There’s a good deal of anti-California rhetoric flying around these days here in Texas, with omnipresent bumper stickers and T-shirts saying “Don’t California my Texas.” Of course, some have moved here to “Texasify their Californication.” But the former concern seems dominant. They are the new yankees, attracting more vitriol than modern yankees used to.
Before we go too far afield from our state motto – friendship – I’d like to point out this fact: Some of the finest Texans we’ve ever had have been Californians. At least on film.
I’m making no effort to be comprehensive here, but I’d like to highlight five Californians who made great Texans in the movies.
The big daddy of them all was, of course, John Wayne. I doubt “The Alamo” along with Wayne’s celebrated depiction of Davy Crockett would ever have been made without his unequaled Hollywood clout – and his money. The movie was a financial disaster, and Wayne lost a disturbing amount of money on it.
Stephen Harrigan wrote in 2015 for Texas Monthly that Wayne’s appeal as a Texan was that he had this “habitual on-screen character meshed with our fond Texas dream of ourselves. In almost every carefully curated role Wayne played, he was a big, friendly, open-handed presence, but there was also a concealed-carry component to his personality.” For all his many films in which he played Texans, Wayne was made an honorary Texan by the Texas Legislature in 2015.
Clint Eastwood played a Texas Ranger in “A Perfect World.” Eastwood directed the film in which he pursues escaped convict Butch Haynes – Kevin Costner – who kidnapped a young boy to aid his life on the run.
A good deal earlier, Eastwood played the Most Wanted Man in Texas in “The Outlaw Josey Wales.” Though Wales was not a Texan in the film, after seeing his family killed and his fellow Confederate soldiers massacred by a Union false surrender ambush, he exacted revenge and headed for Texas to start anew. He represented the lethal self-reliance of the men who populated Texas in those years.
It was also an extension of the man-with-no-name persona that he cultivated in the spaghetti Westerns, one of which was “For A Few Dollars More,” which took place in El Paso and the surrounding region.
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Robert Duvall, a Californian for the first 17 years of his life, depicted the most memorable Texas Ranger of all when he played the lovable and lethal Capt. Gus McCrae in the 1989 miniseries “Lonesome Dove” – a performance that earned him a Golden Globe. Duvall animated in McCrae the self-reliance, adaptability, love of justice, loyalty to friends and fearlessness in battle all Texans admire.
When he was dying in Montana, he made his friend Capt. Woodrow F. Call promise to bury him in an orchard near San Antonio. He knew Call was like him – a promise had to be honored, no matter how dangerous the enterprise.
Duvall was also made an honorary Texas Ranger for his role in 2011, along with Tommy Lee Jones for his role as Call. Jones, though, is a native Texan, and it showed wonderfully in his authentic, uncoached accent.
Duvall was also superb in “Tender Mercies.” For that role, he traveled thousands of miles around Texas studying the accents to get it right in the film, which served him well in both “Lonesome Dove” and in “Secondhand Lions.”
Kevin Costner, a pretty much a lifelong Californian, played Texas Ranger Frank Hamer in “The Highwaymen,” along with Woody Harrelson, in their pursuit of Bonnie and Clyde.
I’ve personally loved watching Jeff Bridges’ role in “Hell or High Water,” written by Taylor Sheridan. Bridges plays an aging Texas Ranger, Marcus Hamilton, one week from retirement, who’s on the trail of West Texas bank robbers.
Bridges got help with his Ranger persona from Parnell McNamara, the then 70-year-old sheriff of McLennan County who taught him how to properly accessorize. “He looks exactly how you’d imagine: leather gun holster for his .45-caliber pistol, creased jeans, boots, a perfectly trimmed mustache, and of course, a cowboy hat,” wrote Olivia Messer for The Daily Beast in 2017.
Though close to retirement, Hamilton does not take it easy or shirk away from his dangerous task. Even after retirement, his good Texas character can’t let go. The job is not done until it’s done, at least to his satisfaction.
If you want the finest example of an unadulterated West Texas accent, you’ll hear it from the waitress in the cafe who says so lyrically, “What don’t you want?” That was Margaret Bowman, and she was from Texas.
Since we have talked about all these Californians playing Texas Rangers, it’s rather cool I think to recognize that our real-life, most famous Texas Ranger of all time, Jack Coffee Hays, left Texas in 1849 and became the first elected sheriff of San Francisco, Calif., in 1850. Can’t make this stuff up.
