The Outlaw Josey Wales

Josey Wales, a Missouri farmer, is driven to revenge by the murder of his wife and young son by a band of pro-Union Jayhawker militants from Senator James H. Lane's Kansas Brigade, led by the brutal Captain Terrill.

After grieving and burying his wife and son, Wales practices shooting a gun before joining a group of pro-Confederate Missouri bushwhackers led by William T. Anderson, taking part in attacks on Union sympathizers and army units. At the conclusion of the war, Josey's friend and superior, Captain Fletcher, persuades the guerrillas to surrender, having been promised by Senator Lane that they will be granted amnesty if they hand over their weapons. Wales refuses to surrender, and as a result, he and a young guerrilla named Jamie are the only survivors when Terrill's Redlegs massacre the surrendering men. Wales intervenes and wipes out most of the Redlegs with a Gatling gun before fleeing with Jamie, who dies from a bullet wound after helping Josey kill two pursuing militiamen.

Lane forces a reluctant Fletcher to assist Terrill in finding his friend and puts a $5,000 bounty on his head, attracting the attention of Union soldiers and bounty hunters who seek to hunt him down. Along the way, and despite his aversion to traveling with company, he accumulates a diverse group of companions. They include an old Cherokee man named Lone Watie; Little Moonlight, a young Navajo woman; Sarah Turner, an elderly woman from Kansas; and her granddaughter Laura Lee, whom Wales and Little Moonlight rescue from a group of marauding Comancheros. Josey and Laura later sleep together as does Lone Watie and Little Moonlight. At the town of Santo Rio, two men, Travis and Chato, who had worked for Grandma Sarah's deceased son Tom, join the group.

Wales and his companions find an abandoned ranch once owned by Tom and settle in after Wales parleys and makes peace with the neighboring Comanche tribe leader, Ten Bears. Meanwhile, a bounty hunter whose partner was gunned down by Wales at Santo Rio guides Captain Terrill and his men to the town. The following morning, the Redlegs launch a surprise attack on the ranch. Wales' companions take cover in the fortified ranch house and open fire, gunning down all of Terrill's men. A wounded Wales, despite being out of ammunition, pursues the fleeing Terrill back to Santa Rio. When he corners him, Wales dry fires his four pistols through all the empty chambers before holstering them. Terrill attempts to draw his cavalry sabre, but Wales grabs the blade and stabs him through the chest, finally avenging his family.

Returning to the Santa Rio saloon, Wales finds Fletcher accompanied by two Texas Rangers. The locals at the saloon, who refer to Wales as "Mr. Wilson", tell the Rangers that Wales was killed in a shoot-out in Monterrey. The Rangers accept this story and move on, but Fletcher sees through the lie, and pretends to not recognize Wales. He says that he will go to Mexico to look for Wales himself and try to tell him that the war is over. Wales says, "I reckon so. I guess we all died a little in that damned war", before riding off.

Pahreah site in Utah, filming location of the film.

Behind-the-scenes film still of Locke and Eastwood, 1975

The Outlaw Josey Wales was inspired by a 1972 novel by former KKK leader Forrest Carter, and was originally titled The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales and later retitled Gone to Texas. The script was worked on by Sonia Chernus and producer Bob Daley at Malpaso, and Eastwood himself paid some of the money to obtain the screen rights.[6] Michael Cimino and Philip Kaufman later oversaw the writing of the script, aiding Chernus. Kaufman wanted the film to stay as close to the novel as possible in style and retained many of the mannerisms in Wales's character which Eastwood would display on screen, such as his distinctive lingo with words like "reckon", "hoss" (instead of "horse"), and "ye" (instead of "you") and spitting tobacco juice on animals and victims.[6] The characters of Wales, the Cherokee chief, Navajo woman, and the old settler woman and her daughter all appeared in the novel.[7] On the other hand, Kaufman was less happy with the novel's political stance; he felt that it had been "written by a crude fascist" and that "the man's hatred of government was insane".[4] He also felt that that element of the script needed to be severely toned down, but, he later said, "Clint didn't, and it was his film".[4] Kaufman was later fired by Eastwood, who took over the film's direction himself.

Cinematographer Bruce Surtees, James Fargo, and Fritz Manes scouted for locations and eventually found sites in Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, and Oroville, California even before they saw the final script.[7] Kaufman cast Chief Dan George, who had been nominated for an Academy Award for Supporting Actor in Little Big Man, as the old Cherokee Lone Watie. Sondra Locke, also a previous Academy Award nominee, was cast by Eastwood against Kaufman's wishes[8] as Laura Lee, the granddaughter of the old settler woman. This marked the beginning of a close relationship between Eastwood and Locke that would last six films and the beginning of a romance that would last into the late 1980s. Ferris Webster was hired as the film's editor and Jerry Fielding as composer.

In June 1975, it was announced that Eastwood would star in the film with a scheduled Bicentennial Celebration release.[9] Principal photography began on October 6 in Lake Powell.[10][8] A rift between Eastwood and Kaufman developed during the filming. Kaufman insisted on filming with a meticulous attention to detail, which caused disagreements with Eastwood, not to mention the attraction the two shared towards Locke and apparent jealousy on Kaufman's part in regard to their emerging relationship.[11] One evening, Kaufman insisted on finding a beer can as a prop to be used in a scene, but while he was absent, Eastwood ordered Surtees to quickly shoot the scene as light was fading and then drove away, leaving before Kaufman had returned.[12] Soon after, filming moved to Kanab, Utah. On October 24, 1975, Kaufman was fired at Eastwood's command by producer Bob Daley.[13] The sacking caused an outrage amongst the Directors Guild of America and other important Hollywood executives, since the director had already worked hard on the film, including completing all of the pre-production.[13] Pressure mounted on Warner Bros. and Eastwood to back down, but their refusal to do so resulted in a fine, reported to be around $60,000 for the violation.[13] This resulted in the Director's Guild passing new legislation, known as 'the Eastwood Rule', which prohibits an actor or producer from firing the director and then becoming the director himself.[13] From then on, the film was directed by Eastwood himself with Daley second-in-command; with Kaufman's planning already in place, the team was able to finish making the film efficiently.

Upon release in August 1976, The Outlaw Josey Wales was widely acclaimed by critics, many of whom saw Eastwood's role as an iconic one, relating it with much of America's ancestral past and the destiny of the nation after the American Civil War.[15] The film was pre-screened at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities in Idaho in a six-day conference entitled Western Movies: Myths and Images. Academics such as Bruce Jackson, critics such as Jay Cocks and Arthur Knight and directors such as King Vidor, Henry King, William Wyler and Howard Hawks were invited to the screening.[15] The film would later appear in Time magazine's Top 10 films of the year.[16] Roger Ebert compared the nature and vulnerability of Eastwood's portrayal of Josey Wales with his "Man with No Name" character in the Dollars Trilogy and praised the atmosphere of the film. On The Merv Griffin Show, Orson Welles lauded the film, calling Eastwood "one of America's finest directors".

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively gave the film a 90% approval rating based on 40 reviews, with an average score of 7.95/10.[17]

Eastwood has called The Outlaw Josey Wales an anti-war film.[18] In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said:

As for Josey Wales, I saw the parallels to the modern day at that time. Everybody gets tired of it, but it never ends. A war is a horrible thing, but it's also a unifier of countries... Man becomes his most creative during war. Look at the amount of weaponry that was made in four short years of World War II—the amount of ships and guns and tanks and inventions and planes and P-38s and P-51s, and just the urgency and the camaraderie, and the unifying. But that's kind of a sad statement on mankind, if that's what it takes.[18]

• McGilligan, Patrick (1999). Clint: The Life and Legend. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-638354-8.
• Munn, Michael (1992). Clint Eastwood: Hollywood's Loner. London: Robson Books. ISBN 0-86051-790-X.

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• The Outlaw Josey Wales on IMDb
• The Outlaw Josey Wales at the TCM Movie Database
• The Outlaw Josey Wales at AllMovie
• The Outlaw Josey Wales at the American Film Institute Catalog
• The Outlaw Josey Wales at Rotten Tomatoes
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• The Outlaw Josey Wales at Box Office Mojo