True Grit (1969 film) Their adaptation focuses more on Mattie's point of view, as in the novel, and is more faithful to its Oklahoma setting. Hailee Steinfeld portrays Mattie Ross, Jeff Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn, and the cast also includes Matt Damon as La Boeuf and Josh Brolin as Tom Chaney. True Grit (1969 film) True Grit is a 1969 American western film directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Kim Darby as Mattie Ross and John Wayne as U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn. It is the first film adaptation of Charles Portis' 1968 novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Marguerite Roberts.
True Grit (1969 film) but the producers turned him down when his agent demanded top-billing over both Wayne and Darby. Glen Campbell was then cast instead. Wayne began lobbying for the part of Rooster Cogburn after reading the novel by Charles Portis. Wayne called Marguerite Roberts' script "the best script he had ever read," and was instrumental in getting her script approved and credited to her name after Roberts had been blacklisted for alleged leftist affiliations years before. This came in spite of Wayne's own conservative ideals. He particularly liked the scene with Darby where Rooster tells Mattie about his life in Illinois (where