The Shootist

John Bernard Books, a gunfighter whose reputation rests on tracking down outlaws no one else could catch, learns from an old friend, Dr. Hostetler, that he is dying of cancer. He returns to Carson City hoping to spend his remaining time quietly, and takes a room in a boarding house kept by a widow, Bond Rogers, and her son, Gillom. His fame follows him there: men who want to make their name by facing him, and a local sheriff who resents his presence, make a peaceful death unlikely.

Don Siegel directed the film, the fifteenth of the eighteen features he made, following Charley Varrick and preceding Telefon. John Wayne plays Books, with Lauren Bacall as Bond Rogers, Ron Howard as her son, James Stewart as the doctor, and Richard Boone and Hugh O'Brian among the credited cast of thirty-six. The screenplay was written by Miles Hood Swarthout and Scott Hale.

Released in the summer of 1976, the western drama runs one hundred minutes and took in about thirteen million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a 7.6 rating from more than twenty-six thousand votes, while on TMDB it sits at 7.1 from a much smaller number of votes; a critics' rating of 8.1 from twenty-five reviews is higher than either audience figure.