Clint Eastwood Something about John Wayne just pisses me off... maybe from listening to this song too much [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckjuux3UE7E&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=MLGxdCwVVULXea9ElQ3XWzqONFH0DxSRHb]YouTube - M.D.C.- John Wayne was a nazi[/ame]
Clint, but he did have the advantage of being cast into so many types of different badass roles. Escape From Alcatraz, Dirty Harry, etc. John Wayne never had the opportunity to play a corrupt (but moral?) cop. Both were great.
I was named after Clint Eastwood, so of course I'm going to choose him. He's just a straight up badass, no other way putting it.
I guess it depends on what perspective you're lookin at it from. As far as cowboy roles go, I was never really too familiar with John Wayne but he always seemed like a polished good guy type of fella, while Clint Eastwood played cowboys that were probably more like the real thing, a rugged tough guy, an anti-hero. The latter are the types of roles I prefer so naturally I'd pick Clint. In general? As stated above I'm barely familiar with John Waynes work, so it'd be Clint by default, but guys like Cagney and Bogart were awesome too.
Clint is fine, but he's kind of wooden. The Duke starred in classics like The Searchers, The Comancheros, The Fighting Kentuckian, Red River, Stagecoach, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Alamo, Rio Grande, Hondo, The Horse Soldiers and many more - pretty hard to beat that body of work, with directors like John Ford and Howard Hawks.
It's tough to really compare the two, I would argue that Eastwood couldn't have existed in a world without John Wayne. Think about it, what are Eastwood's westerns known for? Everything that Wayne's Westerns aren't known for. Realism, grit, non-altruistic heroes, and the deconstruction of the modern Western film. Where Wayne's "Stagecoach" may well be the first massively popular Western setting the paradigm for years to come, Eastwood's "Unforgiven" was deliberately intended to have the last words to say about the Hollywood Western. Eastwood's rise to fame coincided with both his Television work on "Rawhide" and the Spaghetti Western films, which were something that world-wide audiences hadn't really seen before, and was something that Wayne would have and did eschew for the remainder of his career. Oh sure Wayne's later Westerns would be influenced by Eastwood (and vice/versa of course) but to me, it's really Eastwood's vision of more realistic and reality based films (with the exception of "High Plains Drifter") that carry him over Wayne. But, and there's a big but here, Wayne is the consummate Western HERO. There's nothing quite as satisfying as a GOOD John Wayne Western on a Saturday afternoon, especially if it's in Technicolor Widescreen and directed by John Ford.