The Big Trail stars John Wayne.
On February 7, 1973, Burt Kennedy's The Train Robbers opened; Wayne appeared alongside Ann-Margret, Rod Taylor and Ben Johnson
 The project was shelved for some 20 years, until McMurtry rewrote and expanded the original screenplay co-written with Bogdanovich to make the novel and subsequent TV miniseries Lonesome Dove, with Tommy Lee Jones in Wayne's role and Robert Duvall playing the part originally written for Stewart in the extremely popular miniseries

