John Wayne Highlands, fierce fighters against communism, bestowed on Wayne a brass bracelet that he wore in the film and all subsequent films. Wayne finally won a Best Actor Oscar for "True Grit" (1969), two decades after his only other nomination. Wayne took on the role of the eponymous detective in the crime drama "McQ" (1974). His last film was "The Shootist" (1976), whose main character, J. B. Books, was dying of cancer—which Wayne himself succumbed to three years later. "The Shootist" (1976) contains numerous plot similarities to "The Gunfighter" of nearly thirty years before, a role which Wayne had wanted but
John Wayne (song) All the Cowboys Gone?" (1996); in the latter, Cole asks "Where is my John Wayne?" Andrew Unterberger of "Billboard" speculated that the lyrics, "He called, I cried, we broke," could relate to Gaga's breakup with her fiancé Taylor Kinney. "Bustle"s S. Atkinson noted that the song portrays an "intense, doomed relationship" comparable to Gaga and Kinney's; she concluded that the song is about Kinney, despite him being neither a blue-collar worker nor from a Republican state. While reviewing "Joanne", "The Atlantic"s Spencer Kornhaber wrote that "John Wayne" was an indication of the musical direction the parent album could have gone,