One of the most memorable moments of any picture I’ve seen you in is a silent moment in The Searchers [1956]. After you see what’s been done to the white women, there’s a close-up of you, camera moves in—
I turn back. Terrific shot. Helluva shot. And everybody can put their own thoughts to it. You’re not forced to think one way or the other.
Your gestures in pictures are often daring—large—and show the kind of freedom and lack of inhibition you have. Did you get that from Ford, or did you always have that?
No, I think that’s the first lesson you learn in a high school play—that if you’re going to make a gesture, make it.
You also use gestures in your Westerns as though you’ve learned an Indian language.
That’s right. You know, I have fooled around with that just for that sake. There’s something about it that I know is attractive to people. Because they have a feeling that you’re—
It gives depth. There’s that wonderful scene in Yellow Ribbon when you talk to that—
Indian. God, that Indian was wonderful.
That was Chief Big Tree, wasn’t it?
God, he must have been eighty years old then and was working in a defense plant back east.
He had been a stuntman on The Iron Horse, hadn’t he?
Well, he wasn’t exactly a stuntman. We also used him on The Big Trail. There was a group of those Indians from up in that area, all magnificent-looking men.
On The Quiet Man I heard that Ford laid down horse manure for you to drag Maureen O’Hara through.
Well, he didn’t have to lay down horse manure. There was pig shit all over. And actually, there was nothing we could do. I had to drag her through it.
On Liberty Valance did he ever discuss who Vera Miles was really in love with at the end of the picture?
I don’t remember—he really made it tough on me on that picture, I’ll say that. Hawks does it all the time, he just says, “Oh, well, Duke will get by,” and he gives everybody else everything to do. Well, Ford was doing that with me. Thank Christ, he thought of me kicking that steak out of the guy’s hand. And then he was going to cut out the scene at the end, of me coming back to Stewart and saying, “Get in there, you sonofabitch.” He said, “The scene isn’t important, and then you’re walking out.” And I said, “Oh, God, Jack—.” He said, “Well, we’ll ask Jimmy,” and thank Christ he asked Jimmy and Jimmy said, “Oh, Jesus, Jack, he needs this scene.” And I don’t know why he was doing that. Because I’m sure he knew that he had to do the scene. Maybe he was doing it to get a feeling or maybe to make me work a little harder to make that a valuable scene. I don’t know.
That’s one of my favorite Fords. I know you don’t like it as much.
Liberty Valance? I love it. I don’t know how the hell I lasted through the picture. The kicking the steak and the last scene gave me enough strength to carry him [Wayne’s character] through the picture.
Actually, Ford talked to me about how everything revolved around you.
Everything revolved about me, just like I was the lead in The Quiet Man, too, but for Christ’s sake everybody’s got the jokes around me and I’m standing there all the time and had to try to find some way to be alive and to be sympathetic.
Ford knows you have such presence that you don’t have to do much.
In Liberty Valance he’s got the flamboyant heavy—a wonderful guy, Lee Marvin—he’s got Eddie O’Brien doing the intelligent humor, he’s got two or three other guys doing the jokes and Andy [Devine] and Jimmy kicking the horseshit and the girl [Vera Miles] playing “I can’t be in love with Duke because the girl’s in love with Jimmy,” so what the hell? Where do I go?
Yet in Rio Bravo, everybody had the scenes but it was your picture anyway.
I would have been lost in Rio Bravo at one point; we took a whole day—when Dean [Martin] goes in and discovers the blood and shoots the guy down and I stand back as the father image. I was a pain in the ass. You know, I’m just the father image then and that woulda wrecked me. I finally thought of a thing—when we first come in and the guy says, “Nobody came in here.”
When you hit him with the rifle.
So I said, “Nobody came in here, huh?” Not even the hitting him with the rifle. But Martin says, “Easy there.” And I said, “Aw, I’m not gonna hurt him!” Shit, now this put me back in the picture. But I would have been out of it too long if I couldn’t find something for right there.
It was a huge laugh. I said to Ford that by the end of Liberty Valance it seemed that Vera Miles was still in love with Wayne. He said, “Well, we meant it that way.”
I don’t know for sure what he wanted. I think he was so afraid that Jimmy’s part was so colorless, even though, Christ, he had everything to do, you know. But it was still a kind of a weak character—let’s say an ordinary character—that I think he was afraid to portray it any more that the girl was still in love with a dead guy.
Were you kind of unhappy during the making of Liberty Valance?
No, I was never unhappy. Don’t misunderstand me. I knew when it was all over that I would have been protected because Ford’s too dedicated to his own work to not protect me. Even if he didn’t like me. His own sensitivity would not allow that. I worried a lot. Because I couldn’t see where he was going to do it. But he always managed to find some little thing that he stuck in.
Your entrance is terrific—you ride in and the music becomes “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.”
Yeah. Well, you see, it’s a sentimental thing that I don’t think many young people have today. And it’s too bad because they’ve lost a wonderful feeling that I’m sure you get when you look at something like that. And that I get. And it’s sad that they don’t have it. But I don’t know what the hell it is about family life today. I just don’t get it anymore, in life. Fathers are not strong enough. Something has to make an impression on you to have a deep feeling. Ford knows how to put that on the screen better than anybody in the business. He can handle terribly sentimental situations without being maudlin.
Was Donovan’s Reef [1963] mostly improvised on location?
Yes. That’s what I mean about Ford being impatient with writers.
It’s an enjoyable film.
Well, he might as well have used a young, nice-looking leading man. Me, I was useless in the goddamn picture—I figured I was too old to play this part. I was never satisfied with it. I don’t know, just something lacking. But not for the picture, for me. I didn’t give something to the picture that I should have been able to give. And I don’t know what the hell it is.
How did you like Hawks’ Hatari! [1962]?
There was only one thing wrong—he let his production manager do the second-unit work. Shit, we did everything the second unit did. They didn’t come up with any new values in action or anything. I did all the crap that you see in the picture. We should have done something so two or three sequences would have been different. You know, you just can’t ride out and catch animals the same frigging way all the time. Even though it’s more dangerous, it still needs to have a variety of approaches and he let the second unit do it and they didn’t know how to handle action. It’s too bad he didn’t hire a good man.
But, didn’t you and Howard do a lot of the action in the picture?
I looked at the stuff—they’d been over there for three months when I got there—and I said, “Christ, Howard, there isn’t anything there that we can’t do.” And he said, “Riding out like that?” And I said, “Yeah, that’s all right.” So we went out and I got on the thing [catch-car] and rode around and you know before long he’s putting his kid on it. At first he thought that was going to be too dangerous, but I said, “Bullshit. There’s nothing to it.” Why, then all the second-unit stuff went out the window. We didn’t need it. But there should have been some stuff made that was more hazardous than that to add to the picture. What I did was exciting, but it wasn’t dangerous.
Well, the rhino almost got you at one point.
The rhino was a little rough. The fucking kids let the rope burn out of their hands and didn’t scream “Look out!” or anything. I just looked up and see this sonofabitch is loose and they’re just standing there.
It’s a great moment.
Yeah. It’s a pain in the ass when it’s you. His head is right there and I’m riding his ass. Here I am trying to throw a line clear around his legs and I look up and he’s loose. Now, the Mexican doesn’t see this and I say, “He’s loose.” Shit. The truck was right over here and I went hsssh and I was in the truck. He says, “What?” And I said, “He’s loose!” And the fucking thing turned around and looked at the side of the cab and went “yuunk” and stuck that horn right through the metal just like it was paper. And then he stood there a minute and then he started to move his head and goddamn he tore that cab all to hell and then he started charging both cars. And finally—Red [Buttons] was sitting by the window when it starts and the girl’s over there; when it finished the girl was over here and Red was over there. I don’t know how that little sonofabitch got over, but he got over and got [Elsa] Martinelli on the side and then we just eased our truck out and teased the rhino away and then let him go. He was going to kill himself beating into the metal.
John Wayne himself helps to catch the giraffe on location in Africa for Howard Hawks’ comedy-adventure Hatari! (1962). the title means “danger.” It was Wayne’s third film with Hawks.
Where was Howard during a thing like that?
He was up on the camera car.
Didnt you direct some of the horse race in The Quiet Man?
I did the whole goddamn race for him.
Was he sick?
Yeah, he had three days that he was really down over there. The first day we went out and shot—just in the afternoon—shot a couple of fight shots. And we told him about it that night, so then he let us go out the next day and shoot some more and then in the meantime they set up for the horse race and I got lucky that day. I had second-unit cameraman Archie Stout, who’s a terrific outdoor man. And everything was working just right. There were about 400 spectators. So I got Arch, and we ran down a cliff there. We jumped on a little cart we had and got down the cliff. I held the horses back on the beach. And the people spread out coming up toward where we were, and finally I said, “Hold still, everybody!” And so I had about 400 people in there where we only had about fifty extras. And we shot down through grass—I had some really nice shots in it. And he appreciated it, too.
Do you think you picked up any of Ford’s mannerisms?
Possibly—I think so. I can’t recall one at the moment, but I’m sure there’s no doubt. You approach a situation, maybe, like he would approach a situation, rather than a personal, physical gesture. That might be true. There’s one thing he always told me. He said, “A lot of scenes are corny, Duke. Play ’em. Play ’em to the hilt. If it’s East Lynne, play it! Don’t avoid ’em, don’t be self-conscious about ’em. Play ’em!” And he’s right. If you try to play a sentimental scene with your tongue in your cheek, or kidding it, you lose size and the scene loses everything. Another thing I learned—if you cry, the audience won’t. A man can cry for his horse, for his dog, for another man, but he cannot cry for a woman. A strange thing. He can cry at the death of a friend or a pet. But where he’s supposed to be boss, with his child or wife, something like that, he better hold ’em back and let them cry.
While we were shooting the documentary, it started to rain, so Wayne and I took a break while the crew moved the equipment inside and reset the camera. Duke was eating a grapefruit and showed me around the huge living room, filled with mementos, awards, photos, and Western paintings. He was on a grapefruit diet and I watched him demolish both sides of one, using his teaspoon as a kind of bowie knife to get every last morsel of liquid and pulp out of the fruit, right down to the skin. At one point, a long-haired teenage son of his strolled gingerly through the room with an equally long-haired contemporary. They didn’t say a word as Duke watched them like a hawk while they crossed, gouging the grapefruit even harder. Under his breath, as they were disappearing, he muttered, “Goddamn son-of-a-bitch …”
He showed me his tattered old cowboy hat under glass. He had worn the wide-brimmed trooper-style hat in Stagecoach, and virtually every Western he made after it, right through Rio Bravo exactly twenty years later, by which time the hat already showed considerable signs of terminal wear. Duke told me he retired the hat after Rio Bravo and put the soft felt memento under glass to preserve it. He pulled a prize Remington rifle off the wall to show me, just as the teenagers crossed back through the room. Duke froze, rifle in hand, glinty-eyed, watching them go. Then he looked at me and grinned, putting the weapon away.
Though having been only slightly humorous at Ford’s expense in the filmed interviews I had shot, Wayne, Stewart and Fonda were all nervous nevertheless about Ford’s reaction when the documentary was finally screened in the second half of 1971, more than three years after we had started. Ronald Reagan was then governor of California, and he introduced the picture at a special showing for Ford and his actors. I was sitting near Duke when the picture ended and as he stood I heard him saying, “I’m not goin’ near him! Not me.”
About a year later, I saw Wayne out at President Nixon’s “Western White House” for a Hollywood party the Republicans threw in celebration of Nixon’s re-election campaign (described in Introduction: Stars and Politics). I was standing a few feet from Wayne as the President made a speech in praise of Hollywood; at one point, he said, “The other day at Camp David we were looking over the movie list, and there wasn’t anything that had been made recently that particularly appealed, so we wanted to get something that could be shown to younger people safely, and consequently, we ended up selecting a John Wayne movie. I asked Manolo [Sanchez], my very wonderful aide, I said, ‘Manolo, do you think this would be a good movie?’ He said, ‘Oh, yes, sir. I saw it thirty years ago in Spain.’” Big laugh there. I looked at Wayne, who nodded once, lifted his drink in a toast, and said quietly, “Keep those comin’.”
It was around this same time that Larry McMurtry and I were working on an original screenplay for a Western we planned to offer Wayne, Stewart and Fonda; our working title was Streets of Laredo. When we finished a first draft, I sent it to Duke and he turned down the project. Quite upset, I asked him why. He answered, “Well, it’s kind of an end-of-the-West Western, and I’m not ready yet to hang up my spurs.” I protested, “But you don’t die at the end.” Wayne answered, “Yeah, but everybody else does.” And that was that. For a while I thought I could talk him into it, but I was wrong. As a last resort I said that Ford had endorsed the script, and Wayne responded, “That’s not what he told me.” I asked what he meant, and Wayne said that Ford had told him he didn’t like the script at all. Years after both Ford and Wayne had died, Ford’s daughter Barbara confirmed that Ford had indeed told Wayne to turn down the script. Larry would later adapt and vastly expand this story into his best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Lonesome Dove. One of the several sequels he later wrote was named Streets of Laredo.
Just to show it wasn’t personal, around this same time, Wayne offered me the directing job on The Train Robbers, offering one of our Last Picture Show stars, Ellen Burstyn, the female lead. We both turned him down. Still pushing, I said, “You gotta do mine first.” He just laughed. Two years later, he asked if I would direct Rooster Cogburn, the sequel to True Grit, which he was to do with Katharine Hepburn. Ironically, the picture turned out to be Duke’s penultimate work, and naturally, I now wish I had done it. The only other he would finish was decidedly an “end-of-the-West” Western, The Shootist (1976), in which Wayne is dying of cancer, and finally gets killed in a bloody shoot-out.
The last time I saw him was in October 1978 and, like all the other times, we talked mostly about Jack Ford. It was especially appropriate this time because, a couple of weeks before, the Utah Film Festival had given out its first John Ford Medallion for outst
anding contributions to Americana on the screen, and they had given it to Wayne. Because of one illness after another, Wayne had been unable to accept the Utah award in person, and had suggested two alternatives—former President Gerald Ford or me, and since Mr. Ford was unavailable, I went. That was the reason for our last meeting—I brought the award over—though it was anything but a formal presentation. He was in his pajamas, watching a USC football game on television at a bungalow of the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he was staying for several days.
Before calling me about the award, we had last been in touch a few months earlier while I was in Singapore making Saint Jack with Ben Gazzara. Benny and I heard that Duke was having trouble with the cancer, and we had sent him a get-well-soon, thinking-of-you telegram that we know he liked because he responded quickly and warmly, saying he wished he was there with us in Singapore, wishing us luck with the picture, and thanks for the thought.
Now, here I was at the hotel bungalow, giving him the Utah award. His son Pat came over with a couple of the grandchildren and, as usual with Wayne, it was all very casual, very easy—he made you feel at home. We drank iced tea and talked about movies—Hawks and Ford, mainly. He told me he missed them very much. “Christ, everybody’s gone,” he said. Then he asked me if I’d direct his next picture, a period piece called Beau John. He didn’t know if he could make it, but I said of course he could and that I’d be pleased to direct it for him. He thanked me, said it’d be fun. Of course, he didn’t make it.
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