by Scott Eyman
Both Hatari! and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance had been single-picture deals with Paramount. But now Wayne entered into a six-picture contract with the studio. There was talk in the trade papers of a ten-picture deal, with the money to be paid out up front, indicating Wayne was still in financial straits from The Alamo, but the contractual evidence indicates that the deal was for six pictures. The cash crunch, however, was real; Wayne was earning only $500,000 a picture—well below his already established market value.
The deal was for seven years, from August 6, 1962, to August 5, 1969. The first picture was Donovan’s Reef, with the producers being charged $750,000 for Wayne’s services, with $30,000 a week overage after twelve weeks. (The $250,000 difference per picture appears to have been Paramount’s guaranteed profit on the long-term deal.) The pictures (Donovan’s Reef, Circus World, In Harm’s Way, The Sons of Katie Elder, El Dorado, and True Grit) were, on the whole, a strong lot, and Paramount sweetened the deal by giving Wayne a share of the copyrights on Katie Elder and True Grit.
The deal gave Paramount some much needed security, because the studio was in rocky shape and about to get rockier. The problem, according to studio head Howard W. Koch, was that Charlie Bluhdorn, whose Gulf & Western Corporation bought the studio in 1966, was “bright, funny, and liked broads” but didn’t have a clear idea of what he wanted from a studio head.
Koch took the studio over from Martin Rackin, and would later be replaced by Robert Evans. As Koch remembered it, “I came into it for two years and three months and thought about committing suicide twice. I never met so many hateful people in my life.”
Koch was hampered by a lot of production deals that had been made before he took office. Jerry Lewis’s appeal was fading, but Paramount was committed to producing and releasing his pictures, each of which was grossing less than the one before. Worst of all, however, was the deal that had been cut with Otto Preminger just before Koch came on board. “Preminger—that dirty son of a bitch. He made seven pictures [actually five] for us, all losers. He took advantage; he looked down on me. He was totally unlike someone like John Ford, who was a leader, who got you involved. Ford was one of those guys with every scene in his mind, completely prepared.
“I looked at Preminger’s first picture, then looked at the contract. He could do any picture he wanted up to a certain budget point. Nobody could do anything to it. Even In Harm’s Way got fucked up and never did the business it should have. I should have just killed him.”
As Koch knew, directors come and directors go, but John Wayne went on forever.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Romanian-born producer Samuel Bronston made a splash in 1961 with King of Kings, a remake of DeMille’s silent classic. That had been followed by El Cid (a great hit) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (a great flop), all of which were financed via country-by-country advances secured by money from DuPont interests. Now Bronston and Paramount had a deal for Circus World. Paramount’s share of Circus World amounted to an investment of $2.5 million (shades of UA and The Alamo!). Bronston wanted John Wayne, and Paramount was agreeable to making Circus World part of its overall deal.
There were problems from the beginning, because the failure of The Fall of the Roman Empire had put Bronston in severe straits. (Paramount was concerned when Bronston failed to make a contractual $5,000 pension payment for Wayne.) James Edward Grant had bought a ranch in Merced, near Yosemite—six hundred acres, four hundred head of cattle. What with ranching’s high overhead, Grant was always up for making some money. With Wayne’s deal for Circus World set—his co-stars were to be David Niven and Claudia Cardinale, but Niven was soon replaced by Lloyd Nolan—and the script in chaos, Wayne asked Grant to go over to Madrid, where the film was to be shot, and help. Grant didn’t really want to go—Ring of Fear seems to have permanently soured him on circuses. But Bronston upped the ante by offering Grant a three-picture deal. Grant instructed his agent to ask for a ridiculous amount of money, which Bronston gave him.
Once he got to Madrid, Grant saw that there was trouble afoot. Grant would go over to Bronston’s house for dinner, where he noticed that the producer’s collection of famous paintings was shrinking—Bronston was selling assets to raise short-term cash.
Grant found himself beset by all manner of problems: the script, the Bronston organization, and Frank Capra, the prospective director of Circus World.
Grant believed that Bronston “is an absolute genius at raising money and peddling pictures” but had comparatively little interest in their production. Grant found the Bronston organization a rats nest of competing interests, with everybody playing courtier to Bronston, the better to feather their own nest. Of all the problems, the worst was Capra.
Wayne had originally told Paramount to push hard for Henry Hathaway, with Capra as second choice. But Paramount wanted to hold Hathaway in reserve for a Paramount picture that, as it happened, was never made, so Capra was hired—a great director years past his greatness.
What set Grant off was Capra’s treachery over the script. “I, who should be inured to treachery, having worked with Hungarians, have just had a terrific shock. This prick Capra has been having daily singing sessions with my grandchildren and eating and sleeping at my house and at the same time has been putting a Sicilian stiletto between my shoulder blades.”
Grant discovered that Capra was writing the script behind Grant’s back, had circulated copies to the top brass, and had told the brass that Grant was on a free ride; that he didn’t actually write anything, just checked scripts for Wayne, who then forced the studio to put Grant’s name on the script.
Grant then found that Capra’s script actually incorporated some of the material Grant had been writing. “It’s as if you put shit and honey in a Waring blender. His stuff is so incredibly old-fashioned that Duke comes out sometimes as Harold Lloyd, sometimes as Oliver Hardy and sometimes as . . . Stan Laurel. When you read this thing it is easy to understand why this guy hasn’t had a hit since [screenwriter] Robert Riskin died.”
Grant went to Philip Yordan, Bronston’s production ramrod, whom he referred to as “my one-eyed Jew” (Yordan had eye problems), who banished most of Capra’s acolytes. But there was still the problem of Capra. During a meeting Capra informed Grant that no matter what he or anybody else put in the script, Capra was only going to shoot what Capra had written. If anybody didn’t like it they could take a walk. “It’s amazing that a guy with a track record of ten flops in a solid row can be so insanely egotistical, but he is,” reported Grant.
For his part, Capra looked at Grant and saw a familiar Shakespearean character. “I didn’t realize [that] when you took on Duke Wayne you took on a small empire,” wrote Capra in his memoirs. “And part of that empire was a personal writer by the name of James Edward Grant. Jimmy Grant was . . . a writer who attached himself to a male star and functioned as that star’s confidant, adviser, bosom playpal, baby sitter, flatterer, string puller and personal Iago to incite mistrust between his meal ticket and film directors, especially name directors.”
According to Capra, Grant announced that “all you gotta have in a John Wayne picture is a hoity-toity dame with big tits that Duke can throw over his knee and spank, and a collection of jerks he can smash in the face every five minutes. In between you fill in with gags, flags and chases.”
This does sound like something Grant would say, but he was undoubtedly trying to make himself look like the only sane man in an insane situation—at one point he fantasized about Batjac taking over the Bronston organization. Then there was the hard fact that Circus World was ridiculous material for a director who was just trying to hang on, and, most recently, hadn’t been able to turn the trick with A Hole in the Head or Pocketful of Miracles—stories more or less in his wheelhouse. Capra was under the impression that it was 1940 and he was coming off Lost Horizon, You Can’t Take It with You, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But in the Hollywood—or Madrid—of 1963, John Wayne had far more power than Frank Capra
.
Phil Yordan was willing to fire Capra, but only if it was absolutely necessary—for one thing it would cost $150,000 to make Capra go away; for another, Yordan was concerned that Wayne would take a walk unless they could land an acceptable replacement director. But Capra was gone from the picture in January 1963, and Henry Hathaway got a phone call from Wayne. Circus World needed a director. After what Hathaway remembered as a week’s work of rewrites with Ben Hecht, Hathaway flew to Madrid and found that he couldn’t stand Grant, whom he termed “a phony.”
Phony or not, Grant put his finger on the core problem of the Bronston organization when he observed, “These people are all promoters and are only anxious to get the show on the road and get on to the next promotional gimmick. They really don’t give a damn who’s in charge as long as somebody is making some kind of film and as long as there is huge production in it.”
While Hathaway and Grant frantically rewrote, Wayne sailed the Wild Goose across the Atlantic to Spain. He would always remember the trip as the biggest thrill of his nautical life. They went down the Baja coast, through the Panama Canal and the San Blas islands, with stops in the Caribbean. In Bermuda, a hotel mogul named Cooley came aboard and mentioned that he’d always wanted to make a voyage across the Atlantic.
Wayne knew a cue when he heard one, and told Cooley the only thing standing between him and his dream was a pair of deck shoes. Unfortunately, Cooley turned out to be a bad sailor, and the crossing encountered some miserable weather. “We had gale forces on us for four days,” remembered Wayne. “For 14 hours we were going to 45 degrees! This fella Cooley just lay back there in a blanket, the waves cleaning up after him. When we finally got to the Azores, and he put his foot on that ground, if they hadn’t had an airport on that place, he’d still be living there. I don’t think he’ll ever get on another ship as long as he lives!”
Initially hired as the romantic lead in the picture was the young Australian actor Rod Taylor, who was coming off The Time Machine. Taylor had accepted the part on the basis of Wayne, and hadn’t read the script. When he got to Spain, he discovered that there was nothing in the script for him to do.
“Why don’t you write something?” asked Hathaway. At that point, Taylor politely bowed out, to be replaced by John Smith. “I met Duke when he was with that monster Henry Hathaway,” remembered Taylor. “And I was so surprised at how he liked me and showed it. I didn’t feel that I would fit with him comfortably, but we immediately liked each other.”
For Wayne, Circus World was little more than a paycheck, but it introduced Taylor into Wayne’s orbit. Soon, John Ford cast Taylor as the star of Young Cassidy, his biographical film about Sean O’Casey, and Taylor found himself drawn toward the inner circle. “Working with Ford gave me a certain cachet in Duke’s eyes. He had such an emotional thing about Ford. I honestly think that he was still intimidated by Ford, and Duke was always amazed that Ford didn’t scare me. I didn’t give a shit, I just liked the man. In any case, he took it for granted that I was in the family. He wanted to keep me around as a sort of mini-McLaglen.
“Duke’s great joy in life was to beat the shit out of me in poker. I never truly won. He was a good chess player, but he was also a good poker player—stud and five card. He played for the pleasure of the game and he played as long as there was a bottle of Conmemorativo on the table, because he insisted it didn’t give him the hangover whiskey did. He hated to lose—the old jock thing.”
Production on Circus World began at the end of September 1963 on an overly idealistic schedule of seventy-three days for the main unit and thirty-nine days for the second unit. Wayne was contractually bound to work until December 18; after that he was entitled to $30,000 a week overage. But there were weather problems at locations in Toledo—the location was flooded out at one point—and the film went far over schedule.
Wayne was quickly alienated by co-star Rita Hayworth, who was chronically late, didn’t know her lines, and was surly to the crew. That experience may have been what led him to give his children a lecture about how to treat people: “Never lose the common touch. Never think anyone is better than you, but never assume you’re superior to anyone else. Try and be decent to everyone, until they give you reason not to.”
The picture had been shooting for two months when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Wayne had been a Nixon man, but he had a sneaking affection for Kennedy—he knew an Irish rogue when he saw one. Wayne had sent congratulations to Peter Lawford when Lawford’s brother-in-law was elected, and also sent a telegram to the president after his inauguration speech, calling it “thrilling.”
Years later, in a wide-ranging conversation that touched on his own realization of how he had assumed a position of secular leadership that had once been monopolized by politicians, Wayne said, “You didn’t have to be a Kennedy fan to be decimated by his assassination. It was a time to rethink a lot of things we believed; I had to reaffirm to myself my belief in man. John Kennedy could have been good—he was just beginning to realize his responsibilities. The Bay of Pigs taught him a great deal, like living up to his word. . . . Potentially he was a leader [but] we never had a chance to find out.
“There are so many people who can no longer look to politicians, but they’ve begun to look at me . . . so I’ve got an obligation.”
Oddly favorable words, but this was also a period in which Wayne was quietly engaging with many on the Hollywood left. He and the politically liberal Paul Newman exchanged “Dear Duke/Dear Paul” letters and books. Wayne sent Newman a book by a conservative writer, and Newman sent Wayne material by Herman Kahn. Neither seems to have changed the other’s mind, but they enjoyed jousting with each other.
It would be pleasant to report that Jimmy Grant’s take-charge attitude somehow saved a dicey project from going off the rails. Pleasant, but inaccurate. Bronston’s organization was going down, and so was Circus World. In March 1964, just after production had ended, news broke about the ruptured partnership between DuPont and Bronston. “It looks like there are a lot of problems ahead,” wrote Paramount’s Frank Caffey to Bronston production supervisor C. O. Erickson. He didn’t know the half of it.
Grant was still in Spain keeping Duke and his son Michael apprised of the situation, and of worrisome developments with Duke’s brother, Bob Morrison, who was also in Spain. Morrison had gone over to work on Circus World and felt that Henry Hathaway had knifed him out of an associate producer’s credit. His response was to drink heavily.
Wayne’s response to all this was, said Grant, typical: dig in his heels and “defend the indefensible,” in this case Hathaway, who Grant thought had first manipulated Morrison, then knifed him.
Like many dry drunks, Grant was finely attuned to other people’s alcohol intake, which in Bob Morrison’s case was huge. “Morrison looks dreadful,” he wrote to Mike Wayne. “He is the color of Spanish toilet paper and wears the expression of a man going down for the third time. He drinks all night every night with that bunch of bums . . . and then nips all day to keep alive.”
On top of all this, Grant had seen about an hour of Circus World. It was awful, “but what is worse is that Duke is bad. He has so many violent reactions when there is nothing to react to that I am very much afraid a lot of critics will single him out for some of the knocks.”
When the movie was finally completed, people were appropriately mortified. Circus World is beautifully designed by John DeCuir, even though Bronston’s financial troubles are made obvious by one or two recycled sets from The Fall of the Roman Empire. A shaky sense of production is indicated by an intermission in a film that only runs 135 minutes.
Wayne plays Matt Masters, who runs a combination circus/Wild West show around the capitals of Europe; his adopted daughter is Claudia Cardinale, complete with unexplained thick Italian accent, his lost love is Rita Hayworth. Before the inevitable reconciliation, there’s some thinly motivated spectacle—most stirringly a large ship capsizing and a fire sequence directed by Richard Talmadge—inter
spersed with some pretty good circus acts.
That’s on the positive side. On the debit side are some of the worst process shots of the sound era and a script that Herbert Yates would have rejected as old-fashioned. (The hash is explained by the credits: “Screenplay by Ben Hecht, Julian Halevy, James Edward Grant, from a Screen Story by Philip Yordan and Nicholas Ray.” And that’s not even counting whatever Frank Capra contributed, or the blacklisted Bernard Gordon, whose credit was restored in 2000.)
Jimmy Grant tried to take his name off the picture, but his agent told him not to be stupid, leave it there for future residuals, of which there were none. The reviews were dire: Time wrote that “Cinerama . . . magnifies a meager tale beyond all reasonable proportions. To sit through the film is something like holding an elephant on your lap for two hours and 15 minutes.” Produced for slightly less than $8 million, North American rentals were $3.5 million.
Circus World was the second consecutive Bronston flop, and his Madrid studio completed its slow-motion collapse. Bronston spent the rest of his life in court, battling people who wanted the money he had promised them. Grant received $50,000 for his work on Circus World—less than he had been promised, more than he deserved.
For several years, Wayne had been troubled by a hacking cough, the result of his four- and five-pack-a-day smoking habit. On a voyage to Mexico’s Coyote Bay aboard the Wild Goose, Wayne wanted to go water skiing, but it went badly. Getting up on the skis was difficult for him, and afterward he was badly winded, then beset by a coughing attack. He never went water skiing again.
One day, as he opened his fifth pack of cigarettes and lit a fresh unfiltered Camel off the butt of an old one, he looked at his nicotine-stained fingers. “So maybe it’s six months off the end of my life,” he said. “But they’re not going to kill me.”
