John Wayne was replaced by Harrison Ford in major movie role after 'dispute' about one aspect of script

John Wayne, who starred in over 170 films from the silent era to the New Hollywood of the 1970s, was set to feature in another Western after his final movie, The Shootist, in 1976 . The film was a comedy titled The Frisco Kid , with Gene Wilder playing a Polish rabbi traveling to San Francisco .

Wayne was slated to portray Tommy Lillard, a bank robber befriended by the main character. In the Netflix documentary Remembering Gene Wilder , producer Mace Neufeld revealed before his death in 2022: "When we started on the film we were going to use John Wayne and he was all excited about joining the project."

However, according to John J Puccio of Movie Metropolis, Wayne was "eager to take it on as a comic follow-up to True Grit and Rooster Cogburn. Salary concerns nixed the idea, though, and it's questionable he would have finished the shooting, in any case, as he died shortly before The Frisco Kid opened."

• Were John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara ever together? Inside The Quiet Man couple's off-screen relationship

• The Quiet Man: iconic Irish filming locations you can still visit today

In an archived interview before his death in 2016, Wilder recalled: "I was so excited and one the executives got the idea of going out to Long Beach, California where John Wayne lived and tried to knock him down $250,000 and [Duke] said 'Forget the whole thing! '" Another source suggests that Wayne wasn't keen on The Frisco Kid due to the script's "vulgarity."

For all the latest news straight to your inbox, sign up for our FREE newsletters here .

Eventually, the role of Tommy was given to a rising star named Harrison Ford, who had just featured in a small film known as Star Wars, reports the Express .

For the latest local news and features on Irish America, visit our homepage here .