John Wayne: A Giant Shadow

by C McGivern

  Although he accepted the money gratefully and was satisfied to be earning what he considered a decent offer, he bitterly resented the way his new name had been chosen. His oldest friends and his family still called him Marion, newer friends called him Duke, and it was many years before he became accustomed to John Wayne. He never answered to the name John, “No, I’ve always been either Duke, Marion or John Wayne. The name goes well together and it’s like one word, John Wayne. But if people say John-Christ, I don’t look round.”

  The Fox empire was crumbling and the high budget Big Trail was intended to save it. Walsh knew that Duke looked and sounded right for the part he had in mind, but more importantly he was available, he was cheap and John Wayne became, instantly, one of the best deals ever generated in Hollywood history. He had wandered blindly into the situation every actor dreams of and once he had signed on the dotted line the studio became a hive of activity, promoting both the film and their newest star. His background was dragged up and put to good use; the studio heads had already spotted that where the creation of John Wayne was concerned, the shaping of the man was paramount, and Duke’s personal history perfectly fitted the “John Wayne” image now being put together by the publicists. He appeared instantly the hero, someone who had survived the worst that life could throw at him. Joan Didion later wrote, “Imagine… Marion Morrison in Glendale. A Boy Scout, a student at Glendale High. A tackle at USC. Summer vacations at the Fox lot. A meeting with John Ford, just one of seven directors who sensed that into this perfect mould could be poured the inarticulate longings of a nation wondering where it had all been lost.” She continued, “When he spoke there was never any misunderstanding his intentions, he had a sexual authority so strong even a child could perceive it. And in a world we understood early to be characterized by venality and doubt and paralyzing ambiguities, he suggested another world… but where did he come from, before he rode through the tall grass?” Where he had come from had been the very place that the mould had been cast and right from the first, the star system intruded into Duke’s private persona. He completed studio questionnaires grudgingly, “What’s your real name?” … “Marion Michael Morrison.”

  “What was your first job?” … “Picking apricots.”

  “Tell us about your ancestors,” … “Never looked ‘em up.”

  The answers never changed, they began the legend and created the heroic image, but they were rooted in his own honesty, and had little to do with the publicist’s vision. They were instinctive, based on his gut reaction to the situation in front of him, and they served him well for the next fifty years. The studio arranged his interviews; they couldn’t control him or the answers he gave.

  Still, on the first day he walked up to Sheehan’s office his knees trembled as he was ushered in to face the head of the studio, and despite the publicity that followed he felt far from heroic as a five-year contract was pushed across the desk toward him. He had gone to the office alone, read the contract alone, he had no lawyer, no agent and no-one to advise him on the best course to take. He was young, inexperienced and desperate for the chance to develop a career, to earn some money so he could get married. He was clever, he had studied law, he saw no reason why anyone at Fox should want to cheat him, and he signed and felt excited at the blue scribble of his name. It was the first of many one way contracts he signed - always strictly in the studio’s favor. He would resent for the rest of his life the arrogance with which he was treated; they tried to change his identity, take advantage of his naivety, and they changed his name without discussion. The studio, he was made very well aware, right from the start, didn’t give a damn about how he felt about anything.

  For his role in Walsh’s epic he had to learn to throw a knife, a lariat, how to handle a gun and to ride like a westerner, because to cut costs further, he was expected to do his own stunts. He was paid nothing extra but he was pleased to be doing work that he felt comfortable with. He was happy to be working at all, able at last to take Josie out in some style and they began socializing with other young Hollywood stars. Duke was surprised to find himself sponsored, as a contract actor, to all kinds of Hollywood clubs and events. One club he particularly enjoyed was the Hollywood Athletic Club, where he often swam, dined and drank. He worked out in the gym there with stars he had idolized since he was a boy and it was heady stuff to be feted along with those who had played such a big part in his life. He was flattered by the attention but also felt unusually at ease in their midst.

  And if stardom was within his grasp, then marriage had to be and he grabbed at everything now on offer with both huge fists. Taking what life offered had been his greatest talent and he had never been one to sit waiting for the gifts to arrive. He was happy, content and finally ready to take the plunge with Josie. He filled every day with energy and power, he had uncomplainingly taken what had been dished out, but he put so much effort into living that everything he later achieved reflected an unlimited strength, developed back then. In 1929 every last drop in the tank was put into The Big Trail.

  Before the company set off on location Duke asked Walsh if he could bring along Ward Bond for company. The two had played football together at USC but weren’t particularly friendly until Duke left university and was already working as an extra. When John Ford was having difficulty casting football players for a new film he had asked Duke if any of his college friends might be interested and Bond had turned up along with the rest of the Trojan team. At the time Duke told him he was too ugly to get a part but Ford liked him, ugly or not, and he was taken along with the others. Salute was Bond’s first venture in the movies and when he was given a bigger part than Duke it led to tension between the pair. Ford’s warped sense of humor, his amusement at setting up difficult situations, led him to throw them together as often as possible. Duke was the recognized leader of the student extras but Bond went out of his way to undermine his authority and to give him the hardest time he could. Duke went out of his to prove the folly of bringing the troublemaker along. Both found the location work tough, on call from six every morning and drilling everyday with an army sergeant in hot, wet uncomfortable conditions. But, as Ford had anticipated, they were soon spending long nights carousing together, drinking and singing, and they emerged from the experience the best of friends. Bond had only been given lines in the picture to annoy Duke and he recalled, “I can still see that slow grin spreading over Duke’s mug when he realized what Ford was up to. He’s always been that way, the first to get a kick out of a joke that turns back on him.” Duke never forgot their earliest days together and years later when Bond became disillusioned with Hollywood he reminded him, “I done my damnedest to keep you the Hell out of the picture business. But you shoved your fat butt into the bus. You’ve only got yourself to blame.”

  Bond and Duke became a pair in Ford’s mind. Duke remained respectful and preferred to keep a comfortable distance but Bond’s outrageous antics often dragged him into controversial pranks, some amusing others uncomfortable, always interesting. In many ways Duke benefited from the association as he was drawn into a closer relationship with the man they both called “Coach.”

  Bond was given a part in the Big Trail and the two set off to start filming in Yuma in April 1930. The production team had got its star on the cheap but they spared no expense ensuring as much historical accuracy as possible. Locations were spread through five states, the cast and crew travelled over two thousand miles making the film, even the wagons were drawn by oxen not horses, and when filming commenced the set looked just like the real thing. The director faced many logistical problems moving the cast, crew, and equipment. He had difficulty with crew members who didn’t speak English. He was shooting a German version of the film simultaneously using the same basic cast. He was also filming two separate versions, the 35 mil and the new 70 mil, using different cameras and two crews at the same time. The project was enormous and nothing like it had ever been tackled before. Walsh was under the most terrific pressure organizing t
he group of New York stage actors who hated the heat and discomfort of location work, were having difficulty with repetitive takes and were, for the most part, drunk. Duke recalled, “They and the screenwriter were plastered most of the time. Nights in Yuma were like alcoholic orgies.” Duke, hardly a stranger to the bottle himself, gave Walsh, who was impressed by his sobriety, little trouble.

  In fact he had been hit by a severe attack of dysentery and was bed ridden for the first weeks of shooting, “I was dizzy, I sweated, I couldn’t get up. I was so sick I lost eighteen pounds.” He was an unknown prop man, starring in a high budget epic designed to rescue the studio, working alongside major stars. He had little enough confidence, what he did have usually came out of a bottle, and now he felt too sick to go near alcohol. But Duke didn’t want to add to Walsh’s burden and when the director told him he’d have to be replaced if he couldn’t get back to work, he dragged himself out of bed, shaking, pale, and looking very thin and frail. In his first scene he had to carry Tully Marshall, a heavyweight actor, right across the set. In the scene Marshall handed Duke a jug, “They passed the jug to me first and I dug back into it. It was straight rotgut bootleg whiskey. I’d been puking and crapping blood for a week and now I poured that raw stuff down my throat. After the scene I called him every kind of an old bastard.”

  Walsh said, “He was truly the star on location, following every order he was given, every direction, or suggestion. He was the star pupil, attentive, respectful, and willing to be coached. He alone didn’t drink, keep late hours or make a pass at the leading lady. His full attention was given to his work and the part he was playing. If Lady Godiva had ridden across the set with her hair cut off it was a safe bet that he wouldn’t even have glanced at her.”

  Much of Duke’s work in the film was improvised. Walsh scribbled a few lines down for him and told him to do the best he could. He had already noticed that the actor reacted to the events in the scene, made up his own dialogue, and was generally convincing in his first acting role, “I stood and watched him shouting orders, and wondered where the youthful line-backer had gone. Instead of a football player, I had a star. His acting was instinctive, he was a natural.” Of course Duke knew most people never thought he could act at all, though they were willing to admit he was the greatest star of them all. Walsh saw the emergence of both in 1929, “I take a lot of pride in the knowledge that I discovered a winner.”

  “No great trail was ever blazed without hardship. And you gotta fight! That’s life! And when you stop fightin’, that’s death! What’re you going to do? Lie down and die? Not in a thousand years! You’re going on with me!” The line from his first film was pure John Wayne. The cadence, the easy smile and the silent, snake-eyed stare were there, gifts with which he had been blessed, and were already clearly to be seen in The Big Trail. Walsh had discovered that one of his greatest strengths was simply the way he looked on film. Back then he was still unlined and beautiful, with the profile of a matinee idol. At the start of it all he possessed a soft, gentle handsomeness, with a face and form better suited to a tuxedo than buckskin. His eyes were tender rather than hard although he could put on the deadly stare when necessary. He did not have a cowboys face, had not acquired the leathery wall of non-communication that spoke of pain, hardship, loneliness, and an inbuilt refusal to give up. He did not possess the ruggedness that showed his determination to tough it out at all costs, or told the audience beyond all shadow of doubt who is boss. That was the character John Ford was waiting for. When he made The Big Trail he was wistful, delicate, incredibly sensitive, pure, sweet, shy and demure, the contrast between then and later, huge. But whilst there was not even a hint in The Big Trail of what would follow, the image of a man who would die trying to right wrong was there, discovered not by Ford, who chose not to use that impressive image for another ten years.

  The film, one of the first to be shot in 70 mm, could only be screened in two theaters in America, and it was more often seen in the conventional 35 mm version. Audiences who saw it in its intended format were overwhelmed by its splendor but it appeared only average when seen otherwise. The superb sequences of the original cut weren’t enough to make money for Fox and the studio was devastated to find it had a failure on its hands. Duke received excellent notices for his performance and although no critic hailed a glorious new star, one remarked, “If I were an artist or sculptor, I would ask John Wayne to sit for me as the personification of the young pioneer. His body is long, rangy, controlled. It is as lazy as a house cat’s when relaxed, like the leap of a panther in action.” They were not the days of the overnight sensation, reputations were earned through years of hard work, and Duke got precious few chances to build his at Fox.

  John Wayne was about to be un-made! In desperation, the studio sent him east, dressed like a refugee from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, in a green shirt and yellow boots, his hair shoulder length, as part of a huge publicity package, “Please don’t make me do this. I’m going to be an embarrassed man. You don’t put a red dress on an elephant. It makes me look like a loudmouth. They’re going to laugh me out of New York.”

  And he was right. He became an instant joke in New York. He was out of place and out of his depth - an embarrassed man.

  “Mr Wayne, do you usually wear these clothes?”

  “What do you think sister?”

  The interviewer, Miriam Hughes, commented on his unaffected manner and his honesty, saying he was not like other young Hollywood stars. Overhearing the remark he answered, “I think I’ve got sense enough, and that I’ve seen enough of them to keep myself level-headed.”

  The Big Trail went out on general release and was a disaster, coming nowhere near recovering its costs, despite the fee paid to its star. Its failure contributed to the already firmly held belief that the western no longer had a part to play in the future of Hollywood. One day Duke had been a film star, the next he was just another seventy-five dollar a week contract player, “I think The Big Trail shows I had some potential, but the Depression coming right at the time I made my first picture meant that no one was making big pictures anymore. I thought I was going to set the world on fire… I realize now that I wasn’t ready to handle the consequences of stardom even if the picture had launched me.”

  Fox executives decided that whilst he was not cut out to be the warrior of the western, they would not give up on him. He fell all the way from cowboy to clean-cut-all-American College Boy in one fell swoop. What followed was like a bad dream. He hated all the films he was next involved with, “I only got into acting at all because they made a big thing about The Big Trail, and I was complemented. Then they made me take a dim view of it. The next picture I did was called Girls Demand Excitement in which I was a college boy - you know, I had been on a national championship football team, and now I’m playing at girls’ basketball to see whether they’ll win and get to stay in school. I just can’t picture myself not wanting girls in school, and playing them at basketball was just damn ridiculous… I just couldn’t believe it.”

  After six months Fox didn’t pick up their option. He was cast adrift, his dreams of stardom shattered, he was out on the street looking for work with so many other Americans. Still, Duke had embarked on his charmed life and he was more fortunate than most of the other out of work actors. Columbia Pictures, under Harry Cohn, was in the process of changing its image and had begun making sophisticated pictures rather than the westerns and comedies they were better known for. Cohn felt Duke was handsome and debonair enough to star in their new product and he was signed immediately. To his great discomfort he was told he had the look of the smooth romantic, he was an excellent dancer and had a great voice. He felt ill at ease but the studio was soon making money out of him and had no plans to change what they were doing with him. Fans had started writing in for his autograph, and even though he was unhappy with the work he was doing, Cohn expressed his love for him and with great foresight told him he was a “money actor.”

  The conversati
on with his boss took place on a Friday evening. On the following Monday morning he was shocked when he was refused admittance to the studio. After some days he was told to report to Cohn’s office, where he was accused of being drunk on the set and of fooling about with an actress. Duke was furious and Cohn’s vulgarity shocked him, “He thought I’d had something to do with his personal life, which was a goddam lie. But I’d been brought up to respect older people and he talked to me like I was a sewer rat. There was no communication at all. Today when I look back on it, I realize I could have straightened the whole thing out if I would have spoken up, but the fact that he would accuse me of such a thing as he did, I resented, resented to the point of counting to ten rather than throwing him out the goddam window… As you get older you get a sense of humor about these things.”

  The inexperienced newcomer didn’t know Cohn ran his studio as a private hunting preserve where every starlet was considered his own property. Duke, friendly and courteous and not understanding the rules, had blundered into a mistake, flirting with one of Cohn’s girls. He was handsome, single, and women found him irresistible. It was not unusual for actors and actresses to have brief affairs while they worked together, it was tolerated and accepted. Many years later when he was asked if he had ever indulged in the general practice Duke explained with a wry grin, “Well, you know, you get a mutual feeling and relationship on occasions with them.” At twenty four Duke had been dating Josie for five years and had become quite desperate; she was extremely religious, chaste, and continued to refuse all his advances. He had certainly had many experiences before meeting and falling in love with her. It hardly seems likely that such a virile young man would suffer abstinence for five years given the obvious opportunities that arose for him. Still he never became involved in the general sexual chicanery rife in Hollywood at the time; he always avoided scandal and strenuously denied Cohn’s accusations.