No matter what genre he worked in, Howard Hawks (HIS GIRL FRIDAY) played by his own rules, and never was this more evident than in his first western, the rowdy and whip-smart Red River. In it, John Wayne (STAGECOACH) found one of his greatest roles as an embittered, tyrannical Texas rancher whose tensions with his independent-minded son, played by Montgomery Clift (FROM HERE TO ETERNITY) in a breakout performance, reach epic proportions during a cattle drive to Missouri.