We're celebrating the 84th Academy Awards with a gallery of 84 great movie images.This one is from "True Grit," the 1969 Western that earned Hollywood legend John Wayne his first Oscar after more than four decades as an actor. Why did we choose this one? It's all about the eye-patch. As Rooster Cogburn, Wayne plays a hero who is always ready for a knock-down-drag-out, but who is busted up himself. This makes Cogburn the perfect tough guy for his time. It also makes the image of Wayne's one-eyed Marshall very loaded, just like his Colt revolver and Winchester rifle.

We never see how Cogburn lost his eye, so it becomes a badge of how much action he has seen. (Ironically.)  That implied past makes Cogburn mythic, just as Wayne himself had become mythic. So while the eye-patch may not be a fashion statement in the typical Hollywood sense, Wayne works it in a way that adds dimension to the character. Are we watching Wayne play Cogburn, or himself?

Of course, Jeff Bridges also donned the eye-patch in Joel and Ethan Coen's 2010 remake. Bridges received an Oscar nomination for his performance, but had less of that mythic baggage Wayne carried for much of his career. (Perhaps that explains the Duke's swagger.) So while the image of Bridges's Cogburn will always be striking, it is Wayne's that remains iconic. 

The original version was directed by Henry Hathaway. Some of his movies are classics: "True Grit," "Kiss of Death," "How the West Was Won." Some aren't, but their titles should be: "Come on Marines!," "Of Human Bondage," "From Hell to Texas." 

"True Grit" was one of Hathaway's last movies, made near the end of a directing career that began in B-Westerns. The film was also one of several major Westerns released in 1969. Two of the others- "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Wild Bunch"- are famous for how they twisted the conventions of the Western.

"True Grit" may not turn the Western upside down to the same degree, but it does shake up our view of the Western's most iconic star. He is still the Duke. At the same time, he is an old man in what was increasingly becoming a young person's movie business. 

By 1969, the Western had been Hollywood's oldest and most enduring genre. But Hollywood was changing. The movie ratings system had recently been instituted. The studios were being absorbed into large corporate conglomerates. Young filmmakers were reinterpreting -which, in some cases, is a nice way of saying "rejecting"- classic tropes. And naturally, the screen was reflecting the cultural tensions brought on by the Vietnam War and by the social change and unrest that had America churning.

Maybe this is why fans have always had a soft spot for "True Grit." Even if it traded Wayne's white hat from "Stagecoach" (1939) for Cogburn's black one, the film showed audiences how a legend remains a legend. It showed us about endurance.  At a time when everything seemed up in the air.

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