by Scott Eyman
“He couldn’t have cared less about that kind of thing,” said Gretchen Wayne. “He never saved anything from his own career. Michael saved posters, Michael saved wardrobe pieces. If the house had burned down, Granddaddy would have said, ‘Is everybody OK? Then let’s move forward and build another house.’ One time Michael had a fire in the garage. He lost some pictures, and tools for woodworking and electrical work. He mourned it for 20 years. His father wouldn’t have cared about that at all.”
Working or at ease, he was a creature of routine. If he was at home he would spend the morning writing letters and business correspondence, the early afternoon talking business or scripts. Later in the afternoon, he and Pilar might go to Laguna Beach and trawl through antique shops—he could spot a Georgian table or Tiffany lamp at twenty yards. Or he might go to the Big Canyon Country Club, looking for a game of chess or bridge. Dinner would be with the family, with perhaps a screening of a movie.
He exuded much of the self-confidence of his screen character. If he walked into Tom Kane’s office and found a script on Kane’s desk that he didn’t want anything to do with, he would simply flick it on the floor without saying anything. He’d do the same thing with a hat on a desk if he didn’t like the person it belonged to. In the 1960s, bumper stickers started appearing saying “John Wayne for President.” His brother, Bob, shook his head and said, “No. Emperor. He wouldn’t go for that four-year re-election stuff. It would have to be for life.”
Although Wayne felt he was a true liberal in the sense of being in the liberal arts, as well as being open to listening to other ideas and opinions, political parameters were enforced. “None of his kids were Democrats, not that I can think of,” said Gretchen Wayne. “If you didn’t vote the way he did, you had better know why. After Grandaddy died, one of my kids voted for Clinton and another one voted for Ross Perot. Michael couldn’t believe it, but they had their reasons so he couldn’t argue with them.”
Even his children found the relationship with John Ford curious. “His relationship with Ford was a much different relationship than father-son,” said Patrick Wayne. “It was a mentor relationship. He forever held Ford up and gave him total credit for his success and for giving him the opportunity to be where he was in the business, which may have been less than true. I think my father would have been a success at whatever he chose. He was driven and focused and ambitious. But the opportunity was presented by Ford and continued to be, although it would become awkward at times. He wasn’t that submissive with anyone else.”
With the crafts people, the filmmaking rank and file, Wayne’s status was always high. “He holds no malice,” said George Coleman, a jack-of-all-trades who also worked as Wayne’s driver. “He knows I’m a Democrat. With some people you’d either have to switch or you wouldn’t be working for them, but not Duke. He never turns to anybody and says, ‘You’re just a laborer, what do you know?’ He’ll say, ‘This man has something to say, let’s listen. Maybe he has an idea we can use to make this job better and faster.’ He never belittles anybody.”
“If you had an opinion about something, he wanted you to state it,” said the character actor Ed Faulkner, who made six pictures with him. “He did not like yes-men. Even if he disagreed with you, he’d want to hear your argument. And he might say ‘I don’t agree with you,’ but he would always let you say your piece. Which was not always the case with the people around him. With Bruce Cabot, for instance, things were either black or white. And if Bruce disagreed with you, he’d turn and walk away, just snub you. Duke would always let someone say their piece.”
The shy and uncertain boy, the young actor who wanted to play every kind of part, now implicitly demanded that his parts be modeled on the man he had become. “The only difference between Grandaddy on the screen and Grandaddy in the room was in his wardrobe,” said Gretchen Wayne. “What he projected was the man. His basis for his career after a certain point was that he would not trick or cheat the public in any way. ‘Those are the people that put the food on my table,’ he would say, and he had the utmost respect for them. Early on, he played light comedies, but as his role grew, as he played a military man in World War II, he began to understand what the public expected of him—a man who was heroic in the way he dealt with life. That was the consistent element in all of his films. Even True Grit.”
More than anything else, he believed in loyalty. If Wayne came to believe someone could be trusted he would take them aside for a heart to heart: “If you ever want anything, anything at all, call me. Don’t call Mike. Don’t call Mickey [Rudin, his lawyer]. Don’t call Jack [Gordean, his agent at the Feldman office]. Call me. I mean money too. Any amount you want. I’ll give it to you. It’s important you know you have me behind you.”
John Wayne.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Rod Taylor was up for the co-starring part in a Wayne picture called The War Wagon at Universal, but Kirk Douglas read the script and liked it. Since Douglas was under contract with Universal, The War Wagon would use up one of his commitments. Wayne went to Lew Wasserman about Taylor, but the studio prevailed and Douglas played the part for $300,000 plus 15 percent of the gross after break-even until he got a total of $675,000, after which he got 10 percent of the worldwide gross in perpetuity.
The War Wagon was directed by Burt Kennedy. “The only reason The War Wagon was a hard time,” said Kennedy, “was that Duke started me—picked me up off the street. Kirk Douglas said in his book that I was afraid of Duke. Hell, everybody was afraid of him.”
Art director Alfred Sweeney built a western town in Durango, Mexico, in six short weeks. When it was finished, there were twenty new, beautifully aged buildings of wood and brick supplementing some pre-existing structures. The saloon and a mining company office featured detailed interiors that could be used for cover sets in bad weather.
The picture got off to a rocky start when Douglas showed up with a costume that included a flamboyant ring worn over a black leather glove—an expert attempt at scene stealing, as well as a test for the young director. Wayne’s response was instantaneous: “If you don’t get that faggot ring off that sonofabitch, I’m walking off the picture right now!”
Kennedy obediently walked over to Douglas and said, “Don’t you think the ring is a little much, Kirk?”
“No, I think it’s just fine,” Douglas replied. “What do you think?”
“It’s great, just great,” said Wayne. (Reaming out a director was one thing, reaming out another actor on the same level as him was quite another.) Later, Wayne sidled up to Douglas and asked, “You’re going to play it in that effete fashion?”
“John, I’m trying not to let my effeminacy show.” (The nature of the relationship can be gauged by the fact that Douglas always refused to call Wayne “Duke.”)
Durango would become Wayne’s favorite place to shoot movies and hang out. There wasn’t really much to do other than drink, play golf—there was a good nine-hole course—and drink some more. The airstrip had no lights, so planes had to land and take off during daylight hours. “Duke loved it,” said Harry Carey Jr. “People didn’t bother him there. They weren’t movie-conscious. You could go shopping without being bothered.”
But other people weren’t so thrilled. You couldn’t drink the water, and there was a sign that appeared in all the bathrooms of the very modest hotel where the production personnel were lodged: “Please Shake Out Your Boots Before Putting Them On.” The sign referred to the preference scorpions have for hiding in warm places. For Wayne and the stuntmen, this was the Real Thing; for a lot of other people, it paled next to locations in the south of France.
Wayne and Bruce Cabot shared a house on location. On Saturday nights they drank. One night Cabot came back from a night out to find Wayne weaving through the house. “Sleep well,” said Wayne. “There’s very few of us left.” He went into his bedroom, then came back out again. “You know,” he said, “there weren’t too goddamn many of us to start with!”
Howard Keel was playing a comic
Indian and remembered that his main problem was staying sober, while all about him the stuntmen were drinking and being serviced by hookers from a private house. After a month, Keel began to think longingly about being serviced himself, so decided to fly home to his wife for the weekend. Wayne didn’t like it, but he let him go.
In Keel’s memory, Wayne was the director and Burt Kennedy was strictly the writer. William Clothier remembered how Wayne took over on the set one day, grabbing Keel and showing him how he thought Keel should play a scene. Keel was struggling with dysentery and didn’t take kindly to being manhandled.
“I’m watching this,” remembered Clothier, “and Keel started to get pretty red. After the scene was over I went to Keel and said, ‘I saw your reactions . . .’ and before I could say anything [else] he said, ‘If he puts his hands on me again, I’m gonna clobber that son of a bitch.’ ”
The next day, word filtered down to Wayne that Keel had been upset and Wayne came over to him. “I think you’re a damned good director,” said Keel, “and I like and respect you. But I don’t like being pushed around. I’ll do anything you like, but don’t push me. I’ve got a bad temper. I’m not as good at brawling as you are. I only have one good arm, and if I lose my temper, I’ll not brawl with you, I’ll try to kill you.”
Wayne looked at Keel and said, “I’m sorry, kid. I understand.” Wayne and Keel ended up friends; Wayne would ask him to appear in The Green Berets, but Keel was booked for a theater tour and had to turn the job down.
Bill Clothier had seen Wayne manifest control before and understood it. “Duke doesn’t mean anything by it, it’s just the way he is. That doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t have any business putting his hands on people. When Duke’s working with Ford he comes up and says, ‘OK Coach, what do I do?’ Ford says, ‘You walk over to the horse, get on and ride out.’ Duke will then walk over to the horse, get on and ride out. When he’s working with another director, it doesn’t happen that way: ‘Goddamn it, I’m tired. I don’t want to get on the horse.’ That’s the way it works.
“Duke hasn’t patience with anybody. His own family, other actors, anybody. If you’ve got a big-name star, he’ll keep quiet. He wouldn’t think of telling [Robert] Mitchum how to play a scene. Bill Holden too. But you take another actor . . .”
Not all of Wayne’s suggestions had negative results. One day he was watching Kennedy shoot footage of six horses pulling the massive War Wagon down the street. He walked over to Kennedy and asked him if he remembered the ominous rumble that preceded the earthquake in the MGM movie San Francisco. That sort of thing would be good for their picture. Start the wagon further back, before the camera picked it up, and the soundtrack could precede it with a low rumble. The suggestion was used in the picture to great effect.
Robert Walker Jr., the son of Jennifer Jones, Wayne’s co-star in New Frontier at Republic, was also appearing in the movie. The younger Walker had only been in movies a few years, and was a good friend of Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson. He was part of a very different generation who would view Wayne with occasional hostility. Nevertheless, Wayne went out of his way to make the young man feel comfortable.
“He defined the word ‘professional,’ ” remembered Walker. “It was really the last of Old Hollywood. He was in control, but he didn’t micromanage things. I never felt intimidated by him, I felt comfortable with him. I felt he would take care of things and that things would be all right as long as he was around. He had confidence and security and he gave everyone that worked for him that same confidence.”
Walker remembered a slightly different chain of command than Howard Keel. “Duke was the boss, but he let Burt Kennedy set things. Burt consulted him on the setups. But the way it was written, it was almost as if the picture made itself, as if it didn’t need any direction, or even a whole lot of supervising. The cameraman, the crew, the costumers, they were all the best. The grips, the wranglers, the stuntmen, they all loved being there and they all respected Duke tremendously and loved him. He was the presence that kept it all together.”
For Walker, it was a kind of paid vacation. He would grab a horse and ride up above Durango and sit in the canyons and watch the lizards. Down below, the stuntmen chased the War Wagon. He’d sense when he was needed and he’d make his way down in time for his shot. Wayne was still climbing onto his horse, but if any serious riding was needed, Wayne’s double, Chuck Roberson, was called upon.
Wayne said kind things about Walker’s father, and commented about how much his son resembled him. “For me, John Wayne was a grandfather figure; he reminded me of my grandfather, Phil Isley—there was a kindness there, although there was no question that he was the boss. But Duke didn’t lord it over you or make you feel small or insignificant. He was very kind and supportive of everybody. He didn’t give advice. He just set an example by the way he behaved on a set. I always knew instinctively what to do, but if I hadn’t, I could have learned just by watching him.
“John Wayne? I had the pleasure, the honor of working with him.”
Kirk Douglas and Wayne had good chemistry on-screen, although Wayne was mightily irritated when Douglas was late to work one morning—a cardinal sin in Wayne’s theology. “We’re waiting for our star,” he said sarcastically.
It had to be difficult navigating between two alpha males, but Burt Kennedy did his best. “Duke was tough but he was good,” Kennedy said.
You had to go to the mat with him. On War Wagon, there was a shot where he’s at a bar, and it’s the first time the audience sees Kirk. Duke said, “You’ll never use this shot.” He didn’t want to do the shot, but he was just being contrary. The thing about John Ford that actors resented was that he was tough on them. But actors really love that. They’re like children—actors want discipline, and they want praise. Duke would get mad at me and say, “You never tell the actors they’re any good.”
I never saw the guy blow a line. Ever. As big as he was, Duke never forgot making those five-day westerns, and he had an entirely different attitude about work as a result. He was like Bill Clothier, the wonderful old cameraman. You want a cameraman who’s inventive, but not too inventive. Bill was great, and he was in his 60s when I worked with him for the first time; his camera operator was ten years older than he was. And they both could go longer than the young guys. Young crews are spoiled; the first thing they say is, “Are we gonna work late?” You never heard that from Bill or Duke.
Kennedy came to believe that Wayne had superb instincts about movies, knew when a scene wasn’t working and often knew how to fix it. “It was uncanny how he could put a finger on something.” The problem, however, was that while he may have always been right about the problem of a given scene, he could be very wrong in the way he presented his argument. If you didn’t agree with him, you were wrong.
“I remember, after The War Wagon, he went to make The Green Berets. People asked me, ‘Are you going to direct The Green Berets?’ And I said, ‘I’d rather join the Green Berets.’ ”
Dean Smith, who was working on the picture as a stuntman, said that the problem was really very basic: “If you were directing Duke, you had to be smarter than him. That’s all. He was an aggressive guy who knew what he was doing. He was so stout in his own character, and a lot of people are not that confident. My grandmother had a saying that applied to Duke: ‘He had a steel backbone and a wire tail.’ He was tough. He would stay out there all day with us stuntmen. He’d rather work with the stuntmen than be at the hotel. He loved making pictures and he liked the people. He expected you to be just like him and do what was expected of you. But I’ll tell you, if you’re going to ride into a battle, you want to ride with Duke.”
Another stuntman, Hal Needham, noticed that by this time Wayne had to husband his energies, especially for fight scenes—the cancer surgery had left him with a limited energy. “He just couldn’t do a whole bunch,” said Needham. “If we did a fight scene and needed a close-up, he could do a half dozen punches and do them
well, but after that . . .”
The War Wagon emerged as a quintessentially brawny entertainment, the essence of late-period Wayne, complete with a thundering Dimitri Tiomkin score and an unusually strong supporting cast that included Keel, Walker, Keenan Wynn, and, as the heavy, Bruce Cabot, half of whose $1,000 weekly salary was garnished by Los Angeles marshals, for reasons that remain unclear.
The War Wagon cost $4.2 million, a couple of hundred thousand over budget because of weather. It returned domestic rentals of about $5.5 million and it went into profit in mid-1973, when it passed $10.7 million in worldwide rentals—two and a half times negative cost.
Overall, The War Wagon was a good-sized hit, but Wayne knew the picture’s value precisely. “It isn’t a cold picture, but it lacks any real warmth, any getting inside the characters. But there are some tremendously funny scenes in the picture and Kirk Douglas is great in it. . . . There is a nice little love story, but outside of that we’re just two big roughhouse characters. But . . . that sort of thing did all right for Victor McLaglen for quite a few years, you know.”
Although Howard Hawks’s El Dorado wasn’t released until the summer of 1967, it was made in late 1965 and early 1966. Leigh Brackett believed that her script was the best of her career, but there were several problems. Hawks was coming off two dismal flops (Man’s Favorite Sport? and Red Line 7000), and John Wayne’s character died in the end. Hawks, as had been conclusively proven by Red River, was allergic to unhappy endings and retreated to something he knew would work, if only because it had worked before: he had the script rewritten until it became an uncredited remake of Rio Bravo.
Although Wayne had fired Robert Mitchum off Blood Alley ten years before, there were no hard feelings. Hawks called Mitchum to offer him the part. “Bob, how about a western with Duke Wayne?”
“Sounds great. Where are you going to shoot it?”
