Donovan's Reef
(1963)
Starring: John Wayne, Lee
Marvin, Cesar Romero, Dorothy Lamour
Director: John Ford
John Wayne's last film with
mentor and long-time collaborator John Ford (The Searchers) is a 1963
comedy about a group of war veterans settled on a South Pacific island.
When the daughter of one of them (Jack Warden) comes for a visit, the
freewheeling status quo between the boys is disrupted. This is Ford in his
chummy, amiable, roughhousing mode--think of Victor McLaglen's drunken
fight scene in Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon--and it is entirely
pleasurable. Wayne is comfortable in his man's-man role, and Lee Marvin
(who played Wayne's nemesis in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) is
effectively roguish.