Appearances Deceive

In John Wayne’s last film, The Shootist, he uses a pair of blued and fully engraved single-action revolvers fitted with ivory stocks. A beautiful brace of Colts right? Wrong! These six-guns were not Colts at all, rather they were a pair of presentation-grade replica revolvers given to the Duke by the Great Western Arms Company, many years earlier. Duke’s oldest son Michael told me that his father had always wanted to use these guns in a film, but he didn’t get the opportunity to portray