The Top 50 Westerns by The Coward Flying Dutchman
By: Flying Dutchman



“It was an assemblage of two hundred thousand young men- not simpering, dainty, kid-gloved weaklings, but stalwart, muscular, dauntless young braves, brimful of push and energy, and royally endowed with with every attribute that goes to make up a peerless and magnificent manhood- the very pick and choice of the worlds glorious ones. No women, no children, no gray and stooping veterans, – none but erect, bright eyed, quick moving, strong handed young giants- the strangest population, the finest population, the most gallant host to have ever trooped down the startled solitudes of an unpeopled land. And where are they now? Scattered to the ends of the earth- or prematurely aged and decrepit- or shot and stabbed in street affrays – or dead of disappointed hopes and broken hearts- all gone, or nearly all- victims devoted upon the alter of the golden calf- the noblest holocaust that ever wafted its sacrificial incense heavenward. It is pitiful to think upon.”
Roughing It – Mark Twain

Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars?
- extract from The Shooting of Dan McGrew by R.W. Service
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01John Ford
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02John Ford
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03Howard Hawks
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04Robert Altman
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05Michael Cimino
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06Nicholas Ray
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07Sam Peckinpah
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08Anthony Mann
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09Anthony Mann
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10Sergio Leone
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11Kelly Reichardt
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12Budd Boetticher
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13Peter Fonda
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14John Huston
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15Robert Mulligan
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16Anthony Mann
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17Robert Aldrich
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18John Ford
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19Howard Hawks
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20John Sturges
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21Martin Ritt
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22Clint Eastwood
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23Sergio Leone
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24Sam Peckinpah
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25John Ford
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26Anthony Mann
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27Anthony Mann
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28Marlon Brando
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29William A. Wellman
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30John Ford
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31Sam Peckinpah
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32Sergio Leone
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33Andrew Dominik
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34Edwin S. Porter
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35Budd Boetticher
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36Clint Eastwood
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37Sergio Leone
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38Budd Boetticher
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39George Stevens
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40John Ford
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41Jim Jarmusch
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42Arthur Penn
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43John Sturges
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44George Marshall
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45Delmer Daves
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46Henry King
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47Tommy Lee Jones
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48Clint Eastwood
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49Fritz Lang
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50Samuel Fuller