The 1950s and 60s was the height of popularity for the much loved Western as Glenn Ford and John Wayne led the way as leading actors in this genre.
While the Western never really disappeared from cinemas it's success and popularity waned. But in recent years their has been a resurgence as the Western returned to a leading film genre in 2007 with the release of 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
The Great Train Robbery, a silent movie, was the very first Western movie to be released in 1903 and was just twelve minutes long.
The film was a major success as Broncho Billy Anderson became cinema's first cowboy and cinema goers love of the Wild West had begun.
Stage coach, starring John Wayne in his breakthrough role, was one of the first classics of the genre as it's director John Ford became a leading filmmaker in Western cinema.
The 1950s was the height of the Western genre as many were influenced by samurai films from Japan. The Magnificent Seven was a remake of Kurosava's Seven Samurai and both A Fist Full of Dollars and Last Man Standing were a remake of Yojimbo.
During this decade movie studios had found a genre that was popular with the public and in excess of a hundred films were made including Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo and the original 3:10 to Yuma, starring Glen Ford.
The sixties brought the Spaghetti Western, so called as they were usually produced by Italian studios but had a Spanish partner. The Spaghetti Westerns were characterised by the presence of more action and violence than the Hollywood Westerns.
The best known of these movies were the Man With No Name Trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More and The Good the Bad and the Ugly, directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood.
By the nineties the production of these movies had dropped dramatically but the decade still produced a couple of movies that boosted the profile of the genre.
First up in 1992 was revisionist Western Unforgiven, directed by Clint Eastwood, the film had an all star cast of Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Eastwood himself.
The film went on to win Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Hackman) and Best Film Editing at the Oscars and is still one of few Westerns to be inducted into the United States National Film Registry.
The genre once again became popular with cinema goers since 2000 with releases such as Open Range, starring Kevin Costner and The Proposition with Guy Pearce.
But it's 2007 that really saw the return of the Western as both 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford received wide critical praise.
With actors such as Christian Bale, Russell Crowe and Brad Pitt on board the films drew major attention as 3:10 to Yuma topped the U.S. box office and there was a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Casey Affleck for Jesse James.
But as well as the outlaw Westerns coming back to prominence the Western has also been moved into contemporary surrounding in recent years.
Perhaps the most famous of these is Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, released in 2005 the film was a romantic-drama film that depicts the complex romantic and sexual relationship between two men in the American West from 1963 to 1983.
Despite some controversy surrounding the film it was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor for Heath Ledger and Best Supporting Actor for Jake Gyllenhaal with Ang Lee winning Best Director.
Other contemporary Western include Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and more recently the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men.
And this week the Coen Brothers return to this genre once again with their new movie True Grit - a remake of the John Wayne classic.
The Western has provided some of cinema's most classic movies and characters and helped launch the careers of many stars, including Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, and today studios have realised that there is still an audience for these movies.
True Grit is released 11th February.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
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