John Wayne: A Giant Shadow

by C McGivern

  He looked back fondly to the time when he was just an ordinary man, successful in his chosen field, earning good money, and lucky enough to have found a girl he loved. Life was pleasant and simple and for the first time he began to visualize a bright future. He took on still more work earning another fifty dollars a day as an extra as he tried to save enough to persuade Josie to marry him. The directors at the studio found his pleasant face photogenic, but failed to notice the star power; they knew he was different but they didn’t know how, why or where he fitted into the scheme of things. Ford alone recognized that Duke radiated before a camera, became luminous, and seemed to glow, “The camera never missed Wayne. It had something to do with inner honesty.” To him the nothing, walk-on part of the peasant boy of Hangman’s House had been everything. Ford had seen a “movie face” that conveyed an innocence which had nothing to do with youth. There was an openness about him that even later, when he played men of great violence, still shone through; it was effortless but it made his acts of cruelty on screen somehow less degrading than they might otherwise have appeared.

  Nothing that ever happened to him, not all the physical suffering in his later life, not the dissipation, not the effects of fighting with his whole heart and soul for his place in Hollywood, not his intense dedication to his profession, nor the overwhelming sorrows of his personal life ever took away the innocence or the honesty from the screen performance. At the start of the adventure he had no idea what he possessed, but finally even he understood that it was the underlying self that filmgoers loved and paid their money to see. And he offered himself to the fans, “I don’t work for the producers… I don’t work for the studios… and I don’t work for the critics… I work for the audience. They pay my salary… I always give the best of myself so that people aren’t disappointed in me.” He had always been grateful to Ford for teaching him such values right at the start.

  He had been propping Submarine for Ford when he inadvertently became a stuntman, allowing himself to get roped in for the extra cash that Coach offered. The film, later released as Men Without Women, was about a submarine trapped on the sea bed following an underwater explosion. Duke’s first task on the film was to produce air bubbles from the sinking sub. The scene was being shot round Catalina Island and the sea was particularly rough. Day after day Duke worked a hand pump to produce the required bubbles. Two stuntmen were to dive into the sea and emerge where the bubbles were coming up, supposedly having escaped from the stricken sub through the torpedo bays. But each day the men decided the sea was too rough to attempt the stunt. Ford was desperately trying to keep the picture within budget, and he contemplated scrapping the scene and shooting something on the lot instead. He called a break while he decided what to do. Duke didn’t hear the call and kept pumping for all he was worth. When Ford finally spotted him still furiously working away at the hand pump he fell about laughing, but suddenly wondered if Duke would risk getting in the choppy sea.

  “Duke?”

  “Yessir,” he stopped pumping.

  “Hit the god-damned water.” He did the stunt work no questions asked, he always did everything Coach told him to do, no questions asked, trusting him implicitly. He made six dives that day into the dangerous waters before Coach was satisfied with the footage. When he later signed his work sheet Duke was horrified to find he had only been credited seven dollars and fifty cents bonus instead of the four hundred and fifty he was expecting for doing the stunt! The studio explained that he was employed as a prop man and that was what they paid him as.

  “So what’s this seven dollars and fifty cents? What the hell’s that for?”

  They explained it was a bonus for his extra effort, “I’d nearly killed myself… risked my neck on a stunt that no one else had the guts to do, and all I got was a bonus!” He couldn’t do anything about it but he carried the bitterness of that day around with him for a long time and was still fuming about the incident in the 1970’s. Whenever he told the story the anger poured out afresh; whilst magnanimous in most areas of his life, he also carried John Wayne-sized grudges.

  But he had discovered he was a good stunt man and decided that was what he was meant to be. He had enjoyed all the work he did at Fox, but now set his heart on becoming the best stuntman that ever lived. He was fit and muscular, he thrived on physical action, and, as a child, had enjoyed nothing as much as copying the death defying acts of Douglas Fairbanks. He believed he had been a stuntman most of his young life; jumping off garages, climbing trees, riding horses, nothing had been too extreme and he had no sense of danger. As a stuntman he could earn plenty of money doing all the things he most enjoyed.

  Just as he had become used to looking at a film in terms of its props and its detail, he now came to see them in terms of their stunts and their action, and for the next ten years he considered himself to be a stunt man. He had well and truly embarked on the journey of his life. Whilst he carried much of his unhappy past with him into the next phase, he had finally escaped and would never be part of the “ordinary” world again. He could never return to the life of Marion Morrison, and knew everything that preceded that day in the water had been preparation for the rest of the amazing voyage that he was now embarking on.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WARRIOR ON HORSEBACK

  The Making of John Wayne

  John Ford on Wayne: “I could always tell the big dumb oaf had something very special, but at the start he was just too skinny and too pretty to do much with. I kept an eye on him, gave him bit parts from time to time and he became the son I would have liked to have. He was my favorite boy.”

  “My mind as an actor and later as a director was conditioned by the work I did in my youth. I started out on the Fox lot as a prop boy and I felt that made me, in some minor way, a genius too. I learned the movie industry on the Hollywood back lots, from the bottom up. I served my apprenticeship and got a thorough education in the importance of detail.”

  ...Steely eyes glanced out over the harbor as they so often did, drawn constantly toward the sea, “I was going to sit outside for a while, look at the boats, the lights. You want to come with me?” The voice was little more than a whisper in her ear, it was another attempt to melt her anger, and she looked up at him, smiling at last. He hated anyone to be angry with him, and he bent his head toward her and brushed his cheek against hers, in a familiar gesture, calmer now. He took the glass that she still held and put it down on his desk, and then taking both her hands in his he pulled her closer toward him. “Well, if you’re coming out with me, you better put something warm on, it’s getting colder out there.”

  All week as he prepared himself for Christmas he had been in a terrible, dark mood, barking his orders and giving no one, including himself, any peace. Pat had borne the brunt of his legendary temper, but particularly so when she tried to talk him into going to the hospital for a check-up. He knew it was inevitable, but wanted to delay talking to his doctors, despite her nagging, because he wanted to enjoy the holiday, before all the familiar tests started, and before he would be forced to face a truth he already knew.

  He wasn’t ready to take that step yet, but he felt fretful and angry, irritable, on edge. He had cancer again, but he’d beaten that enemy before, he would beat it again, and he told Pat, “I’ll be goddamned if I’ll spend my holiday in that place, it depresses me. Anyway, what the hell is the hurry? I’ve put up with the pain for so long, a few more days aren’t going to matter - I can put up with it a few more days. Now let’s get the place looking like it’s Christmas.”

  To Pat it had an uncanny resemblance to a scene from one of his movies, “Are you hit sheriff?”

  “Yeah, but it’s just a flesh wound.”

  He hadn’t voiced his suspicions, but she understood him well enough to guess, she also knew him well enough not to argue with him for too long and she had helped him find the decorations, had gone with him to choose the tree, had helped him to do all the things he wanted to do, knowing that nothing would budge
him, and that he would go to the hospital only when he was ready. He’d promised her he would go, and she had to be content with his promise.

  “Let’s go out then.”

  By the time they had put their jackets on it was almost dark. There were guests coming for dinner, but he wanted to breathe in some fresh night air before he made the effort of entertaining them. He loved the patio he’d had built when he and Pilar, his third wife, first moved into the house. Pilar was long gone now, but he still enjoyed sitting out there just watching the water, the boats and the sky, feeling the sea breeze on his face. They were the things that were important to him, were what he had always taken pleasure in. The evenings on the patio overlooking the main channel of the bay were the peaceful moments in his life, the rare moments when he sat still, relaxed in pleasure.

  He was silent, his mind elsewhere, in a different time, a different place. He had not made a film since The Shootist, two years earlier. Even when he had made it the critics had considered the story, about an aging gunfighter, dying of cancer, to be his epitaph, and they considered it a prophetic slice of history. Tonight he wondered if they had been right.

  He sighed heavily, “I didn’t want to retire you know. I’d like to do another picture. I’ve seen a story I think I could do. I need to work Pat, I get nervous, don’t know what the hell to do with myself, I just keep wondering what the hell to do next. I’ve made millions and millions of dollars since I began… I haven’t got even one million left now… what the hell. I need to make sure there’s gonna be enough for everyone when I go. I went without a meal, I’ve had it all kinds of ways, so I’m not worried about me, but I want to make sure the kids will be alright. The world’s a tough place out there Pat”

  “Duke, the kids will all be fine whatever happens.” She didn’t know what to say, he wasn’t listening anyway.

  “I enjoyed it all so damn much. I had such a good time, and there were such special people in my life, a man just couldn’t have known so many dear people in one lifetime,” he wanted to talk about the old days, the studios, the fun, but it was time to get ready for the performance. He stood up sharply, determined it would be a good one, and the two small dogs that had been sleeping in between his feet moaned their discomfort. “Get outta here,” he offered, laughing as they played around his ankles.

  He strode back into the house, tall and upright as ever, leaving Pat to follow sadly behind. She could remember the times when the laughter had never been far from his eyes, when every line of him told of power, ebullience, but it seemed to have drained away so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that she felt unprepared for what she saw now. She hoped she would have as much determination as he had, and after the week she had just spent with him, she knew she was going to need it. He had been irritable about everything and she had stayed out of his way as much as possible. Now she knew he needed her there. When she had gone off shopping alone, just to get away from him for a while, he had been white with anger when she got back. She had taken longer than he had expected and he was livid, but when she tried to explain she had been choosing presents, he growled, “Like hell you were, you were in some bar… Why don’t you just get out of here, and leave me alone? I don’t need a damned secretary anymore.”

  The barbed words hurt because the accusation was absurd and he was being unfair, but he had been in so much pain when she happened to walk in that he had lashed out in uncontrolled fury, attacking one of the few reliable people left in his life. She had walked away from him then leaving him alone, forlorn and helpless. But out on the patio she decided not to leave him on his own again; he hadn’t done anything to deserve that. Whatever he did or said, she knew he needed someone. His words might hurt now, but he was also the gentlest man she had ever known, and if he hurt her it was because he was hurting so badly himself. He had been kind, thoughtful, wonderful for six years, and now she would repay him…

  … John Ford had an enormous impact on the Hollywood version of The American West but his dream didn’t included Duke Morrison back at the start; he was far too young and sensitive to put into his romantically violent image. Luckily Ford was not the only director on the Fox lot, and Raoul Walsh was every bit as successful. John Wayne, the movie star, was all his creation.

  Many of the directors at the Fox Studio had taken notice of the big prop man-cum-stunt man. They acknowledged he was handy to have around, always willing to work hard and so good looking and able they were not afraid to use him in their films as well. But as Duke remembered it now, the start had been a case of him being in the right place at the right time.

  With the advent of the talkies everyone in Hollywood prophesied the demise of the Western, saying there was no room for the vast sprawling outdoor film, that sound could not be reproduced or recorded outside, and this prevented the very mobility needed to make a good Western. Walsh believed it could be done and he developed special sound units to track outdoor action when he made history, shooting the first western talkie. He hid microphones in bushes and on trucks and although the sound quality was rough it was possible to hear horses clattering, guns shooting and bacon sizzling. He had created a revolution in the film world with the first production made on location, now he wanted to go further and make a spectacle western, an epic, and the biggest movie of all time. He planned the film, hired actors from the stage and wanted Gary Cooper for the lead role. Cooper was under contract to Sam Goldwyn and couldn’t be released. It was 1929, the middle of the country’s worst ever recession and Fox, in deep financial difficulty, had already thrown one hundred thousand dollars at the project and they were worried. Walsh refused to give up and continued auditioning every cowboy actor in town. He was getting desperate when, to appease the studio heads, he decided to cast an unknown in the lead role.

  There was a shortage of film actors suitable for the talkies and there weren’t enough stars to go around anyway, so Walsh was ready to take a gamble. On a hot Californian morning he was on his way to the Fox administration building to talk over his unusual decision. His journey took him past a gang moving furniture. He immediately noticed a tall, bare-chested young man whose rippling muscles were covered in sweat. He watched intently and later recalled, “He was juggling chairs as if they were made of feathers. Someone made him laugh and I was intrigued by his expression. He was so warm and wholesome. I knew who he was. Duke had propped on a number of my pictures, but I’d never watched him before. Now I noticed he had a western droop to his shoulders and a way of moving typical to the westerner. I opened a conversation with him and concentrated on the way he spoke. I liked what I heard. I liked the fine physique of the boy, his casual strength, the grace of his movement and his easy voice.” Without ever getting to the casting meeting he asked Duke to grow his hair long for a screen test.

  “Mr Walsh I don’t want to be an actor.”

  But Walsh had decided Duke was going to star in the most expensive epic to hit the screen, The Big Trail. He answered, “You never know Duke, you just never know where life’s going to take you.”

  Walsh was staggered when he saw the results of the first tests. Ford would not have been shocked at how good Morrison looked, but Walsh had not suspected that he would be so right, or that he would sound so good for the part he had in mind. He couldn’t believe how lucky he had been to walk past him on that particular day, noticing his muscles shining in the hot sun. How much luckier it turned out for Duke that he had laughed at the split second he had been noticed.

  The director ran the test for the Fox studio bosses, Wurtzel and Sheehan.

  “How do we know he can talk?” asked Sheehan

  “You heard him talk. It was a hard scene. He did it well.”

  “It’s too much of a risk,” said Wurtzel

  “We’re not going to get anyone any better” Walsh insisted, “He’s the only one I can get for the money you want to pay.”

  He was sure he’d already found the best, he didn’t even want Cooper anymore, knowing Duke would look better in the buckskins des
igned for the lead character.

  “I don’t like his name… it’s no name for a leading man” added Sheehan.

  Walsh had his man.

  Sol Wurtzel agreed, “Duke Morrison doesn’t sound American enough.”

  “How about Anthony Wayne?” asked Walsh, an admirer of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne.

  “Sounds too Italian.”

  “Tony Wayne” … too much like a girl… he already had a girl’s name, they had to steer well clear of female sounding names.

  “Well how about plain John? John Wayne?”

  “John Wayne sure sounds American.”

  Walsh was told to send John Wayne to Sheehan’s office the next day so they could decide how much they were going to pay the star of the biggest western ever made. He was earning thirty five dollars a week as a prop man, standard rate, but Sheehan pondered, “We ought to give him a raise - how about forty five dollars?”

  Walsh couldn’t believe it, “If it ever got out that we paid our leading man forty five dollars and our other actors five hundred we’d be the laughing stock of the industry.” The answer came back, “Well we can’t afford to pay him five hundred dollars. We have to hold the budget down, that’s the whole point of using him in the first place - if we had $500 we could have got you Cooper.”

  Finally, to star in his first film, he was offered seventy five dollars a week and Duke had grinned his delight at the offer of untold wealth, a handsome sum in the wake of the stock market crash. He couldn’t believe his luck, a $40 a week pay rise to go and have some fun. He had no idea that all the others would be getting hundreds of dollars. Best of all, he could tell Josephine he was going to be a star, he would be earning a good wage, and his name would be up in lights, he would have status, he would be someone.