John Wayne: A Giant Shadow

by C McGivern

  As the result of his heroic efforts he had finally got enough money together to support Josie and after six long years of struggling against the inevitable, Dr. and Mrs Saenz resigned themselves to a wedding. Duke had doggedly continued to court their daughter, obsessed as only he could be.

  His determination won the day, as it so often did, and on June 24th 1933 they exchanged vows in the gardens of the Bel Air estate owned by Loretta Young’s mother. Her father gave Josephine away. And she took Duke’s breath away when he saw her standing on the lawn, no man ever felt more proud of his bride than he did as he pulled her toward him and placed her tiny hand in the crook of his enormous arm. They smiled brightly for the traditional wedding photographs, Josie looking coyly up at her hero. There was no sign of the worry she felt about his repeated promise to change his ways, and on Duke’s face, the relief was plainly written. He had finally got the prize he had sought for so long. It was a day neither would ever forget as they drank imported champagne, and ate the finest foods.

  He was still under contract at Mascot, he was given no time to take his bride on honeymoon and they settled into their new apartment before he returned to work only days after the wedding. They were special, happy days and they lived long in his mind.

  Although Josephine was soon pregnant she found no pleasure in Duke’s world. He often left for work before five in the morning and didn’t return home until late in the evening. She wanted him home more, away on location less. It was the start of a conflict that was to shatter both their lives and eventually their children’s too. Duke had more than one contract thanks to the efforts of Kingston and he was working harder than ever at both Monogram and Mascot. She constantly begged him to stop, to get an ordinary job, be an ordinary man, make their marriage an ordinary marriage, be as she wanted him to be. Duke felt secure at work but the happiness began to fade from his eyes and long-forgotten battles were resurrected once more to haunt him. It seemed that Josie could only be happy at his expense, there was to be no shared joy after all. Instead of making more films, as he would have preferred, he decided to stay home with Josie when he wasn’t working for Mascot. He told Al not to bother finding him extra work for his six month break. But time began to drag and he looked forward to getting back into action, his body couldn’t be idle, he ached to climb back into the saddle.

  He took pleasure in family life, it was what he had always craved and yearned for. He longed to feel relaxed in his own home with the woman he loved and he looked forward with eager anticipation to the day their baby came to complete the picture of domestic bliss. But a main part of Duke’s dream included long, tiring hours at work. When he was not working he was lost. Days at home were unstructured, he was bored, and as always when he was not working, he had little discipline, he drank more and was more likely to break the promises he had made to Josie. His restless mind soon started to wander, and his itchy feet began pacing the floors of their home. The caged tiger gave him no peace, nor Josie either.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with her, he had always desired her, but he needed more than just her. He needed his friends, and he needed to find an outlet for the wild side of his nature. Increasingly, even though he was still only working six months of the year, he began spending less time with his bride, and more with his friends. He often spent weeks away aboard John Ford’s boat The Araner fishing and drinking with the rest of the film fold.

  His increased involvement with Ford and Bond inevitably led to a corresponding increase in his desire to get back to work. He knew he couldn’t sit around for months at a time, being a husband and an imminent father. His very nature meant that no matter how well paid, six months employment was just not enough. He was never happier than he was working seven days a week, sixteen hours a day, for months at a time. He’d had a nice time with Josie, but the honeymoon was over and he was frustrated by his peaceful existence. He had to fill his time, to find an outlet for the energy that swamped him and his comfortable life, and which eventually engulfed everyone else around him too. His wife could find no place in Duke’s world, she simply couldn’t keep pace with him. He continued struggling to keep his life in its neat compartments, but he was less successful now than he had been in the past.

  Apart from anything else he had changed, he was no longer the sweet young boy Josie had first fallen in love with. He had experienced dizzying success, starring in the first epic western ever made, he had been involved in the scandal created by Cohn, and he had tasted bitter defeat. He had a greatly enriched knowledge of the world, and was used to living in the often rough and ready land of the B-movie. During those years meanwhile, Josephine had remained at home under the watchful eyes of her doting parents. They moved in different worlds. It didn’t mean they didn’t still love each other, but Duke came to see the wedding as the start of a bad dream, realizing almost immediately that they were no longer well suited. He still wanted her and would have been more than happy to take her along with him on his journey to stardom. He was intensely hurt that she was unwilling to join him. Of course on the other hand, he made no effort to fit into the social life she loved. When he came home from a hard day’s filming he was exhausted, too tired to want to join her parties, he wanted a bath, food, some pampering care, soft words of comfort and then bed. He passionately longed for a happy and complete marriage, but soon discovered that Josie found no joy in the desire he had loyally maintained for over six years! Many of his films emphasized his sexual frustration and longings he typically had to resist, to save the day. Duke thought it ironic that he was so often called on to portray a man compelled to suppress his desires, how rarely he was allowed to settle down and get the girl. Unlike so many other stars of his day his need and sense of loss was always painfully and realistically obvious.

  In one world he was still Marion Morrison, devoted to Josie. In the other he had become John Wayne, film star. In the first he should have found satisfaction after his long wait, but didn’t, and in the other he was feted and fawned over, and found his body was in great demand. Marion Morrison, or John Wayne; he was just a man. Still, he had made promises to Josie, and he was a man who honored his promises, no matter how tough that proved. Duke became the same man he so often portrayed, in his own home, where he had hoped for so much more. Josephine had become a habit in his life long before he married her, and now it became a severe struggle to honor the vows he had made to her. Apart from his obvious difficulties, he had also fallen deeply in love with life as a film star, and that love affair carried him further and further away from his wife, and on toward temptation.

  Whilst both he and Josie had been delighted when she became pregnant the speed with which it happened caught him by surprise and presented him with more problems than he was sure how to handle. He felt the familiar urge to earn more money, if he was going to be supporting an increasing family he had to do it in style and he felt compelled to find extra work. The offers had been drying up since he cut his availability down. His contract had run out at Mascot, and his friend Al Kingston had left the agency that he remained tied to. His contract was not with Kingston, but with the Leo Morrison Agency. Morrison never seemed concerned whether Duke worked or not, he made no effort to find him anything and Duke became increasingly worried; in his eyes, the ability to support his family was the mark of a real man. A man who couldn’t feed his wife and children was a failure; how often had his mother said that? Of course he was driven by a need greater than that of merely earning a living and from April to September he “worked like hell” doing any work he could find for himself.

  Once again he was a Poverty Row actor knocking on the studio doors begging for another chance. He was sometimes lucky, there was some demand for cowboys, he picked up bits here and there and Warners still offered small parts from time to time. But his lack of success didn’t improve his frustration or do much for his quick-fire temper either. Josie was getting on frayed nerves and he began making his general discomfort known loudly and regularly. They drifted
further apart.

  Anger flared to violent temper when he couldn’t get Leo Morrison on the phone. He was paying him ten percent of every pay check he earned, yet the agent was doing nothing. In desperation he sought out Kingston to explain his position. Agents at that time signed actors up for seven year stretches and Duke was trapped in the Leo Morrison deal he had signed originally with Kingston. He told Duke he could still get him work, if he could get out of Morrison’s clutches. Naturally the agent wouldn’t release him, he was too good an earner for that, but he agreed he could work with Kingston and he would still take his cut out of Duke’s salary, getting ten percent of everything for doing absolutely nothing. Duke didn’t care and Al knew just where to place his old friend.

  Trem Carr had set up Monogram Pictures on Poverty Row to make the type of quickie western that Duke knew so well. Carr liked what he had seen of his work and recognized his capacity for earning money. He signed him to make eight pictures a year under the Lone Star banner, at twenty-five hundred a picture. Monogram could wrap a picture in five days. Carr paid a thousand dollars in advance and Duke used it to pay off a mountain of debt.

  Trem Carr took a big liking to Duke, saying, “He was disciplined and always willing to give a good days work for his money. He had excellent habits, was always at make-up on time, never loafed about on location, and he worked really fast. He rarely needed to be told anything, and usually knew not only his own lines but everyone else’s as well. He was an unusual actor; most were slovenly about time-keeping and work.” Duke flourished and at Monogram the first visible signs of improvement could be seen. He was on the way to becoming an accomplished actor under Carr’s tuition. The head of the studio took the time to get to know him and they spent many hours talking about old films and the industry. Carr often asked him about his work and where he saw himself going, “The films I made after The Big Trail, God I just hang my head in shame, they were mostly low budget musicals about kids in school, and they were goddamn ridiculous. And that was embarrassing because the only friends I had then were kids still in school. Goddamn! I tell you, when those pictures came out, the razzing I got from college kids. It was murder. Some jerk was coming up with story lines and who did they get? Well, what the hell, let’s put Wayne in it! Helen Hayes said, “If you learn to throw away bad lines, that’s what will make you a fine actor”… well… I want to tell you… I’ve had plenty of chances to become a fine actor already Mr Carr. I’ve been in plenty of pictures that were written in the backroom after the brandy.”

  Carr told his new star that he didn’t see things changing for him at Lone Star Productions, not in the near future anyway.

  Herbert Yates, a “testy little Scotsman in a beret,” who owned Consolidated Film Laboratories, a processing operation, had noticed how much money both Nat Levine and Trem Carr were making producing B Movies. He moved in, bought and merged Monogram, Mascot, and some of the other Poverty Row companies, to form Republic Pictures. Trem Carr became vice-president of the new group and insisted on taking Duke to the newly formed studio with him. Everyone associated with Republic, except Carr, was astonished to find that he was already one of the biggest box-office attractions in the South and Southwest. No one was more surprised than Duke was himself at his rapidly growing fame and fortune.

  Meanwhile John Ford had moved to RKO and was directing huge hits like The Informer. He and Duke hadn’t seen much of each other for some time. Ford appeared to be jealous that it had fallen to Raoul Walsh to give his boy the big break; stardom, he believed, should have been bestowed by him. They had drifted apart as they waited for destiny to take a hand in their affairs, “To this goddam day I don’t know why he didn’t speak to me then.” Duke guessed he was being punished for something he had done to upset the old man, others believed it had more to do with the director’s legendary mean streak, but they were not destined to remain distant. Their lives were bound together by some outside force, and eventually Ford was compelled to bring Duke back into the fold. He was never allowed to drift away again, “Whenever I had a vacation or he had a vacation, we usually took them together. Some of these may have been just a day or two on Pappy’s boat, others stretched into months.”

  Their vacations varied from the quiet and relaxing to the hell-raising and dangerous type that often turned into drunken chaos as Ford, Duke, Bond, and Henry Ford sailed off together on The Araner, usually heading for Mexico. During the hot days they fished, Duke always smothered from head to toe in thick, white sun lotion in a vain attempt to stop him burning, and at night they drank tequila and told lies. Duke loved it when they docked at Mazatlan where he was able to wander the streets barefoot, staggering drunk, unshaven and still covered in his greasy lotion. Sometimes he sat on his own outside a bar, drinking from a bottle, listening to the bands playing in the saloons and whorehouses with a stupid, fixed smile on his face, alcohol running unchecked down his stubbled chin. The skipper’s log gave a graphic account of how Ford’s boys spent their time on December 31st, 1934:

  1:18pm Went ashore - got the owner, Fonda, Wayne and Bond out of jail. Put up a bond for their behavior.

  9:30pm Got the owner, Fonda, Wayne and Bond out of jail again. Invited by Mexican officials to leave town.

  The log went on to describe how “Fonda and Wayne” continued, throughout the trip, to slip ashore together to spend their nights in local whorehouses and bars. Though they never hurt anyone else in their escapades, the captain of The Araner thought sometimes they were lucky not to have been killed.

  One of the stories that circulated Hollywood involved Henry Fonda who passed out early in a Mexican bar. Duke paid the owner of the bar to place his pet boa constrictor on the dozing Fonda’s lap. When he struggled back to consciousness he screamed in horror and threw the snake straight at Duke who was waiting, giggling in anticipation. Considering his loathing of snakes it is obvious he wasn’t expecting the thing to come back at him, but nobody ever dared mention his terrified reaction to his face. No one ever knew the truth behind the long catalogue of stories involving Ford’s wild stock company; each member was a great raconteur in his own right. It didn’t really matter, what was important to them was the enjoyment they found in each other’s company. It was during such trips that Duke saw how Ford escaped the pressures of work by drowning himself in alcohol. He learned to do the same. He had always consumed large amounts of alcohol, now Ford gave him license to carry on… but only when he wasn’t working. In 1934 he and Ford formed the exclusive Emerald Bay Yachting Club “to promulgate the cause of alcoholism.” All members were to be “career-orientated” or “gutter-orientated” drunkards. It was a yacht club for people who didn’t like yacht clubs, a drinking association that spoofed all the more pretentious Hollywood clubs. It attracted a huge following including James Cagney, James Stewart and Ronald Coleman. Duke’s membership was important, it brought him to the attention of many important people in Hollywood and he said at the time, “There is no snobbery in alcohol.”

  Many people who saw Ford and Wayne together then believed the director was already grooming the actor for the future. Duke had no such belief himself. But Ford was preparing to lift the western to epic proportions, to create a nation’s mythology on film, and in John Wayne he had already chosen his mythical western hero, “There’s nothing finer to film than a running horse, and no one looks better on that horse than Duke.” In Ford’s mind he was the man on horseback and no one saw more clearly how John Wayne fitted into the vision, “He was the perfect canvas on which to paint the patterns of the Old West.” Instantly recognizable as he rode into the midst of an ordinary town where no one knew or cared where he came from, its citizens had only to glance in his direction to see someone hard, isolate… a killer, his character capable of facing any challenge on the way to the climax where he inevitably overcame a supreme ordeal before winning his reward.

  The movements of Ford’s stories almost exactly matched those of Wayne’s and inevitably when he starred in one of his pictures Duke
could see, only too clearly, the reflections of the crises of his reality, often with all the same tragi-comedy elements present. It was from his work with Ford that he learned he had to go on, “If you have any kind of strength you can’t drop out. If you have any strength left you can’t be through with life. It’s ridiculous to think that way… people make mistakes and they come back.” For John Wayne there could be no giving up. Ford had seen exactly such quality the first time he laid eyes on the skinny prop man, knowing even then, he possessed the characteristics that would enable him to portray the hero of his mythology. Ford heroes rarely had any involvement with women, and Duke himself freely admitted, “Women scare the hell out of me… I’ve always been afraid of them” … his personal attitude toward women, that of combined idolization and fear, fitted his Westerner’s persona and he hardly had to act at all when Ford did set him against a woman, and his lonely, fearful face told its own story, words were rarely needed. He hated all pretence, frills or anything “too mushy.” He conveyed everything visually, often without the use of a line. Claire Trevor said, “There was such power in it. When his face was in close up emotion leapt from his eyes. A close up of Wayne really meant something. Romantic chemistry was built just from the looks he gave. When he made eye contact it was more exciting than anything he could have said.”