

No, but I drove past the cemetery, so I can say I was within easy rifle shot of his grave.  Quaid acts a very good "psycho" and was perfect for the role!

BTW;  I will be visiting El Paso at Christmas, and would appreciate a contact in CAS.

[gunplay]

There was a movie made of his life and it stared Rock Hudson.  It covered his life after prison.

[Major 2]

There was a movie made of his life and it stared Rock Hudson.  It covered his life after prison.

The Lawless Breed directed by Raoul Walsh

[Early Graves]

Hardin was a sociopath.Enough said!

[Yul Catchum]

  Guy posted on the SASS wire yesterday he is doing a movie on John Wesley Hardin. Says he's goona do it as the odd ball Sociopath JWH was.

We'll see.

(Look on SASS Wire April 28th, 2008)

[piebiter]

Perhaps the next best thing to a movie about him would be to read his book, The Life of John Wesley Hardin, As Written By Himself. The book is available from the University of Oklahoma Press for $14.95.
If my memory serves me right, he wrote this while in prison and does not cover his life beyond that point. Its been a number of years since I read it and don't have my copy handy. However, it is straight from the "horse's mouth" so to speak. In other words the way Hardin viewed things. It is a very interesting insight to how the man ticked.

[santee]

It would make a great movie. A realistic movie may also tarnish the myth of the "gunfighter."

[Cyrille]

It would make a great movie. A realistic movie may also tarnish the myth of the "gunfighter."

In my opinion it would not, The Jessie James myth has been debunked, Billy the Kid has been shown to be a wacko,
  But as long as we have Buch Cassidy as Portrayed by Paul Newman, and the Sundance Kid by Robert Redford, and John Wayne as J.B. Books and/or Quirt Evans not to mention the Ringo Kid, or Yul Brenner in Requim for a Gunfighter, or the Magnificent Seven. Or Steve McQueen in"Wanted Dead or Alive," or Glenn Ford in 3:10 to Yuma Or Gregory Peck in Yellow Sky---- I could go on, But Like Knights of old on destriers bold the gunfighter myth will live in song and story.