The Cowboys is a 1972 American Western film starring John Wayne,[3] Roscoe Lee Browne, and Bruce Dern, and featuring Colleen Dewhurst and Slim Pickens.

[6] In 1878, when his ranch hands abandon him to join a gold rush, aging rancher Wil Andersen must find replacement drovers for his 400-mile (640 km) cattle drive.

He rides into deserted Bozeman, Montana, where his friend Anse Peterson suggests hiring local schoolboys.

Andersen tests their ability to stay on a bucking horse, and as they take turns, Cimarron, a boy slightly older than the others, rides up.

Andersen locks the boys' guns in a box that will be kept on the chuck wagon during the drive, and they practice roping, branding, and herding cattle and horses.

One day Dan, a boy who wears glasses, is chasing a stray horse when he stumbles upon Watts and his gang of cattle rustlers.

Watts, who reveals he has been trailing the herd, releases Dan but threatens to slit the boy's throat if he says anything to Andersen.

When Dan drops his glasses into the ravine where the cattle are resting, Charlie succeeds in retrieving them but is trampled by the herd.

Writing about The Cowboys, film historian Emanuel Levy noted that Wayne frequently appeared in father-like roles throughout his career: Aware of his repetitive screen roles as a paternal figure, [Wayne] said the movie was based on a formula that worked in Goodbye Mr. Chips and Sands of Iwo Jima.

Wayne did not hesitate to appear in The Cowboys, despite the fact that "no actor in his right mind, would try to match the antics of eleven kids on screen," but for him it became "the greatest experience of my life.

[citation needed] In 1974, Warner Bros. developed The Cowboys as a television series for ABC starring Jim Davis, Diana Douglas, and Moses Gunn.