Production
Glendon Swarthout's 1975 novel had won the Western Writers of America's Spur Award for Best Western Novel.
Producer Mike Frankovich announced that he had purchased the movie rights to Glendon Swarthout's novel The Shootist, and Wayne expressed a strong desire to play the title role, reportedly because of similarities to the character Jimmy Ringo in The Gunfighter, a role that he had turned down 26 years earlier. He was not initially considered due to the health and stamina issues that he had experienced during filming of Rooster Cogburn. Paul Newman passed on the role, as did George C. Scott, Charles Bronson, Gene Hackman, and Clint Eastwood, before it was finally offered to Wayne. His compromised lung capacity made breathing and mobility difficult at Carson City's 4,600 ft (1,400 m) altitude, and production had to be shut down for a week while he recovered from influenza, but Wayne completed the filming without further significant medical issues.
The Shootist was Wayne's final cinematic role, concluding a 50-year career that began during the silent film era in 1926. Wayne was not terminally ill when the film was made in 1976. He had been a heavy cigarette smoker for most of his life, and he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1964. It is also believed that Wayne may have contracted cancer as a result of working on the 1956 film The Conqueror, which was filmed downwind of a nuclear testing site. He underwent surgical removal of his left lung and several ribs. He remained clinically cancer-free until early 1979, when metastases were discovered in his stomach, intestines, and spine; he died in June of that year. Nonetheless, Wayne appeared in a televised public service announcement for the American Cancer Society that began with the scene in which his character is informed of his cancer. Wayne then added that he had enacted the same scene in real life 12 years earlier.
The film's outdoor scenes were filmed on location in Carson City. Bond Rogers' boarding house is the 1914 Krebs-Peterson House, located in Carson City's historic residential district. The buggy ride was shot at Washoe Lake State Park, in the Washoe Valley between Reno and Carson City. It was a Paramount production, yet the street scenes and most interior shots were filmed at the Warner Bros. backlot and sound stages in Burbank, California. The horse-drawn trolley was once used as a shuttle between El Paso and Juarez, Mexico.
Wayne's contract gave him script approval, and he made a number of major and minor changes, including moving the location from El Paso to Carson City and the ending. In the book and original screenplay, Books kills his last opponent by shooting him in the back, is fatally wounded by a bartender with a shotgun, and is finally put out of his misery by Gillom. Wayne maintained that over his entire film career, he had never shot an adversary in the back and would not do so now. He also objected to his character being killed by Gillom and suggested that the bartender do it, because "no one could ever take John Wayne in a fair fight".
Wayne was also responsible for many casting decisions. Several friends and past co-stars were cast at his request, including Bacall, Stewart, Boone, and Carradine. James Stewart had not worked in films for a number of years, due in part to a severe hearing impairment, but he accepted the role as a favor to Wayne. Stewart and Wayne had worked together in two previous Westerns: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and How the West Was Won, both released in 1962.
While filming the sequence in the doctor's office, both Stewart and Wayne repeatedly muffed their lines over a long series of takes, until director Don Siegel finally pleaded with them to try harder. "If you want the scene done better," joked Wayne, "you'd better get yourself a couple of better actors." Later, Wayne commented in private that Stewart knew his lines, but apparently could not hear his cues.
Another casting stipulation was using the horse owned and given away by Wayne's character, a favorite sorrel Quarter Horse gelding named Dollar (or sometimes Dollor) that Wayne had ridden in Big Jake, The Cowboys, True Grit, Rooster Cogburn, Chisum, and The Train Robbers. Wayne had negotiated exclusive movie rights to Dollar with the horse's owner, Dick Webb Movie Productions, and he requested script changes enabling him to mention Dollor's name several times.
By one account, Wayne's numerous directorial suggestions and script alterations caused considerable friction between director and star, but Siegel said that Wayne and he got along well.
He had plenty of his own ideas ... some I liked, which gave me inspirations, and some I didn't like. But we didn't fight over any of it. We liked each other and respected each other.
