Classic movies starring America’s most famous cowboy John Wayne are largely to blame for a romanticised, rose-tinted view many have of the Wild West. Westerns featuring the Hollywood legend, who died in 1979 and was known as “The Duke”, usually portrayed the remote open plains as being populated by lantern-jawed, unimpeachably heroic men who always had right on their side.
Yet fellow big-screen icon Kevin Costner argues that almost everything we know about the US West from those movies is wrong. He contends the reality was far more brutal and bloody than Tinseltown’s version would have you believe. The Yellowstone star, 70, says too often we have fallen for the cliché of the noble cowboy. “What do we see when we think of the West? A gunfight between some small-town sheriff and a gang of outlaws? Maybe a cowboy playing his banjo under the stars?” he says.
“But if we choose to look a little closer, we can see beyond these images to another kind of story, of people who came to make a home no matter who is already there and of a land that shows us bounty but all too often gives us blood.” In his absorbing new eight-part Sky History series, Kevin Costner’s The West, which begins on Tuesday at 9pm, the actor sets out to puncture many of the myths surrounding the West. His deep and abiding love of Westerns was born when he was first captivated as a seven-year-old by How the West Was Won at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.
But he now believes such old-school films have spread this sanitised image. Kevin has sought to change this throughout his career with the Oscar-winner Dances with Wolves, pictured top centre, Silverado, Wyatt Earp, Open Range and Horizon. He says: “When we first started making Westerns, people fell in love with the imagery. They couldn’t believe how big the country was and how beautiful it was.
“Europe was very sophisticated. They had buildings that reached to the sky, buildings that Americans couldn’t even imagine. But America was untouched.” Kevin says: “When you see images of America and you see a lone man on horseback, you almost can’t believe that’s all he needed – as long as he had a certain set of skills. Could he build a fire? Could he protect himself? There’s something terribly romantic about that idea. When you put him against that beautiful landscape, it can take your breath away.”
But he adds: “You didn’t think about any of the hardships, so we just romanticised what we saw. We didn’t see the exploration and the confrontation, which usually ended in blood. People didn’t really want to see that; the slaughter, fear and cultures clashing. People flinched when they saw that. The romantic idea is one of heroism, which is a little more acceptable.”
Kevin is also anxious to overturn the misconception that the frontiersmen’s relentless drive westwards during the 19th century was a smooth, trouble-free journey. It was frequently halted by indigenous peoples who had lived there for millennia. “It wasn’t simple,” the actor asserts. “It was very complicated. Going into land that was untamed and uncharted – and dragging your families with you – was harder than anyone could imagine.
“America happened in inches. For 400 years, we were moving by inches and it was hard-fought. It was contested, it was taken, it was regained. I’d like to debunk the myth that it was Disneyland. What happened out there was real and it has marked us as a nation.”
Nor should we underestimate the savagery of the West’s conquest: “You hear the term ‘Wild West’ and it’s kind of a cliché, right?” says Kevin. “But it’s not. The West was wilder than wild. It was dangerous.”
● Kevin Costner’s The West, Sky History, Tuesday, 9pm.