American Titan: Searching for John Wayne

by Marc Eliot

  None of these six Universal films were good enough to elevate Wayne to the ranks of an A-list star. Even though they had better production values than the movies he had made at Republic, they still looked and felt like B movies. When his contract was up, he parted ways with Carr, who made no real effort to keep him.

  Scrounging for work as a freelancer, broke again and needing to make some money, he was hit with the devastating news that on Sunday, March 4, his father had died of a heart attack in his sleep, after not feeling well enough to go to a football game Robert was playing in for the Los Angeles Dons, a semi-pro team that played at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Wayne was grief-stricken, and cried in the car all the way to the funeral.

  Mary did not attend.

  An inconsolable Wayne leaned on the big shoulders of John Ford for comfort. If Ford was tough and mean, henceforth Wayne would assume the role of obedient son for his Clyde surrogate, who played the role of paternal martinet with great delight. It would become the oddest and most effective real-life faux father/fake adopted son working relationship in all of cinema.

  Aboard The Araner one weekend not long after his dad’s death, Wayne confided to Ford about how bad things were going and asked the director, “When is it my turn?” Ford, never one to turn to for sympathy, barked, “Christ, if you learned to act you’d get better parts!” He then changed his tone, as was his way. “Just wait. I’ll let you know when I get the right script.”

  That wait would soon come to an end.

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1937, Ford’s sixteen-year-old son read a three-thousand-word story in Collier’s magazine called “Stage to Lordsburg” by Ernest Haycox, about a group of eight easterners making a pilgrimage across the country by stagecoach that would take them through dangerous New Mexico Apache territory. The story was a very loose and Americanized adaptation of Guy du Maupassant’s “Boule de Suif.”52 When he gave it to his dad, Ford read it and was convinced he could turn it into a character-rich western. He hadn’t made an oater in eleven years, since 3 Bad Men, a silent 1926 feature.53 After the failure of The Big Trail, not just Wayne but most westerns had been relegated to B pictures and serials. The studios believed The Big Trail proved that adults were no longer interested in “cowboy” movies. Ford bought the rights to the story for $4,000 and assigned Dudley Nichols to try to turn it into a workable film script.

  And Ford wanted Wayne to star in it, which would make it an even harder sell. Getting a studio to green-light the picture was one thing; getting Wayne approved as its lead quite another. He had made sixty-five films, none of which had been a big enough hit to make him a bankable star.

  Dudley Nichols completed his film script adaptation of “Stage to Lordsburg” (screenplay credit was shared with Ben Hecht) and renamed it Stagecoach. One night not long after, during a weekend-long poker game aboard The Araner whose players included actor Grant Withers, Victor McLaglen, Nichols, Wayne, and Ford, Ford tossed everyone a copy of the manuscript with the directive they read it immediately.54

  The following evening, during a break in the marathon game, Ford called Wayne on deck to discuss the film. The director decided to toy with him a little, saying that he had signed Claire Trevor to play the female lead, and that almost all the male leads were already cast, with George Bancroft, John Carradine, Thomas Mitchell, and Andy Devine. The problem he was having, Ford said, was that he couldn’t think of any actor to play the Ringo Kid, the young rebel who helps guide and protect the wagon train safely through Indian country. Wayne meekly suggested Lloyd Nolan, a good actor who had recently been in King Vidor’s The Texas Rangers. Ford said no, he was looking for a different type, handsome, strong and tough, and tender with the ladies; someone with star quality. Wayne assumed that didn’t mean him and they both went back below deck to play some more cards.

  The next night, Ford took Wayne back up, turned to him suddenly, and said, “Duke, I want you to play the Ringo Kid.” According to Dan Ford, the director had wanted Wayne for the part from the very moment he finished reading the short story. It was just Ford’s way; he liked to toy with actors, especially Wayne. Years later, Ford himself would explain his reasons for choosing Wayne: “I wanted John Wayne to play [Ringo]. He was by no means a finished performer, but he was the only person I could think of at the time who could personify great strength and determination without talking much. That sounds easy, perhaps, but it’s not.”

  And according to Wayne, “Well, I had made a lot of cheap pictures after Raoul Walsh saw me on the set and gave me the part in The Big Trail. He needed a man of my type, and I was a prop man and handy. Funny thing, John Ford remembered me in that picture.”

  This time, Wayne promised himself that despite his easygoing manner and his reputation of being the type of actor who did what he was told and never complained, he wasn’t going to let anything or anyone—not the film’s temperamental producer David O. Selznick, not even kick-ass John Ford—ruin what might very well be his last real shot.

  Or Josephine. Despite or perhaps because of Josephine’s strict limitations on their sex life rules, the family had kept growing. During their first six years of their marriage, Josephine had given birth to two children—Michael in 1934, Toni in 1936, and now was pregnant with their third, Patrick, who would be born in 1939 (they would have a fourth child, Melinda, in 1940).

  In 1940, after the release of Stagecoach, Wayne complained to his friend and press secretary Beverly Barnett that there was no longer anything sexual about his relationship with Josie. Barnett pointed out she had given him four children, and Wayne bitterly replied, “Yeah, four times in ten years.”

  Chapter 6

  Ford was ready to start production on Stagecoach for David O. Selznick. The independent producer wasn’t the biggest fan of Ford, but he admired Merian C. Cooper and wanted to work with him now and in the future. As far as Selznick was concerned, Stagecoach was not a major project, just another western. To maximize its commerciality, he declared to Ford it needed big-name stars, not John Wayne.

  Selznick insisted that Ford instead use Gary Cooper to play the Ringo Kid, and he also wanted Marlene Dietrich, a much bigger star at the time than Ford’s good friend Claire Trevor, to play Dallas, the young prostitute run out of town and hoping to start a new life. Dietrich had, after all, made her reputation playing one in Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 The Blue Angel, and she had just finished a solid turn in George Marshall’s satirical western Destry Rides Again as the happy hooker Jimmy Stewart falls in love with. Ford, however, remained adamant about Claire Trevor and Wayne, claiming Cooper and Dietrich were both too old to play these roles, even though he knew they weren’t. In truth, Ford could see Cooper as the Ringo Kid, but Dietrich’s Germanic man-devouring dominatrix-with-a-heart-of-ice was something he wanted no part of. When Ford refused Selznick’s casting, and after Selznick tried to lure Ford off the project by offering him a number of others, including the film version of Gone with the Wind, none of which interested Ford, the producer threw his arms up and killed the project.

  Interest in Stagecoach was revived by independent producer Walter Wanger, who had made a string of successful films in the ’30s, among them James Cruze’s 1932 Washington Merry-Go-Round, and Frank Capra’s 1933 The Bitter Tea of General Yen, both made at Harry Cohn’s Columbia. Wanger then decided to go independent, created Walter Wanger Productions, and signed an exclusive distribution deal with Universal. Unfortunately, the first seven films Wanger made there all lost money. In 1938, when he first became interested in Stagecoach, the studio agreed to let him make it, but only if he could bring it in for under $400,000, which necessitated the film being shot in black-and-white and eliminated the possibility of big money to attract any major stars to be in it.55 Ford signed a contract for $50,000 to direct, with a healthy percentage of the back end after the film recouped its negative cost, and final say on casting. The rest of the company received a combined total of $65,000 in salary. Wayne signed on for $600 a week against a minimum of $3,000, a salary that Cooper
would have laughed at.56 Trevor received $15,000 as the female lead; Thomas Mitchell, $12,000; Andy Devine, $10,000; and Tim Holt, in a relatively small role, $5,000.

  The film was sold with the tagline “The Powerful Story of 9 Strange People!” None are conventionally respectable and all are seeking redemption of one sort or another. The characters aboard the stagecoach are going against the grain of their own lives, seeking salvation (in the film, the stagecoach moves from west to east, from Tonto, Arizona Territory, to Lordsburg, New Mexico Territory, against the grain of the country’s natural and morally self-justified expansion west). Ford’s direction and the Nichols/Hecht script offer a heavy dose of morality in the telling of the characters’ individual stories that separates and elevates the film above the rest of the shoot-’em-ups being made after The Big Trail.

  Trevor received first billing over Wayne in the front credits, but not above the title; Ford gave no one star treatment. Louise Platt played the young and pregnant Lucy Mallory, taking the stage to meet her U.S. Cavalry husband in Lordsburg. In many ways Lucy is the opposite of Dallas—one is fleeing from her past, one is rushing toward hers. They are linked by the en route delivery of Lucy’s baby. Dallas assists, helps save Lucy’s life, and by doing so finds new meaning in her own.

  Wayne’s Ringo Kid, as directed by Ford, comes off as a character with the exterior charm of Roy Rogers and inner darkness of Harry Carey. Ringo is a fugitive from justice headed for Lordsburg to avenge the death of his brother and father at the hands of Luke Plummer (Tom Tyler), who he knows will be there waiting for him. George Bancroft is “Curly” Wilcox, the shotgun-riding marshal there to protect the passengers from any and all danger, especially from the Apaches. The balance and the contrast of the characters continues—Wilcox is a lawman, Ringo is a fugitive from the law.

  Andy Devine plays Buck, the stagecoach driver, while the marshal looks for Ringo (Ward Bond was Ford’s first choice to play Buck but said he couldn’t drive the coach for the film’s necessary long shots; most of the medium shots were done with a fake stagecoach on springs, and using rear projection). Physically soft, he is the opposite of the lean and tough Ringo kid.

  John Carradine is the elegant white-hatted “Hatfield,” a southern gentleman and degenerate gambler in search of new worlds (and bank accounts) to plunder. Henry Gatewood, the stiff, brusque, white-haired Berton Churchill, is a bank clerk who is absconding with $50,000 of the bank’s money. Both their lives are ruled and ruined by money—one wants it, one has it, both steal it. Thomas Mitchell is Doc Boone, a drunken doctor from the North, a veteran of the Civil War whose skills have been corroded by alcohol. Salesman Samuel Peacock (Donald Meek, known for playing soft but sensitive characters) sells whiskey. One is a man whose life has been ruined by alcohol; the other a man who makes his living off it.

  When they begin their treacherous journey, they are warned by a young cavalry officer, Lieutenant Branchard (Tim Holt), that Geronimo is on the warpath; therefore his troops will accompany the coach, but only as far as their destination, the fort at Dry Fork. Early along the way, Ringo is found walking along the trail after his horse has gone lame. Ford gives Wayne an unmistakable star entrance, as the camera swoops down from the POV of the marshal to the smiling and beautiful face of the squinty-eyed, grinning Ringo.

  During production, Ford had wanted Wayne to do something special. They came up with twirling his rifle in a circle, the barrel passing under his right armpit. The only problem was, the rifle was too long. Ford then had a few inches chopped from the tip of the rifle so Wayne could perform the trick. It was a decision and a moment fraught with meaning. That single, swooping shot, with the camera high above Ringo (which also signals Ford’s control of Wayne by keeping him below eye-level in the shot), the gun twirl was at once a symbol of the Ringo Kid’s toughness, and an extension of his manhood, a preening, phallic moment (which makes Ford’s “cutting” of the gun even more significant). The rifle was what got Ringo in trouble and will also serve as the weapon of his redemption. The twirling became a signature move for Wayne, copied by endless other “cowboys,” and used by Wayne again most notably when he twirls his pistol in The Searchers just before he tries to kill Debbie (in that film, the gesture hints at a repressed sexual desire for her, one more reason Ethan Edwards has to kill her).

  It was a striking move by Wayne, and gave him a moment of sexuality he otherwise rarely displayed in most of his films, where his strength was usually married to his stoicism. It is one of the reasons Wayne remained an action star rather than a romantic one.

  Although Curly must eventually arrest Ringo for murder, he allows him to join the other passengers. Not long after, Ringo finds himself attracted to Dallas; this moment signals the beginning of his redemption, and hers.

  After arriving at Dry Fork, the cavalry must go on by itself to Apache Wells, to fight Geronimo’s band of warriors. The stagecoach passengers vote on whether to turn back. The majority decides they should continue on to Apache Wells unescorted, intending to reunite once again with the cavalry. Along the way, Lucy then goes into labor, and a shaky Doc Boone delivers the baby, another act of self-redemption. As Dallas emerges from the makeshift delivery room in the stagecoach holding the newborn, Ringo is moved by her maternal caring and affection and knows now that he loves her.

  When the stage reaches its next intended destination, Lee’s Ferry (each act of the screenplay is neatly divided by these stops), the passengers find it decimated by the Apaches. At this point, Curly releases Ringo from his cuffs, so he can cut and attach logs to help float the wagon across the river. Just as it appears everything is going to be all right, the Apache furiously attack, and Ringo heroically jumps on the lead horse to help steer the wagon train (most but not all of the stunts here were done by Yakima Canutt).57 Then the cavalry arrives to save the day, in one of the most rousing rescues ever filmed, and the surviving passengers complete their trip to Lordsburg.

  There is, however, unfinished business, as Ringo must now face Luke Plummer (Tom Tyler) and make him answer for the murder of Ringo’s brother and father. He cannot start a new life with Dallas until this act of vengeance is fulfilled. The marshal knows it, and does not try to stop him. The final shoot-out in the empty streets of Lordsburg is beautifully staged and dramatically exciting. We do not see the actual gunfight, only the start of it as Ringo hits the dirt. And we do not see the end of it, only the result, when Plummer pushes his way back through the swinging doors of the bar, apparently the victor, until he falls forward, dead. The film ends happily, as Ringo and Dallas redemptively escape the shadow of death and ride off into the sunset.

  There are seeds of several Ford/Wayne films to come planted in Stagecoach. Ringo anticipates Ethan Edwards in The Searchers with his determined vengeance; the attack on the wagon train by the Indians anticipates the cinematic formalism of the Indian attacks in Fort Apache, The Searchers, and The Horse Soldiers; and the courage of migration is once again on display in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. These Ford signature stylistics would be repeated over and over with and by Wayne, as each refined his personal style through the other.

  It is in Stagecoach that Ford finally found the cinematic persona he had been searching for to replace Harry Carey. Wayne had Carey’s toughness, stoicism, and all-American strength and the charm (if not the wit) of Will Rogers. Together, Ford and Wayne would make the best films of both their careers, as Wayne visualized Ford’s characters, and Ford deepened Wayne’s character and his own. According to Andrew Sarris: “Stagecoach has been clarified and validated by what followed [in both Ford’s and Wayne’s careers]. Its durability as a classic is attributable not so much to what people thought about it at the time as to what Ford himself spun off from it in his [and Wayne’s] subsequent career.”

  Ford’s direction was tough and unforgiving and illustrated those aspects of the director’s personality that had always been so off-putting. He appeared to take sadistic pleasure belittling Wayne in front of everyone, grabbing hi
m under the chin and humiliating him for acting like a statue (to get, he later claimed, the best performance possible out of him). The more Ford dished it out, the more Wayne took it, which in turn made Ford dish it out all that much more. The first day of shooting he called Wayne a “dumb bastard, a “big oaf,” and made fun of his acting: “Can’t you even walk, for chrissake, instead of skipping like a goddamn fairy?” Wayne secretly sought both consolation and coaching from his old friend and stage director Paul Fix. After his daily tongue-lashings from Ford, Wayne would meet with Paul at his house in Hollywood to rehearse the following day’s shoot.

  According to Patricia Bosworth, “With this film Ford took the western from pulp status into one of the greatest American movie genres of the Twentieth Century . . . Wayne was mesmerizing as the naïve young outlaw seeking redemption . . . but Ford baited him cruelly during the shooting and made fun of all the ‘B’ movies he’d been in . . . Nobody could ever figure out why Duke took so much abuse from Ford . . . years later Wayne told Maurice Zolotow that he thought Ford was simply after artistic perfection . . . ‘Sure he got me angry,’ he said about the making of Stagecoach. ‘He would turn me inside and out. First of all he was making me feel emotions and he knew he couldn’t get a good job out of me unless he shook me up so damn hard I’d forget I was working with big stars like Thomas Mitchell and Claire Trevor. I was insecure . . . He also knew that putting a relatively unknown actor like me in a key role, well, there’s an unconscious resentment among the veteran actors; there has to be . . . Mr. Ford wanted to get these veterans rooting for me and rooting for the picture, not resenting me [so] he deliberately kicked me around, but he got the other actors on my side.’ For reasons that remain mysterious, Ford at his most creative was often his most mysterious.”