Who the Hell's in It

by Peter Bogdanovich

  Among the most revealing things about Wayne on a movie set—and probably the most charming—was how much he himself still relished that world. Old Tucson itself, where Wayne so often shot, was created for illusions. It used to be right outside Tucson, Arizona, and was a quite elaborate, labyrinthine, period Western town with numerous streets built in 1939 by Columbia Studios especially for a misbegotten, long-forgotten epic, Arizona. Hawks and Wayne shot all of Rio Bravo and El Dorado there, as countless Westerns did before and after (until the place burned down).

  For a week at Old Tucson, I saw Duke playing around with his six-shooter off-camera, or with that repeating rifle he often carried in pictures—as Wyatt Earp himself had told Ford he had done in life—with all the enthusiasm of a kid with a new toy. He was always ready, always prepared, did not go off to his trailer between shots—as Mitchum and Caan did, as most stars do, unfortunately—Wayne clearly enjoyed watching the process take place, loved the crew, the atmosphere. For Duke Wayne, this was home. Certainly he had spent the great majority of his life on movie sets, often five or six pictures a year.

  The very breadth and longevity of Wayne’s career has become impossible to achieve ever since the original star system died forty years ago. Fewer and fewer movies are made, the audience therefore unable to attain the familiarity of repeated exposure that personality stars used to have (which explains why a number of today’s stars began with the weekly intimacy of TV series, from Clint Eastwood to Tom Hanks). While a contemporary star is lucky to have two pictures released in a year, audiences of the thirties or forties could see Cagney, Bogart, Gable or Tracy on giant screens four, five or even six times a year.

  Wayne had already acted in about a hundred Z-budget Westerns in those ten years before Jack Ford saved him from the Monogram and Republic treadmills in 1939 with Stagecoach. Of course, Ford had first put him in pictures more than twelve years before that. Wayne was going to USC, playing football—Marion Michael Morrison was his name—and he used to go to the movie studios in the summer looking for work. In 1927, Ford gave him a job as an assistant propman and a goose-herder at Fox Studios on Mother Machree, then bits, small roles in several other late silent and early sound films. Among them was Hangman’s House (1928), in which Ford gets his first laugh with Wayne’s size, as young Duke stands out, cheering with a crowd, and eventually stomps down a picket fence before him in his innocent enthusiasm. For Ford’s early talkie Salute (1929), Wayne speaks (characteristically) his first line, razing a rookie cadet: “What do they do in the movies, mister?” (The answer: “They neck.”) In 1930, Raoul Walsh decided he so much liked the way Marion M. “Duke” Morrison walked and behaved that he cast him under his new name—Walsh helped him decide on “John Wayne”—as the romantic lead (hardly usual for a newcomer) in an expensive Fox talking epic called The Big Trail. A giant dud at the box office in its day, the film is actually quite a likeable movie. I first saw it around the same time that I ran two popular, critically acclaimed, Oscar-winning Westerns of similar vintage, In Old Arizona (1929) and Cimarron (1931), and the Walsh-Wayne film was infinitely superior. (The other two are virtually unwatchable.)

  Right from the start in Walsh’s picture, Wayne had an engagingly natural quality, and this kept him going through the endless poverty-row Westerns he turned out after the failure of The Big Trail, and until Ford’s Stagecoach finally made him respectable. Even then, it took almost another ten years of pictures for Wayne to find the character that really immortalized him: the gruff, tough, often mean, often bad-tempered, sometimes sentimental, but certainly unregenerate and lonely older man he first played while still quite young in Howard Hawks’ first landmark Western, Red River (1948).

  Until then, all his best movies had been for Ford (Stagecoach, The Long Voyage Home, They Were Expendable, Fort Apache), and another good one with Walsh (Dark Command), but his roles had all been amiable, decent leading men—not without charm and color—yet definitely without the later complexity and spirit. After Red River, not to be outdone, Ford cast Wayne as an even older (though kinder and more honorable) man in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). But the Wayne prototype had been established and Ford’s was the first of many variations on the theme, the character aging and deepening as Wayne and his two favorite directors aged and deepened their art. A remarkable series of films followed: from Hawks, the quietly revolutionary Rio Bravo and the rollicking African romance Hatari!, plus the darker Rio Bravo variation, El Dorado. From Ford, the more diverse and increasingly complicated beauties of such fifties and sixties treasures as Rio Grande (an ambiguous story of love, duty, parenthood), The Quiet Man (Wayne’s and Ford’s most romantic picture), The Searchers (perhaps their best), The Wings of Eagles (their most misunderstood), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (the final masterwork with all the deceptive simplicity of a classic woodcut).

  His performances in these pictures rate with the finest examples of movie acting, and his value to each film is immeasurable; yet none of them was recognized at the time as anything much more than “and John Wayne does his usual solid job,” if that—more often he was panned. The Academy nominated him only twice; first for Allan Dwan’s excellent Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), an effective and archetypal John Wayne Marine picture of non–Ford/Hawks dimension. Yet I remember that Wayne’s sudden death from a sniper at the end of Sands was the first real shock—and one of the most lastingly potent—I ever had at the movies. The reason why this worked so powerfully for me at age ten, as well as for millions of all ages, was because of Wayne’s even then accepted indestructibility. In fact, Sands of Iwo Jima was the second of only five films in which Wayne dies. Still, it wasn’t until twenty years later, when he put on an eye patch, played drunk, and essentially parodied himself in True Grit, that anyone thought he was acting, and so with this over-the-top performance Duke Wayne got his second nomination and finally won his Oscar.

  The particular quality in a star that makes audiences instantly suspend their disbelief—something men like Wayne or Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda naturally bring with them when they enter a scene—is an achievement which normally goes so unnoticed that most people don’t even think of it as acting at all. To a lot of people, acting means fake accents and false noses, and a lot of emoting. Although Paul Muni gave his finest movie performance in Hawks’ Scarface, he became “Mr. Paul Muni” (literally—that was his billing) with the theatrical posturing of his Pasteur-Zola-Juarez series at Warner Bros. Bogart was inimitably Bogart in quite a number of films, but the establishment insists on remembering his most “acted” performances in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen and The Caine Mutiny. A career of roles like that, however, might perhaps have garnered more awards, but certainly no Bogart cult. Similarly, John Wayne was at his best precisely when he was simply being what came to be called “John Wayne.”

  And after forty years in films, Duke had more excitement about the job than most people just starting out. He liked working with newcomers, too, and was generous with advice; those who didn’t let ego stand in their way could learn quite a few good tricks. And all of this came without a note of pomposity or pretentiousness. In fact, he always seemed genuinely surprised, even slightly embarrassed, by praise. Without ambiguity, Hawks had said to me that “when you have someone as good as Duke around,” it became “awfully easy to do good scenes” because the actor helped and inspired everybody.

  Wayne was also a colorful storyteller, punctuating his sentences with numerous expletives and profanities. In personal conversation, they rolled off his tongue almost without pause. Everything was “goddamn,” there were many “shit’s and quite a few” fucking’s. At one point, he was illustrating to me how he had resolved an argument with John Huston. He grabbed me by my shirt front, and threw his arm back as though to throw a punch, at the same time saying, “I took that sonofabitch by the—” His face was suddenly close to mine, his teeth clenched fiercely. Evidently, on the single Huston-Wayne film, The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958), the two did
not get along. Wayne was in the process of reenacting the climactic moment in their relationship when I got that unexpected Wayne close-up. I laughed and said, “Jesus!” Then Duke laughed, shook his head once, and let go of me. “Sorry,” he said. “That guy really sets me off.” It’s difficult to describe the impact of the moment; remember, Wayne was every bit as big a guy as he seemed, over six-foot-four, wide-shouldered, with small feet and huge hands. When we shook hands it felt as though my own disappeared in his grasp.

  On a Howard Hawks set everyone called him “Mr. Hawks,” including Wayne; only in private was the first name spoken. Hawks was the most laid-back director I’ve ever seen and yet in total control. During the making of El Dorado, I often saw or heard Wayne giving other actors a word or two of direction. He would tell Jimmy Caan how to do this or that. Caan seemed to mind more than Hawks. Five years later, I would see Wayne and Hawks on a Hollywood sound stage during their last (and least) film together, Rio Lobo, and watched as Wayne directed Chris Mitchum (Robert’s son) in how to pick up a chair or a gun, always turning to Hawks afterward and saying, “Isn’t that right, Mr. Hawks?” And Howard, standing in the darkness outside the set, would reply, “That’s right, Duke.” During a break I finally asked Hawks if he didn’t mind Wayne directing the actors like that. “Oh, hell, no,” Hawks said. “Duke and I have done so many pictures together, he knows what I like. It just saves my breath.” As Wayne recounts, one of the actor’s proudest memories was that Hawks had told the press he couldn’t have made Red River without John Wayne.

  It was often reported that Wayne also had a tendency to be generous with advice to some of the younger directors he hired, but evidently they didn’t seem to mind too much, either, since at least two I can think of continually did pictures with him. They may have been totally intimidated or perhaps realized that his interference came from exuberance and a real passion for the work rather than simply from some desire to bully. (Nevertheless, the two movies Wayne signed as a director, The Alamo and The Green Berets, are hardly among his best.)

  In 1967 and ’68, I went a couple of times to Wayne’s home in Newport Beach, California, preparing and shooting an interview with him for a documentary which the American Film Institute (with the California Arts Commission) had asked me to make on John Ford. As Duke was walking me back to my car, he took me on a shortcut through his sizeable garage. Entering, I was greeted by a virtual sea of 35mm motion picture canisters—large, octagonal specially-built metal cases to hold the heavy 2,000-foot reels of film—two or three reels per canister; this is how movies had always been shipped and stored. Suddenly, here before me, were original prints of an awful lot of vintage John Wayne movies; mostly brand-new–looking cases, boldly marked RED RIVER, THE QUIET MAN, SANDS OF IWO JIMA, RIO BRAVO, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, etc.

  For a movie buff, it was a heady moment. I said something like, “Jesus Christ, Duke, do you have 35mm prints of all your pictures!?” He said, “No, but just about. It’s been part of my regular deal for a long time—the studio’s gotta give me a print off the original negative.” A light went on in my head. I looked around and saw quite near me a print marked STAGECOACH. Knowing that the original negative of this film had been lost or destroyed, I was excited: “Is that print of Stagecoach from the original negative?” Wayne answered, “I believe it is—don’t even think it’s ever been run.”

  This was golden news for film lovers because, as I told Wayne, his print—which did turn out to be a mint copy—could be used to create a new negative, producing a better result than anything known to exist. If he would actually contribute his Stagecoach print to a nonprofit institution like the American Film Institute, I told him, he would get a very good tax write-off. After a new negative had been made, a new copy could then be sent to him. Duke was enthusiastic, especially about the tax break. What I outlined in the garage did in fact happen, and just that accidentally is how Stagecoach was saved.

  The day I came with a crew, and while they were setting up on a large terrace overlooking the bay, I chatted inside with Wayne as he sat in front of his dressing-room mirror putting on his toupee. When I admired it, he agreed, “Good one, isn’t it?” I asked if it was true that he often directed Andrew V. McLaglen’s direction on their films together. Wayne said no, but that of course Andy, the son of Victor McLaglen, a great Ford regular, had grown up on Ford-Wayne sets and was given his first feature-directing job by Wayne. It was true that he occasionally made “suggestions” to Andy, but, Duke said, “there’s only one captain on a ship—and when Andy’s the captain, he’s the captain.” I let it go and went to check the setup.

  When it was ready, Wayne came out and, looking around, immediately began issuing orders excitedly. “Move that light over a little bit,” he said, “and take that one to the side. Better give me a higher chair to sit on—bring that stone elephant over—that’ll do—” After several moments of this—my tiny crew had jumped into action on his first word—he glanced over at me. I’d been watching him and I guess I looked amused. Our eyes met, held a second, then he grinned broadly. “Oh,” he said, “sorry, Andy …”

  PB: How did you start out in pictures?

  JW: Well, I’ve naturally studied John Ford professionally as well as loving the man. Ever since the first time I walked down his set as a goose-herder in 1927. They needed somebody from the prop department to keep the geese from getting under a fake hill they had for Mother Machree at Fox. I’d been hired because Tom Mix wanted a box seat for the USC football games, and so they promised jobs to Don Williams and myself and a couple of the players. They buried us over in the properties department, and Mr. Ford’s need for a goose-herder just seemed to fit my pistol. So I went on the set, and he said, “Ah, you’re a football player, huh?” This was the time when USC was first getting football teams of renown, so everybody was starting to get interested in football. Well, Mr. Ford had played a little ball and he said, “How do you get down?” So I got down and just braced myself on all fours, and he just kicked my arms out from under me and rubbed my face in the plastic mud, and when my nose hit, it wasn’t the sod of old Ireland, I’ll tell ya. And then I said, “OK, let’s just try that again.” The next time he tried to go around me, and I whirled and kicked him in the chest, and he went right on his ass. He sat there and for a minute it was a case of whether or not I had a future in the motion-picture business—I didn’t realize how important it was then. But he took it humorously and laughed like hell—and the crew laughed. When he laughed, they laughed—they waited their turn. But that started our association.

  Wayne tells Easterner James Stewart he had better learn to use a gun in John Ford’s final Western masterwork, a kind of moving woodcut, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), among the most ironic of movie titles once you know the film’s outcome. It is the penultimate Ford-Wayne feature of the twenty or so they did together.

  Didn’t you have another run-in with Ford on Four Sons [1928]?

  Oh, yeah, Jesus, that was the next time I pretty near left the business. I was just working vacations, wasn’t really interested in the business as such, but I really liked Ford. He had this wonderful woman, Margaret Mann, who had never done anything before, and he was talking a performance into her—taking two, three hours to talk her into the right mood for this scene. It was the fourth son bringing the letter from the third son she’s lost in the war. It’s fall, and when the door opens, my job as property man was to throw up the maple leaves, and they had a fan there to blow them out—it was a silent picture, remember. The fan turned on, and down came the breeze into the middle of the set and the door closed and I relaxed. Then I’d go out and sweep the leaves away and get ready to do another take. We kept doing this over and over, and it got to be fairly monotonous for one who wasn’t as interested yet in the business as he should have been. So this one time, they opened the door, the son went in, I threw up the leaves, the leaves wafted in, I figured the scene was over, you know. The fellow turned off the fan and I picked up the broo
m, went in, and started to sweep. And I looked up and I’m looking right into two cameras—and they’re turning! And looking at me are the cameraman, and John Ford, and the wife of the man who was head of the studio then. Shit, there I was. I just threw down my goddamn broom and started to walk off. There was that moment of tension and then, again, he broke up laughing, so they all laughed. They said, “Whoa now!” They had Archduke Leopold’s Serbian heir working on the picture, and a lot of German guys, so they played a martial piece of music and marched me around, and then took me to the Archduke and bent me over in front of him and he pinned the Iron Cross on me. Then they took me back to Ford and he bent me over and kicked me in the ass. And then they sent me off the set, because this actress laughed every time she looked at me—she couldn’t stop laughing. I was never so goddamned embarrassed in my life. My God, it was awful … But after Mother Machree, they’d put me on every summer.

  Was that only for Ford?

  Well, there were two other fellows that used me: a director named Benny Stoloff, who was an old baseball player, and then the fellow in the electrical department there. You could belong to one union then and it took care of everything. I don’t know how kids can learn their business today. Jesus, in those days it was wonderful. You’d work as a prop man part of the time, maybe you’d do some stunt work, then you’d work in the electrical department, and you’d get the feel of your business, like they do in summer stock, where they build their own sets and everything. It’s a shame that all the guilds don’t have a pool out of which new people could work and find their place—but they don’t. I guess the only ones that have an apprentice program are the makeup men.