by Marc Eliot
The 1940 Academy Awards took place February 27, 1941, at the Biltmore Bowl of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, its entrance dressed up for the occasion with a fifteen-foot neon outline of Oscar. The host of the proceedings was Walter Wanger, the producer of The Long Voyage Home, who was the president of the Academy. That might, with the inevitability of war hanging in the air, Hollywood decided to throw itself, and America, one final peacetime fling. To mark the occasion (both the reality and the unreality), President Roosevelt delivered a radio address, during which he praised Hollywood for its defense fund-raising efforts, put in a plug for Lend-Lease, and thanked a Hollywood that unified, a patriotic industry that worked together in harmony for “promoting the American way of life.” After, while Judy Garland sang “America,” the Republican faction of the Academy, led by Louis B. Mayer, none of whom could stand Roosevelt, pushed their plates away in disgust. Hollywood was anything but unified.
The nominees for Best Actor were Charles Chaplin, Henry Fonda, Laurence Olivier in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, Jimmy Stewart in George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story, and Raymond Massey for his performance in yet another Lincoln film, John Cromwell’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Although Fonda’s performance towered over all the others, the award went to Jimmy Stewart, the result of the Academy splitting its vote between Fonda, Olivier, and Massey (Chaplin, supremely unpopular in Hollywood, didn’t have a chance). Best Actress went to Ginger Rogers for her performance in Sam Wood’s Kitty Foyle, over Katharine Hepburn (The Philadelphia Story) in her comeback, Joan Fontaine in Rebecca, and Bette Davis in William Wyler’s The Letter.
For Best Screenplay, Nunnally Johnson and Dudley Nichols both lost, for The Grapes of Wrath and The Long Voyage Home, respectively, as did Dalton Trumbo for Kitty Foyle, and Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison for Rebecca. All fell to Donald Ogden Stewart for The Philadelphia Story. Best Picture saw Hitchcock’s Rebecca walk away with the honors (the award going to producer David O. Selznick rather than the director). Both The Grapes of Wrath and The Long Voyage Home lost in that category, but John Ford walked away with the Best Director Oscar for The Grapes of Wrath, over Sam Wood, Hitchcock, Wyler, and Cukor. Ford’s triumphant year could not be denied. “I love making pictures,” Ford said later, “but I don’t like talking about them,” and instead went fishing with Wayne during the Academy celebrations.
IF WAYNE HAD FELT ADRIFT after the commercial failure of The Long Voyage Home, 1940 would not turn completely forgettable. Among other things, he fell in love with a gorgeous displaced German actress with an insatiable desire for hot sex with American boys and men, even hotter if she could break up their marriages or in some other ways humiliate and disgrace them. Her name was Marlene Dietrich, and when she came into Wayne’s life, she juicily sucked every last drop of resistance, loyalty, morality, and guilt out of him. Sex to Dietrich was destructive and debilitating and decadent and debauched. It was the way she liked it, and the way she wanted to make Wayne like it.
It was said by friends of the actress that she liked to put Wayne on his knees and hold his face close between her thighs and make him recite the Pledge of Allegiance to something higher even than his flag and his government.
Chapter 8
By 1929 the heat had gone out of American film director Josef von Sternberg’s silent films, and he accepted an offer from the UFA (Universum Film-Aktien Gesellschaft), Berlin’s leading film production house, to make a sound film in Germany simultaneously in German and English. It was The Blue Angel, the story of distinguished Professor Unrat, who falls for a gorgeous blond showgirl and prostitute, Lola-Lola, who, in turn sexually enslaves and humiliates him, literally turning him into a clown. When she degrades him in front of another man, he returns to the schoolhouse where he once taught and, in the midst of a fit of mad rage, dies.
The film was a huge international hit and made a star out of Marlene Dietrich, a former showgirl and German silent film star, who then made Sternberg into her real-life Unrat. His love for Dietrich (who was married) turned into a perverse addiction he could feed only by making more films with her. After she came to Hollywood, she made a point of sleeping with every one of her leading men, in films mostly directed by Sternberg, twisting her costars out of sexual shape until they could no longer stand straight. Her so-called victims were all willing and eager for a taste of her luscious exotica (including the young and beautiful and notorious swordsman Gary Cooper, whom she reportedly fell in love with while making Sternberg’s 1930 Morocco); Sternberg’s Unrat-like obsession with Dietrich, and her inability to successfully break away from him, eventually ruined both their careers, as each of the seven films they made together under contract to Paramount became increasingly fetishistic and overstylized. By 1935, both had become box-office poison.
In 1939, Dietrich’s career was fully revitalized when she managed to land the female lead in George Marshall’s western spoof, Destry Rides Again (a.k.a. Justice Rides Again), produced by Joe Pasternak, a remake of an old Tom Mix silent film, based on a Max Brand novel. This was Jimmy Stewart’s fifth and final film of 1939, a very prolific year for the young actor. Even before production began, Dietrich let it be known that she intended to make a full-course meal out of him. Rumors persisted for months after the completion of Destry that she had gotten pregnant by the actor and had an abortion, reportedly arranged by her friend Louis B. Mayer.64
She then lost all interest in Stewart and dropped the smitten actor without ever bothering to tell him to his face that his time with her was up. It was a heartbreaking turn of events for the young bachelor, who took a long time to get over her. It was prime Dietrich, whose pattern of hot seduction and cold heartbreak would be put into play again with her next victim, John Wayne.
Tay Garnett, a former naval flying instructor turned gag writer for Hal Roach, Mack Sennett, and Cecil B. DeMille before developing into a solid, if unspectacular film director, was a good friend of Wayne. Both were members of the Emerald Bay Yacht Club. In the fall of 1940, Garnett was assigned to helm Seven Sinners for Universal. Destry had made Dietrich bankable again, and Universal wanted her immediately for another film produced by Pasternak, this one an updated, (very) loose adaptation of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Garnett knew exactly whom he wanted to play opposite Dietrich. The role called for a rugged tough guy, and he chose Wayne, whose own star had risen after Stagecoach before stalling following The Long Voyage Home. The only thing standing in the way of Garnett casting Wayne was Dietrich. She now had costar approval, something that came along with her huge $150,000 fee to make the movie, a deal Feldman, who had signed her on as a client, had negotiated.
When Garnett first introduced Wayne to Dietrich, she played it cool, but afterward she whispered in the director’s ear, “Daddy, buy me that!”65 According to Pilar Wayne, “A meeting was set up in Dietrich’s dressing room at Universal. Duke recalled that day quite vividly. He said that Dietrich invited him inside and then closed the door and locked it. He’d never been in a major star’s private dressing room before and stood gawking at the luxurious appointments.
“Dietrich broke the awkward silence. ‘I wonder what time it is?’ she said, giving him a smoldering look. Before Duke could glance at his watch she lifted her skirt, revealing the world’s most famous legs. A black garter circled her upper thigh with a timepiece attached. Dietrich looked at it, dropped her skirt, and sashayed to Duke’s side, saying in a husky voice, ‘It’s very early, darling, we have plenty of time.’ ”
IN SEVEN SINNERS,66 DIETRICH’S NAME was billed above the title—“MARLENE DIETRICH IN SEVEN SINNERS—and Wayne’s was half the size—“With John Wayne.” Dietrich plays Bijou Blanche, a South Seas music hall girl (call girl), a variation of the same easy-virtue seductress she had played in every move since The Blue Angel. She was so big she was able to demand that no other woman in the film could have blond hair (causing one of her costars, Anna Lee, to have to dye her natural-blond hair dark brown).
For this film, Wayne traded in hi
s cowboy chaps for navy whites, and is stationed at the American air base at Boni-Komba, where Bijou happens to be “appearing” at the Seven Sinners Café, protected by her “bodyguard” (pimp), the gruff Broderick Crawford. One night she meets U.S. Navy Lieutenant Dan Brent (Wayne), who falls head over heels in love with her, much to the dissatisfaction of his commanding officer. In a statement of defiance, Lieutenant Brent vows to resign his commission and marry Bijou. Not long after, at the café Brent gets into a rumble with a disgruntled ex-lover of Bijou and is knocked unconscious. He is taken back to the ship, where he slowly regains his senses, while Bijou and her bodyguard (and another girlfriend) slip past the authorities and head out for the next port.
The film was released in October 1940 and proved a critical and commercial success, due in large part to Dietrich’s drawing power at the box office. As for Wayne, playing opposite a sexual bombshell like Dietrich reminded audiences how little heat he really had as a leading man. Rough and tough was his sweet spot, and Seven Sinners is filled with saloon-wrecking fistfights that Wayne felt more at home with.
Off-screen, of course, it was a different story. Wayne was like a sweaty adolescent around Dietrich. He couldn’t get enough of her. He had never before had a real whiff of the kind of feral sexuality Dietrich exuded. Certainly there was nothing like that for him at home or with any and all the Claire Trevors of Hollywood. He was crazy for Dietrich from the first time she led him to her bed. He stayed there, at her beck and call, for the next three years and didn’t appear to care who knew it. She was the bad girl he’d never had, the forbidden fruit he’d never tasted. She was as free and easy with her body as Josie was uptight and rigid with hers. Dietrich used that to her advantage and made him not just like sex with her, but crave it.
The gaggle of gossips that included Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper, and Jimmie (Jimmy) Fidler all made reference of the affair in their columns and radio broadcasts, with eyebrows raised in surprise and outrage.67
Josephine was not amused. Even in her insulated social world, it was impossible not to hear about her husband’s wild romance with his decadent German costar. If her marriage to Wayne had had any chance at all of succeeding, it ended with the arrival into his life, and hers, of La Dietrich.
He was in love with this glamorous actress, who had shown him her world, and he now wanted to show her his by introducing her to American football. He took her to USC games, which she enjoyed. He took her fishing and hunting north of Los Angeles, and up to the great Northern California woods and through the vineyards. They were two opposites that seemed so strongly attracted to each other. Dietrich lived off her exotic sultriness, her frilly underthings revealed as easily as her smirk, while Wayne epitomized the American male stoic, the strong, silent type who preferred to let his fists do his talking and to keep his lovemaking a private affair. She was his fantasy of Europe, sexually uninhibited and wild; he was hers of America, big, tough, impervious, sexually repressed. Lacking the refinement of his German counterparts but capable of beating them to a pulp, he managed to escape being the next Unrat to her real-life Lola-Lola. Instead she made him her own personal King Kong.
They carried on in public as if they didn’t care who saw them kissing in nightclubs over dinner, and that proved the final blow for Josephine, who informed her husband she intended to go through with the divorce after all. Wayne was shocked by her decision. He never thought she would have the courage to actually go through with it, to break up the family and defy her church, but she made it clear to him their marriage was over, and until it became official he was no longer welcome at home.
And if that wasn’t enough to make Wayne crazy, there was that other thing going on that was about to affect his and everybody else’s life. America was about to go to war and every able-bodied man would be expected to enlist, put on a uniform, and fight. Young boys would lie about their ages to get in; old men would as well because they, too, wanted to fight for their country. Rich men, poor men, men from good families, men with no families, college students, doctors, lawyers, film stars, and directors—everybody would want in on the action.
Except John Wayne.
Chapter 9
In February 1941, ten months before Pearl Harbor, Republic, via Charles Feldman, signed Wayne to two films, the first be directed by John H. Auer, A Man Betrayed (a.k.a. Wheel of Fortune, a.k.a. Citadel of Crime, a.k.a. Gangs of Kansas City), a so-called screwball comedy that had very little screw in its ball. In it, a badly miscast Wayne, whose flair for comedy was never his strongest suit, plays a lawyer investigating the death of a friend, which leads to his uncovering a widespread web of local political corruption. He two-fistedly cleans up the town, and gets the girl while doing so, in this case pretty Frances Dee, married at the time to Joel McCrea. Wayne had no off-screen interest in Dee or any other leading lady, as he was still terribly smitten with Dietrich.
This was a film Yates had pulled from Republic’s trunk of recyclables, the studio having made it once before in 1936 (also directed by Auer), with Edward Nugent in the lead. Wayne was paid $18,000 for his services and he asked for and got Ward Bond to be his costar, the simpleton henchman for the bad guys. A Man Betrayed received decent reviews, most critics agreeing it was okay, nothing special.
Two months later the second Republic-produced Wayne feature was released, Lady from Louisiana, this one directed by Bernard Vorhaus (who also coproduced). In the film, which wisely leaned more heavily on action than comedy, Wayne once again plays an attorney, this time on a nineteenth-century Mississippi riverboat. Modern Screen described it quite succinctly and accurately as having “a colorful background, a capable cast, a considerable cast, a considerable amount of action . . . Wayne competently fills the bill.” The Motion Picture Herald noted the film’s “thrilling finale of blood and slugfest.” It was shot in twenty-three days in March and Wayne was paid $24,000 for his services. Ona Munson played his female interest. It opened that May nationwide.
Lady from Louisiana completed Wayne’s latest commitment to Republic. Free now to accept any and all new offers, Wayne added a key element to his team of business representation, Bö Roos (pronounced Boo Roos). For 5 percent, Roos agreed to have his company, Beverly Management, handle Wayne’s finances, an assignment he had done for a number of other Hollywood stars including Merle Oberon, Red Skelton, Johnny Weissmuller, Lupe Vélez, Fred MacMurray, Joan Crawford, Ray Milland, and Marlene Dietrich. It was, in fact, Dietrich who first sent Wayne to Roos, assuring him that Roos could take him from being a comfortable actor to a really wealthy man. Wayne got the message. Everybody knew he and Josie were headed for divorce and he needed to protect as many of his assets as possible. There was no hidden agenda here on Dietrich’s part. She was still married to the same man in Germany and would remain so for the rest of his life.
Roos’s combined portfolios for his clients was about $25 million, an enormous amount for the early 1940s, equivalent to more than a quarter billion dollars today. Tellingly, he was also an expert in managing the finances of divorcing clients and fought for them to keep every last dime they could, no matter how nasty the split.
The first thing he did was put Wayne on a weekly $100 allowance, and he sent an ample amount for household expenses to Josie. He then set up trust accounts for each of their four children. Roos’s maneuverings put a strain on Wayne’s cash flow; he was not used to someone telling him how and how much to spend of his own money. He had become something of a glad-hander among his friends, and was known in Hollywood as a soft touch. He loved picking up the check whenever he went out, regardless if it was with one woman, or a group of twenty-five pals, and if anyone needed some bridge money, he was always happy to give it to them. This was the way he was brought up—he learned to help others from his father, who was quick to help others even if it meant he didn’t have enough for himself. “It was impossible to get Duke to stay on a budget,” Roos later told Zolotow. “He just couldn’t say no to a guy he liked and, hell, sometimes he wouldn’t tell y
ou, wouldn’t tell me, or anybody in the office he was signing a check. However, at least we did get Wayne’s capital invested to some extent.”
Roos put some of Wayne’s money into a Culver City motel, a yachting marina on Catalina, a beach club, a fleet of shrimp boats, a fast-freeze food-processing plant, a country club, a hotel in Acapulco, some oil wells, and a portfolio of common stocks. And Wayne continued to spend lavishly on his three favorite, if somewhat idiosyncratic hobbies: cowboy suits, comic books, and Kachina dolls. Roos succeeded in stabilizing and maximizing Wayne’s income, while protecting as many of his investments as possible from the coming divorce proceedings.
WAYNE MADE HIS NEXT FILM for Paramount, Shepherd of the Hills, directed by Henry Hathaway. The film is about a son whose father deserted his mother when the boy, Matt, was young, which led to her death, an emotional context that recalled for Wayne his own problems with his dad when he had left his mother for another woman. To make the point even more powerful (for him) and to deepen the emotional connections, Wayne insisted that Harry Carey, the actor who had been his role model during the early, formative years, play the father.
In the story, after his mother’s death, Matt becomes embittered and something of an outcast in the Ozark community in which he lives. He gets involved in moonshining and vows to avenge his mother’s death by killing his father, should he ever return. Into this mix comes a stranger who performs what appear to be a series of miracles, including saving the life of Matt’s fiancée, Sammy Lane, played by Betty Field. In an interesting twist, this mysterious “Good Shepherd” turns out to be Matt’s father. The son forces a confrontation and is shot by the father. He miraculously recovers and becomes a changed man. Matt forgives his father and marries Sammy.