John Wayne: A Giant Shadow

by C McGivern

  Wayne hadn’t wanted to be a western hero at the start, but he always had the appearance of uncertainty in situations where he had to be on the ground, or when confronted by a woman. Those two elements alone so precisely matched Ford’s vision of the western hero that Duke really became an obvious choice. How he looked out of the saddle, the way he walked into dangerous situations became part of the mystique that grew up around him, and the walk had of course come in for much scrutiny from the critics and reviewers. William Wellman said of his friend, “He walked like a fairy.” Ford however saw the walk of the loner, permanently at risk out of the saddle, as he waited for the next threat from his own kind.

  Duke grew tired of people asking him about his walk and his efforts in the early films, “My main duty was to ride, fight, keep my hat on, and at the end of shooting still have enough strength left to kiss the girl and ride off on my horse, or kiss my horse and ride off on the girl - whichever they wanted. The way I walked didn’t matter.” He never planned to turn the walk, the hesitancy with women, or even his ability to ride into mythological hero status. But Coach, it turned out, always had. All the time he was turning out B-movies at Republic he was being watched, and Ford knew his time was fast approaching, but not quite ready. He was studying Duke as he continued to learn to use his weapons ambidextrously and precisely, waiting until he was completely at home on horseback twirling his rifle in his huge hand, completely at home in the role he was to make his own.

  Waiting never came easily to Duke and he was unhappy at the way he saw his career going. He tried discussing it with Josephine, but she really didn’t understand his frustration. She had little interest in his professional problems. She was looking for a more normal existence with a husband who went out and came home at the same time every day, who didn’t smoke, drink or swear. She hadn’t chosen well. And Duke knew he didn’t fit the bill anymore, he felt guiltily aware he had let her down. In private he swore like a truck-driver, it was a habit picked up in his college days and fine-tuned on the film lots. Ella Raines said, “He was prolific in his swearing but he didn’t mean anything. I liked the big old hunk of a thing, never mind his four-letter words. They were like black pearls cast on hay… you got over it.”

  He also continued drinking. On celluloid he fought like a devil, dressed as a dusty cowboy, never used profanity, but often drank. In his own home he dressed immaculately, was noisy and boisterous, and often consumed so much he dropped unconscious in a heap. Josie wanted someone he couldn’t be and there was nothing he could do about it, “Hell, she loved me enough to marry me. The minute we said our “I do’s” she started trying to change me into some other kind of fellow.” By the time he had become entrenched in the world of the western he wanted a divorce and was looking for an escape from the misery of the marriage he had fought so hard for. He needed a comfortable, gentle kind of love, and longed to feel warmth and security. He never enjoyed the fraught, tense, jealous kind that Josie offered. He worked too hard for that kind of relationship, and his own vision of love was one where he came home after a hard day in the saddle to be met on the doorstep by his Latin lover, who would pull off his shoes, feed him and make love to him, where he didn’t have to talk and she would just know what he wanted. Josie hadn’t found her dream, but neither had he.

  And when he arrived at the studio he got to churn out one more boring western, each one telling the same story as the last. In those early pictures he treated his enemies with absolute brutality, his life was always at risk, but the innocent and the weak were safe in the knowledge that with John Wayne around evil would find no hiding place. All would be well, everything put right by the avenging cowboy in the space of fifty fast-moving minutes.

  The reputation was building, but it hadn’t always been like that. At Lone Star he had hit the screen as Singing Sandy. Although Duke had been the first of the singing cowboys, he thought that was open to debate from anyone who had ever heard him sing; he certainly never claimed singing as one of his accomplishments. In fact he was so embarrassed that he fought tooth and nail with his Monogram bosses to drop the idea. He lost the argument but dug his heels in over the clothes he would wear, refusing to budge an inch and Sandy turned up to sing wearing sweat-stained Stetson, dirty kerchief, a soiled check shirt, crumpled jeans and old, worn out boots. Duke told interviewers he had to learn to say “ain’t” for the part as well, but Sandy’s actions were all his own, and the cowboy persona he created then fitted him like a glove for the rest of his career. He became, to all movie-goers everywhere, the cowboy, rough, tough and sweaty, with dust caked deep on his stubbly face. He had won a hard fought battle at Monogram and the victory brought unexpected reward.

  At home he was less successful, he lost most of the battles there, but whenever he had a particularly nasty session with Josephine, Ford was always around to pick up the pieces, and he found himself accepting more invitations to go sailing. They became closer during Duke’s troubled times; he was able to pour out his problems to the crusty director, but when he mentioned he wanted a divorce, Ford was privately horrified. There were children to consider and Ford, like Josie herself, was a strict Catholic. He advised Duke not to rush into anything and was seriously worried about Duke’s future. He knew the best thing was to get him away from his troubles and he insisted on taking him away most weekends.

  Duke had come to rely on his friends. But he wasn’t the only member of the group who needed the free and easy times; Ford enjoyed them just as much as he did. The director had already been around the film industry for many years and was reaching the height of his profession; he found it stressful and taxing. He was also a very complex character, often disliked by those he worked with. Duke and Bond were different and he enjoyed spending time in their company. He drank heavily, but with those two it was never an issue, they could more than keep pace. They never treated him as a famous Hollywood director; they accepted him in a mutually satisfying friendship. Of them all, perhaps Duke stood a little apart from the rest, wholeheartedly enjoying the camaraderie they shared, but never willing to give himself up fully. There were always other things, other people in his life.

  But the years of being able to live successfully in separate, neat, compartments were coming to an end, because in the one place he should have known contentment he could find no peace at all. When he was home he wanted to relax as the man he thought himself to be. It was impossible because Josie wanted him to be someone else entirely. He had grown up hating the sound of raised voices, detesting the angry scenes that filled him with dread, and at home he tried to avoid confrontation, and rather than argue he apologized, “In those days I was always apologizing for something.” He was weary of apologies, and of trying to be someone he knew he wasn’t. He had already left his wife and family behind and they saw only the worst of him. He saved his best for work, his friends and for John Ford. Duke’s third wife, Pilar, wrote many years later, “So much of my husband’s character and lifestyle, the good and the bad, seems a product of those days on the Araner and his association with Pappy Ford. Pappy had always wanted a hell-raising, hard-working son-of-a-bitch like Duke for a son. If Duke hadn’t existed, Ford would have had to invent him. Perhaps in a way he did.”

  He buried himself in his work. Many of the films he starred in for Carr and new boss Herb Yates were made on location in the deserts he knew so well and few Hollywood actors understood better how a man should look when he was living and working in those parts. Into each of his undistinguished B-movies he carried an aura of knowledge that won him a legion of fans, all eager to see John Wayne ride onto the next adventure. The reputation grew in direct correlation to the huge effort he was putting in and it was all about to pay off.

  Duke understood Yates, recognizing him as a man who cared nothing about movies, only about money, “He never involved himself directly in production and only came on set once in a while, but he had a sharp pencil on budget. He just wanted to show profit. He was a business man and I got on with him fine. M
y movies had always been money makers and whilst they continued to triple his investment Yates was a happy man.” He never took the time or trouble to look at film scripts and had no guilty conscience about the quality of the pictures his company turned out. That attitude gave Duke his big chance, allowing him to take on more responsibility himself. He had increasing power at Republic because he did care, and knew what was required to get a film out. He was becoming a big fish in a small pond. The merger of the Poverty Row studios under Yates meant the pond was suddenly much bigger and his own influence grew accordingly. Yates didn’t care enough to stand in his way whilst the results were making so much money. He trusted his star to get the work done, and sat back and reaped the rewards. Yates was a happy man, Duke was less so. He enjoyed getting his own way but was more aware than anyone else that the films he was turning out were disregarded, “Some were better than others, some were high-quality-B-movies.” He continued to do his best but said, “The aura at Republic wasn’t so much Poverty Row. That wasn’t really the problem. Let’s put it this way… it was a Western action studio, and the Western was largely ignored. It was the bread and butter of the industry but all the bigger studios looked down at what we were doing there.”

  As his popularity grew he ached for another chance to work on an A-movie and to get away from the Western studio. He longed for success, perhaps seeing it as deserved compensation for the misery of life with Josie. The more unhappy he was at home the greater was his drive to succeed away from it. When his head hit the pillow and his eyes closed on another back breaking day, it was to dreams of stardom, of fans clamoring for his attention, and of walking around the big studios and talking to the biggest moguls. He could feel success deep inside. Then he woke to another day of grind on Poverty Row, another day of struggling in the dust, churning out one more fifty minute oater.

  At any time Ford could have offered a helping hand, but explained, “Duke wasn’t ready, he had to develop his skills as an actor … I wanted some pain written on his face to offset the innocence … but I knew he had what it took to make it in the movie business. He was hungry.” Ford waited for the instant he saw hunger. But as he struggled Duke was also watching; the relationship worked both ways and he began copying Ford’s ideas in his own pictures. He developed his own trademarks and worked as hard as he could on every aspect of the business, studying everything and everybody, determined that superior knowledge would lead to better things He already knew much of what went on in the backroom, knew what the lighting technicians and soundmen did, the cameramen, the prop men, and technically he learned to never waste a moment of his time on a film set. As an actor, however, he admitted he still had a long way to go, and he hated seeing himself on screen, “I felt so damned clumsy all the time.” But he forced himself to watch and learn from his mistakes.

  In those films he was always kissing the girl, and though he felt uncomfortable, he concentrated on what he had to do, and eventually began playing love scenes more smoothly, performing with more conviction. He learned well, if not easily. Other cowboy heroes of the time such as Autry and Roy Rogers fraternized with their horses, but even though he denied it, and was obviously uncomfortable around women, Duke was, right from his very earliest movies, a ladie’s man. That alone set him aside from all the other cowboys of the day. It also increased his box-office appeal by fifty percent. A female fan once whispered longingly in his ear that it was his wonderful thighs that she went to see! He laughed at the idea that any woman would pay money to see his thighs. She had not been interested in him because he tried harder than anyone else, or knew more than anyone else, but because he had nice thighs.

  Despite the fact that he was primarily a western star, it seemed the strong sexual undertone of his work appealed to women, and they enjoyed the hard-action, often violent B-movies. The natural and obvious discomfort and vulnerability were always evident and a few understated, graceful actions made his longing almost tangible, the eyes communicating an urgent desire to the audience. He believed his characterizations only came to life when they expressed desire and love for women and no one knew better than Duke that real men needed women. His longing for love set his pictures well apart from all the rest.

  Women liked his body, his looks, would pay to see his thighs, and his leading ladies liked being kissed by him too. Louise Brooks, who had been a star during the silent era, made Overland Stage Raiders with him. She first bumped into him on set and was completely bowled over, “He was a giant of a man, so big he overshadowed everyone around him. His height alone gave him the most amazing sexual authority. Looking up at him, I thought… this is no actor but the hero of all mythology miraculously brought to life. His physical presence was his greatest asset then, central to the image he created, both in real and symbolic ways.” In that first instant she saw exactly what Ford and Walsh already knew. Brooks enthused, “He did everything with full gusto, everything was full force, when he laughed everyone heard it, when he put his arm round my shoulders it felt as though a tree had crashed down on me; but I felt protected and safe within that arm. There was so much more … He was innocent and awkward, naïve, a chivalrous romantic, at the same time he remained stubbornly independent. He rarely lost his head over a woman.”

  Though he worked so hard at developing a character that related naturally to women on screen, his intention was to define “the real man.” His every action was designed to reflect the parameters of ultimately masculine behavior and it was the way he behaved toward women that made him the “ultimate male” for generations of American men. He was consistently tender, gentle, low-key, and soft in his courtships, his passion restrained rather than carnal, both on and off screen. Maureen O’Hara said of him, “He is the softest, kindest, warmest, most loyal human being I’ve ever known.”

  If his dealings with women came across in his films well it was because he studied all his early mistakes so carefully. He puzzled constantly about how he might have done something better. Each film was scrutinized in the minutest detail as he searched for ways to improve. He hated almost everything he saw, and could often be seen squirming in embarrassment as he watched. His obsession with doing everything more realistically inevitably meant a total break with Hollywood traditions as he began insisting on innovative changes. He saw no reason why a low budget should imply a split from the real world he was sure B-movies could be improved. He actively sought ways to develop the cheaply made films and soon spotted where improvements could be made. Whenever he was attacked in a film he began retaliating with anything that came to hand; that was how he believed a real man would respond. His instincts and reactions rarely let him down and his fight scenes immediately improved. He and Yak started choreographing the action scenes themselves and what they achieved was revolutionary. Duke explained, “I’d made up my mind that I was going to play a real man to the best of my ability. I felt many of the early western stars were too goddam perfect. They never drank or smoked or wanted to take a girl to bed. They never had a fight. When a chair was thrown at them they just stood looking surprised, and they didn’t fight in that spirit. They were too sweet and pure to be dirty fighters. Well, I wanted to be a dirty fighter if that was the only way to fight back. Hell, if someone throws a chair at me I pick it up and throw it right back. I wanted to be a man who got dirty, who sweats and who really enjoys kissing a gal he likes, who gets angry, who fights clean when possible but will fight dirty if he has to. You could say I made the western hero into a rough neck. That was why the singing cowboy idea was wrong, it was phony. My fighting had to be realistic; I tried to copy the style of Jack Dempsey who was a tough street fighter. I was being Dempsey when I traded punches with Yak or any other heavy. I loved playing the fight scenes. I bought some newsreel of Dempsey’s fights and tried to duplicate some of his moves; and how he moved his arms and fists. At that time actors were punching each other in the shoulders and faking it, but I put all my strength into my punch, and the stunt men taking those punches had black and blue should
ers. They didn’t like it, but no one said anything except ole Yak, who complained there must be a better way of doin’ it. I couldn’t hold back when I felt myself gettin’ worked up with hatred for the villain… I wanted to kill the son-of-a-bitch. Matter of fact I liked those old fight scenes better than any other stunts I ever did. In a fight in the movies there are no rules and you purposely have to exaggerate every punch you throw. And both men have to stay in balance. In a real fight of course the idea is to knock the other guy off balance. Well one day I was sick of Yak bellyaching about his bruised shoulders so together we tried to come up with a better way. The cameraman said if he put the camera at a certain angle it would look like my fist made contact with Yak’s face, even though it actually passed right by. When we tried it and checked the rushes it looked real good. “The Pass System” became the accepted way of doing a fight. The best thing about it was I could now punch as hard as I liked, put all my power into it and not hold back. I’ve been told I’ve had more fights in pictures than any other star… I’ve also had a few fights off screen.”

  He remained keen to do his own stunts and fights, no matter what objections his producers or directors raised. It was his favorite part of film-making, though he made plenty of mistakes, and was always getting hurt. In A-pictures the mistakes could be edited out, but in the world of the B-movie they usually remained for all the world to see. The custom of one take was almost law and some fine examples of his early mistakes were caught in his B-movies. In The Trail Beyond he was supposed to leap off his horse onto a wagon, a stunt he had performed many times before, but he couldn’t get his horse close enough to the wagon and he ended up falling, hitting the ground hard and rolling over three times before coming to a stop. His reaction to the fall was unusual. As the cameras kept rolling he stood up, climbed back into the saddle and carried on to finish the job he had started, racing after the wagon and completing the transfer at the second attempt. What the person in the cinema saw was a man doing his job, a man willing to get injured and determined to give his best, and his first failure wasn’t such a bad error. Eventually, with Yak’s help, he mastered the art of leaping onto, and off, a moving horse!