Still wrong, I’m afraid. You’re confusing self-parody with great good humor - and the Duke has it in spades in this one. It is not a perfect movie. It has two bad performances. Glen Campbell was cast in the old-fashioned notion that he would bring in the teenagers - just like Wayne westerns featured Ricky Nelson and other teen idols. I don’t know how Kim Darby fell into it. But it has the Duke, Robert Duvall, Strother Martin (brilliant!), Jeff Corey and even Dennis Hopper as an unwashed villian who made it soar. The Duke deserved his Oscar.
How the West Was Won is a classic. I was lucky enough to see it in Cinerama as a kid and later on was surprised how good it was on the small screen. Good story, good script, good actors, good directors and brilliant cinematography and a magnificent score by Ken Darby, I believe (not Kim!).
The music of HTWWW was by Alfred Newman. John Ford is the only ‘great director’ who worked on it. Hathaway and George Marshall have little standing in film studies. TG is passable entertainment but it’s not a classic American western. The competition is too great.