In 1972, director Mark Rydell auditioned roughly a thousand kids for The Cowboys — and ended up with two tribes who couldn't have been more different. Half were rodeo kids who'd been riding since they could walk. The other half were actors who'd never touched a horse. They all spent eight weeks learning to be cowboys for real before a single frame was shot.
I've written about dozens of forgotten casts over the years, but the cowboys 1972 cast genuinely surprised me. Not because of the famous names — Wayne, Dern, the Carradine connection — but because of the kids nobody followed up on. The question isn't just what happened to them. It's which tribe stayed closer to the truth.
Bruce Dern is 89 years old as of February 2026 and still acting. After playing the villain who shot John Wayne on screen, he received death threats for years and was typecast as psychotics. He currently has three films in post-production and turns 90 in June 2026. A Martinez just appeared in the Season 4 premiere of Dark Winds on 15th February 2026. And Clay O'Brien, the 11-year-old who played Hardy Fimps, quit acting entirely to become a seven-time Team Roping World Champion. He chose real rodeo over Hollywood rodeo — and won.
Here's where every cast member is today.
John Wayne — The Rancher Who Passed the Torch
John Wayne was already the definitive American screen cowboy when he arrived in New Mexico to play Wil Andersen. At 65, with over 170 films behind him, he understood this role was different. The Cowboys wasn't about his heroism. It was about his mortality.
Mark Rydell had reportedly borrowed money from his own mother to option William Dale Jennings' novel. The gamble was enormous — he was staking everything on an unconventional Western that would kill its hero two-thirds of the way through. He needed Wayne not just as a star but as a genuine mentor to eleven young actors working at this scale for the first time. Wayne delivered in ways no script could capture.
He insisted on 6am call times to match the boys' schedules, turning down the preferential 7:30am start the studio offered him. He taught them card games between takes, showed them how to sit a horse properly, and treated them as professionals rather than props. When Robert Carradine asked him to sign a photograph, Wayne refused.
"I just made a picture with you. That makes us colleagues. I don't sign colleagues' pictures."
The boys remembered him catching them when they fell from horses. They remembered him calling The Cowboys the greatest experience of his life — a statement that carried real weight from a man who'd spent five decades on film sets.
Wayne's final Western, The Shootist (1976), mirrored The Cowboys in uncomfortable ways: another dying man, another meditation on what gets left behind. A short-lived ABC television series in 1974 attempted to continue the story with the boys running their own ranch — it lasted thirteen episodes and proved that some narratives resist extension.
Wayne passed away on 11th June 1979, just seven years after the film's release. The boys who'd sat around his campfire were men by then. Some had already left the business entirely. But every one of them remembered the man who'd refused to sign their photos because he considered them equals.
Bruce Dern — The Man Who Killed John Wayne
Bruce Dern was 36 when he accepted the role of Asa Watts, the rustler who would murder John Wayne on screen. He understood the weight of that decision. Wayne understood it too.
Before the premiere, Wayne took Dern aside with a warning: audiences were going to hate him for this.
He was right. Dern received death threats from Wayne's fans. Hate mail arrived for years. The typecasting followed immediately — Dern found himself offered only villains, psychotics, men with unravelling minds. He played them brilliantly, but the shadow of that riverbank murder scene never fully lifted.
The scene itself carried a terror that wasn't entirely scripted. Rydell had instructed Dern to genuinely frighten Nicolas Beauvy, the 16-year-old playing Dan. Dern whispered threats that weren't rehearsed, producing authentic fear that the camera captured without artifice.
Where is Bruce Dern today? At 89, he has comprehensively outlived the typecasting and the hero he killed. The intervening decades brought extraordinary work — Coming Home (1978), which earned him an Oscar nomination, and Nebraska (2013), which earned him another and proved he could carry a film with quiet humanity rather than menace. His recent credits include Bloodline Killer and The Devil's Trap (both 2024), and he has three projects in post-production for 2025: The World's Happiest Man (acquired by distributors in December 2025), Bad Men Must Bleed, and Fractured. He turns 90 in June 2026, still reporting for work six decades after audiences first sent him death threats.
Robert Carradine — From Slim Honeycutt to King of the Nerds
Robert Carradine was eighteen and terrified. His brother David had convinced him to audition, but the reality of performing alongside John Wayne felt overwhelming.
David had a practical solution. A Martinez, then 24 and the only young cast member old enough to serve as legal guardian, agreed to supervise Robert on set. This allowed David to leave production knowing his teenage brother was looked after.
Carradine's Slim Honeycutt became the natural leader of the young cowboys — a role that suited his quiet confidence. His post-film career included a return to the Western genre in The Long Riders (1980), riding alongside brothers David and Keith in a film about the James-Younger Gang.
Then came the role that would define him for a generation: Lewis Skolnick in Revenge of the Nerds (1984). The pocket protector, the nasal laugh, the unlikely bravery — Carradine created an archetype that carried through four films and countless cultural references.
Where is Robert Carradine today? He was photographed riding his motorcycle in Los Angeles as recently as spring 2025. Now 71, he remains connected to the industry his family has inhabited for three generations. The nervous teenager who needed a guardian on set became a guardian of his own legacy.
Read Next
From the Vault
A Martinez — Still Riding at 77
A Martinez is doing career-best work at 77. Dark Winds Season 4 premiered on 15th February 2026 — just days ago as I write this — with Martinez returning as Acting Chief Gordo Sena in one of television's most acclaimed dramas.
He was 24 when he played Cimarron, the half-Navajo trail hand who served as Wil Andersen's right hand. Already the veteran among the younger cast, he was literally Robert Carradine's legal guardian during production.
His post-Cowboys career resists easy summary. The Centennial miniseries (1978–1979). Six seasons as Jacob Nighthorse in Longmire (2012–2017). Recent appearances in Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024), The Rookie (2024), and Blue Ridge (2024–present). His IMDb page reads less like an acting CV and more like a map of American television across five decades.
The achievement that eludes most actors — sustained relevance across six decades — Martinez has managed without fanfare or reinvention. He simply never stopped working. At an age when most of his contemporaries have retired, he's starring in a series that premiered this month.
Check out this 50th Anniversary get together
The Supporting Players — Browne, Dewhurst, Pickens and Farnsworth
The Cowboys gathered an extraordinary ensemble of character actors. All four of the principal supporting players have since passed, but they deserve more than footnotes.
Roscoe Lee Browne brought Shakespearean gravity to Jebediah Nightlinger, the camp cook who quotes poetry and challenges the boys to think beyond their saddles. A classically trained actor who'd spent years with the New York Shakespeare Festival, Browne used the role to subvert stereotypes about Black cowboys while maintaining absolute dignity. He passed away on 11th April 2007, aged 81, having never stopped working.
Colleen Dewhurst was known as the Queen of Off-Broadway before she played Kate Collingwood, the boarding house owner who offers Andersen her boys for the cattle drive. A two-time Tony Award winner, her commanding presence lent gravity to a small but pivotal role. She passed away on 22nd August 1991, aged 67.
Slim Pickens embodied authentic Western credibility as Anse. A former rodeo clown who'd worked the circuit for two decades before turning to acting, Pickens brought genuine horsemanship that couldn't be taught in eight weeks of pre-production. He passed away on 8th December 1983, aged 64.
Richard Farnsworth had spent thirty-five years as a stuntman before audiences truly noticed his face. As Henry, the oldest trail hand, he represented the passing generation that Wayne's character belonged to. Farnsworth would go on to receive Oscar nominations for The Grey Fox (1982) and The Straight Story (1999), becoming the oldest Best Actor nominee in Academy history at the time. He passed away on 6th October 2000, aged 80.
Together, these four represented different traditions of American performance — classical theatre, rodeo authenticity, stunt work, and Broadway royalty. The Cowboys gave each of them a final significant Western before they were gone.
Physical Media
The Cowboys (1972) 4K
*Affiliate Link - We may earn some commission from your purchase.
The Young Cowboys — Where Are They Today?
The casting process for The Cowboys created two distinct tribes. Rydell saw roughly a thousand children before narrowing each role to two finalists. The chosen boys then endured eight weeks of intensive riding and ranch work before filming began — real labour that started before dawn.
Here's how those two backgrounds shaped everything that came after.
The Rodeo Kids: Clay O'Brien, Alfred Barker Jr., Mike Pyeatt — boys who already knew horses.
The Actor Kids: Nicolas Beauvy, Stephen Hudis, Norman Howell Jr., Sam O'Brien, Sean Kelly, Steve Benedict — boys who had to learn.
That division predicted their futures more accurately than any performance review.
Nicolas Beauvy (Dan) left acting after Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker (1979) and became a successful estate agent. He remains friendly with Bruce Dern, who occasionally took him to Lakers games after filming wrapped. The improvised terror of their shared river scene — Dern's unscripted whispered threats — forged a bond that outlasted their professional relationship.
Clay O’Brien is the only cast member whose real-life career directly mirrored his character — and surpassed it. He quit Hollywood because rodeo was more important. Then he won seven world championships to prove it.
Legacy Archive
Clay O'Brien (Hardy Fimps) represents the most remarkable trajectory of any cast member, and he's been almost completely absent from previous accounts of this film. After The Cowboys, he played Wayne's son in Cahill U.S. Marshal (1973) and Roy Rogers' sidekick in Mackintosh and T.J. (1975). Then he made a choice that defined his life: he quit acting because he couldn't get time off for rodeo finals.
O'Brien chose the real arena over the soundstage. He went on to win seven Team Roping World Championships — verified by Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association records — becoming the genuine article that The Cowboys only pretended to depict. He's the answer to a question nobody thought to ask: what if one of them actually became a cowboy?
Stephen Hudis (Charlie) transitioned into stunt work, doubling for Eric Roberts, Kris Kristofferson, and L.Q. Jones before becoming a stunt coordinator in 1988. Those eight weeks of riding training turned out to be the most practical education of his career.
Norman Howell Jr. (Weedy) became one of Hollywood's most accomplished stunt performers. He doubled for Roger Moore in Bond films and for Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves (1990). His stunt coordination work on Brooklyn Nine-Nine earned him Emmy recognition. The boy who rode in Wayne's cattle drive became the invisible professional who made other leading men look heroic.
Sam O'Brien (Jimmy Phillips — not Dan, as some previous accounts have incorrectly stated) served twenty-five years as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot before transitioning to aerial firefighting for the U.S. Forest Service. He spent his career fighting wildfires from the sky — a path as far from Hollywood as any cast member took.
Sean Kelly (Stuttering Bob) appeared in The Waltons and The Car (1977) before leaving acting. He now works as an intuitive and trance channelling consultant — a career that defies easy categorisation but represents the kind of spiritual seeking that attracted several former child actors of his generation.
Alfred Barker Jr. (Fats) bridged both worlds. He continued rodeo competition while serving thirty-five years with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, where he was a member of the National Police Rodeo Association. Lawman and horseman, all in one life. Of all the young cast members, he came closest to living both halves of the film's DNA simultaneously.
Steve Benedict (Steve) acted until 1979's Friendly Fire, a television film about a family investigating their son's death by friendly fire in Vietnam that won four Emmy Awards. He then became a stockbroker and now builds custom homes — three entirely different careers in one lifetime.
Mike Pyeatt (Homer) returned directly to rodeo after his single film credit and is now superintendent at Naval Air Station Lemoore in California — military discipline echoing his rodeo background.
Most of these boys chose lives of purpose over lives of celebrity. Clay O'Brien became a seven-time world champion. Sam O'Brien fought wildfires from helicopters. Alfred Barker spent thirty-five years keeping people safe. The film was about boys becoming men. They did exactly that.
Why The Cowboys Still Matters — 54 Years Later
The Cowboys won the Bronze Wrangler Award at the Western Heritage Awards in 1973 and performed respectably at the box office. Critical reception was divided but enduring — Rotten Tomatoes currently shows 80% approval, while Metacritic registers a more cautious 52 from seven reviews.
The film's violence sparked debate from the start. Critics argued over whether its vision of masculinity was toxic or traditional — a conversation that continues in different vocabulary today. The scene where the boys avenge Wayne's death remains genuinely confronting.
What most accounts of this film miss is the source material. William Dale Jennings, who wrote the novel, was a pioneering gay rights activist who co-founded the Mattachine Society in 1950. His Western isn't merely about a cattle drive. It's about alternative families, chosen mentorship, and what happens when the strongest person in the room isn't there anymore — themes that read very differently once you know the author's biography. That subtext is part of why the film has aged better than many of its contemporaries.
John Williams composed the score early in his career, years before Star Wars would make him a household name. The music carries his signature melodic gift without the bombast of his later blockbusters. It's one of his most understated and emotionally precise works, and it's worth seeking out on its own.
Fifty-four years on, the film endures because of its central paradox. It stars children who chose authenticity over fame, led by an icon who called it his greatest experience, featuring a villain who killed him on screen and still gets recognised for it at 89. And somewhere in that story, an 11-year-old boy watched Hollywood pretend to be a cowboy — then went out and became the real thing, seven times over.
The cowboys rode on. Some of them became exactly what they'd only pretended to be.
