The Searchers The Searchers The Searchers is a 1956 American Technicolor VistaVision Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, set during the Texas–Indian wars, and starring John Wayne as a middle-aged Civil War veteran who spends years looking for his abducted niece (Natalie Wood), accompanied by his adoptive nephew (Jeffrey Hunter). Critic Roger Ebert found Wayne's character, Ethan Edwards, "one of the most compelling characters Ford and Wayne ever created". The film was a commercial success. Since its release it has come to be considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest and most
John Wayne filmography Wayne starred in his final film, "The Shootist" (1976), ending his acting career for fifty years, 169 feature length films, and various other television appearances or voice-overs. In 1993, Wayne appeared posthumously as George Abitbol, the central character in the French TV film "La Classe américaine". The film, the story of which revolves around an investigation of Abitbol's death, consists entirely of cut-and-pasted extracts from other films, dubbed with new lines in French and transformed into a new story. Raymond Loyer, who had dubbed Wayne into French in his previous films, returned to do so one last time. John Wayne