If you’ve been blessed as I have, you have cousins. But not just any cousins, those cousins; you know the ones. The ones you’ve spent your life with, the ones you’ve looked up to and admired, the ones you gravitate to at any family gathering. The ones that truly make you feel the connection that comes with blood.

Mine have all been older. I’m the baby on my dad’s side and I was only six when my parents split up which was no doubt a big deal to my extended family at the time. And I assume that my aunts and uncles and their kids were concerned about me and my older brother and looked out for us and cared about how we were doing. Subsequently, to this day I enjoy a closeness with a precious few of my cousins and as our folks pass away, perhaps we are beginning to mean even more to each other.

My cousin, Jeff, looms large in my legend. He is 12 years older than me – he used to babysit me – and so when I was a kid he was a young adult and I thought he was cool. I remember specifically that I wanted to wear not boots but Pony sneakers in the winter and steer a car with my knees just like Cousin Jeffy. He was also there when I first fell in love with movies. When video tape was new, he somehow had copies of three movies I distinctly remember being among the first I ever saw; Smokey and the Bandit, Enter the Dragon and G.I. Blues.

Later when I was a young father, Jeff and his wife, Tina, would invite my wife and I over to their house with our kids. We were hesitant at first because I always thought people didn’t want little kids running around their homes but we were welcomed there and it became the only place we stayed overnight when our kids were little. And, like me, Jeff collected movies. He did it a bit different, though – he only collected King Movies (Elvis Presley films) and John Wayne Movies. When I would visit, I would always scan his shelves to see how he was doing as he moved towards his goal of owning all of the Duke’s movies. Fast forward 20-some years and Jeff calls me up; I’m getting rid of my movies and CDs, says he, do you want them? The lack of storage space in a condominium netted me a bounty of physical media. The spines I had looked at so often in the past were going to be mine.

I’ve written before about receiving a tub of records that belonged to my brother-in-law’s father and I’ve gotta say that I can fully grasp the joy and excitement that comes from acquiring “lots” and just sticking your hand in and seeing what you pull out. Non-Duke movies in the four boxes my cousin gave me included 22 King Movies on VHS, an Elvis watch and pair of socks, 2 CD box sets from the Bee Gees and Elton John, a full box of CDs, a few of which I’ll keep and many I will listen to, all five seasons of Miami Vice, box sets of Rambo movies and Jack Ryan movies and a John Wayne Christmas ornament! As I looked through the John Wayne movies I began to wonder how close Jeff got to owning them all which lead to thoughts of Duke’s movie career; his early days as a nobody, early recognition in B westerns, the golden age through the 40s and 50s and the legend years in the Sixties and out. I wondered is it possible to own or even to view all of John Wayne’s films? Here’s what I found.

John Wayne made over 160 movies and I took the liberty of dividing his career into four acts. He made his debut in the silent film Brown of Harvard, a 1926 football movie starring William Haines and America’s Sweetheart – from Toronto! – Mary Pickford. John was uncredited as “Yale football player” and would carry on in a similar vein for some years. Between this debut in ’26 and 1930’s Cheer Up and Smile – a musical that starred Arthur Lake, the future Dagwood Bumstead and Dixie Lee, the first Mrs. Bing Crosby – Duke appeared in 21 films. He appeared each time in miniscule roles often uncredited and, from a home video standpoint, these films don’t exist. The movies are basically lost to the mists of time and so they are uncollectible, even unviewable and this renders them “uncountable”; for the collector, they don’t count. Additionally, if you love “John Wayne movies”, these are not them. You cannot compare Noah’s Ark from 1928 in which Wayne played “Flood Extra” with Rio Bravo.

The second act of John Wayne’s career can be said to have begun with The Big Trail, Wayne’s first starring role, from 1930. Raoul Walsh directed this western that has been available on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray for many years. The Big Trail – and it is here among these movies, still in the wrapper – was the last film for Tyrone Power, Sr. and the first major collaboration between Wayne and Ward Bond. During this segment of Duke’s career he was prolific, grinding out many B westerns and serials, most an hour long or shorter, most formulaic and forgettable, and most lacking the charm of the scores of Gene Autry or Hopalong Cassidy movies released at the same time. It’s worth noting just how prolific Wayne was during this period in which he starred, for example, in 9 films in 1932 and 11 in 1933. And most of these movies are in the public domain and have been released many times on cheapie VHS tapes and DVDs that you can buy for a couple of bucks at various liquidation places. Between The Big Trail and Red River Range in 1938, Wayne churned out 59 movies, this last being one of the 8 films in the Three Mesquiteers hour-long programmers in which Duke starred. Out of these fifty-nine Public Domain Epics, there are 29 here in the boxes.

I decided it was appropriate to begin the Golden Age of the film career of John “Duke” Wayne with 1939’s Stagecoach, the legendary and Academy Award-winning film directed by John Ford, the first of his westerns to be shot in Monument Valley. Ford had to fight for his vision for a big budget western – out of vogue at the time – and was insistent of casting “B movie actor” Wayne in the lead. The result is one of the greatest and most influential films ever made, one that cemented Wayne’s position as an A-list leading man. Note, though, that he still approached filmmaking in a similar way to that of his previous era as seen in the fact that he appeared in seven movies released in 1942 alone. Here is the first era of Duke’s time making movies that finds most all of the titles available for purchase in some form or other. I’ve chosen as the endpoint to this era 1958’s The Barbarian and the Geisha, a film Wayne made with John Huston in Japan. The years 1939 to 1958 saw John Wayne make 55 films and my cousin was able to collect 43 of them.

You could argue – I am not but you could argue – that John Wayne became John Wayne in the years that started with the release of Rio Bravo in the spring of 1959. While I will concede that he made The Searchers in 1956 during the previous era and that film is renowned as one of the best ever made, it becomes clear that the bulk of the films Wayne is really known for were made in the 1960s when Duke was in his 50s. After Rio Bravo came The Horse Soldiers, The Alamo – which Wayne directed – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, McLintock!, The Sons of Katie Elder and so many more classics, well known and revered by both hardcore and casual classic movie fans. The thirty-two films Wayne made between Rio Bravo and his last movie, The Shootist, released in 1976, three years before Wayne passed from stomach cancer, are by far the most readily available to purchase and therefore the easiest to collect. Remarkably, the only one Jeff never owned was The Greatest Story Ever Told. The last three of the four eras we talked about here comprise 146 movies but I cannot confirm that all 146 are available to be bought. In the end, my cousin collected 104 John Wayne movies. Not bad.

Partly because of my Cousin Jeffy, I, too, have built a collection of John Wayne films. He even has his own section on my shelves joining Presley and Sinatra as the only actors who do. This is not so much because I so love the Duke but because “John Wayne movies” really do stand alone. They have their own special ethos owing mostly to Duke’s presence, the type of films he made and his regular collaborators like John Ford and the players of the John Ford Stock Company. I recall a garage sale a few years ago. It was raining so not much happening but we were in a small town and saw a sign and stopped by. Among the treasures on offer was what must have been a major fan’s collection of John Wayne artifacts including many movies on DVD. I bought a few of them and took them home and while I’m determined to watch them all they may not all be keepers for me. But I do enjoy a John Wayne film.

I will keep a few of Jeff’s movies. Some I do not own and think I should – like The Big Trail – some are upgrades for me – like a nice, clean Stagecoach replacing my silly snap case. The jewel of the bunch though is Jeff’s deluxe edition of The Searchers. Released for the 50th anniversary in 2006, it includes a reproduction of the Dell Comic released in ’56 and pages of behind-the-scenes photos, promo art and much more; a huge upgrade on another silly snap case. I’ll have to ponder what to do with the ones I will not be keeping. It is likely that the VHS have run their race as I know that many thrift stores will no longer accept them as no one is buying them. I’m sure there are people and places online that may be interested and I will try to find them. Shame to think of throwing out movies on VHS – but I always console myself with the thought that they ended their run in my care, someone who loves and appreciates them. If they are to be laid to rest, I’m glad it’s me who performs the rites.

Mostly what happened here, though, was another experience in something I’ll call The Thrill of the Lot; the rare joy that comes when you acquire a vast collection. I can understand the lure collectors feel when they bid on lots at auctions or purchase the contents of a storage locker. Diving in to see what you’ve got has an obvious appeal. I also got the chance to delve back into the films of John Wayne, to revisit some titles I really should view again and investigate how many of Duke’s movies are out there on home video and how many never received that treatment.

This time, for me there was an added personal joy and it is somehow fitting that I should be bequeathed this particular lot of physical media; family heirlooms, you might say. Aside from just to augment my own collection, it provided a chance to visit with my cousins and to strengthen a cherished family connection.