The John Wayne Western classic that President Richard Nixon used for his political ends

Back in 1970, John Wayne starred in the Western Chisum as a wealthy cattle during the Lincoln County War of 1878.

Despite his advancing age at 62 and multiple health problems, Duke played the 54-year-old John Simpson Chisum with his usual hairpiece and even had cosmetic surgery in September 1969 to appear more youthful.

When the movie was released in 1970, Richard Nixon commented on the film during a press conference in Denver, Colorado and used it as a vehicle to express his views on law and order.

The US President from 1969-1974 said: “Over the last weekend I saw a movie – I don’t see too many movies but I try to see them on weekends when I am at the Western White House or in Florida – and the movie that I selected, or, as a matter of fact, my daughter Tricia selected it, was Chisum with John Wayne.

“It was a western. And as I looked at that movie, I said, ‘Well, it was a very good western, John Wayne is a very fine actor and it was: a fine supporting cast. But it was just basically another western, far better than average movies, better than average westerns.’”

Nixon continued: “I wondered why it is that the western survives year after year after year. A good western will outdraw some of the other subjects. Perhaps one of the reasons, in addition to the excitement, the gunplay, and the rest, which perhaps is part of it but they can get that in other kinds of movies but one of the reasons is, perhaps, and this may be a square observation–is that the good guys come out ahead in the westerns; the bad guys lose.”

Nixon added: “In the end, as this movie particularly pointed out, even in the old West, the time before New Mexico was a state, there was a time when there was no law. But the law eventually came, and the law was important from the standpoint of not only prosecuting the guilty, but also seeing that those who were guilty had a proper trial.”

As a life-long conservative Republican, no doubt Duke will have been very happy with this.