by C McGivern
But he inevitably reached a point where he could not get through another day at home and he was forced to concede defeat. He made the decision that if any of them were to survive intact, he had to get out. He had done the best he could and it hadn’t been enough. He wanted a divorce and yet the thought of it made him sweat. Eventually, and after much drinking, he brought himself to mention it to Josie. His heart was racing as he waited for the inevitable explosion. They had been arguing violently yet again when she had said they should part and he replied, “Let’s get it over with.” But Josie didn’t shout back at him and he was unprepared for the tears which always reduced him to a quivering wreck. He had expected opposition but instead she clung and pleaded with him to think it over. They were both desperately unhappy and he believed divorce was the only way either of them could ever find happiness again. His mind was made up and he set about making sure that neither reputation was tarnished and that no one else knew he was leaving. There were no rumors, no gossip, but he slowly began to cut down the number of functions he attended with her. He still made every effort to appear the good husband, not wanting the gossip columns printing anything about either of them, especially that he could no longer cope with his life or that he needed several glasses of whiskey before he could attend a dinner with her.
He continued to allow her to be boss at home and he didn’t drink in the house, though he more than made up for her rules as soon as he escaped. He’d had a bully of a Mother, and had accepted Josephine as the dominant force in his home. He allowed her to do as she wanted, allowed her to bully him. She was far less tolerant than he was. He never asked her to give up her parties or her religion, but he consistently put his work, his greatest need, before her. He and Josie were forced, by his demons, to travel different paths, but they never stopped loving each other and both always knew where the other was at any given time along that path. They could always find each other in time of need, and both knew the other would always come running to help out when necessary. On a personal level he felt sad that people assumed there had been no good times when that had been far from the case, “I can’t deny I’m not an easy guy to get along with, because I do have a short fuse. I have a temper. I guess I hurt Josie many times. I never meant to. Maybe we should have separated sooner, but I loved her and when the kids came along we both wanted to make it work out. I felt strongly about the children. I didn’t want to break up. I grew up in a home of bickering and I knew how children suffer when their parents fight. I also know how hard it is for them to take their parents’ divorce too. So we stayed together and our children came out just fine. I give all the credit to Josie.”
He wondered if things might have worked out if he had drunk less. He was a rare drinker, always able to consume the most enormous amounts of alcohol without it seeming to affect his mind or his body. And he did drink enormous quantities. He loved alcohol and his consumption was averaged out at a quart a day for over forty years! He never measured a drink and took absolutely no notice of the amount he drank. He enjoyed it so much that he even liked talking about it, and about his favorite drink, tequila and glacial ice. Sometimes he took no liquor at all, at others he drank until he dropped where he stood. He rarely indulged himself when he was working, and never allowed it to affect his day on set. However, one friend recalled watching him make himself a jug of Martini at a party. He downed the whole lot, swigging back the equivalent of eighteen shorts in a couple of hours. Duke was still, reportedly, standing up when everyone else left, “This was a scientific impossibility. I collapse myself after four of Duke’s Martinis. Duke can hold his liquor.”
Although he was not alcoholic most of his friends were, including Ward Bond, his favorite writer, Jimmy Grant, and even John Ford himself. Perhaps they all spent too much time around a man who could sink eighteen martinis at a sitting. His self-control was the envy of all them all. No hangover ever prevented him working, or doing whatever task he had set for himself. Sick or healthy, sober or hung-over, he was always first on set ready to get on with the day’s work. Even just before he was struck down by his final illness, whilst he was making The Train Robbers he went out to dinner with the rest of the cast. One by one they fell by the wayside until Duke was left drinking alone late into the night. But the next morning he was up, breakfasted, in full costume and driving himself off to location before any of the others had emerged from their rooms. He sat patiently waiting for his eight o’clock start. The others arrived two hours later, exhausted and bleary eyed, and unfit for work. He was twenty years older than most of them, yet there he was, laughing at their discomfort, offering no sympathetic words. He sometimes thought about the amount of time he had spent, sitting around waiting for other people to catch up with him.
He saved his serious drinking for the wild sessions that he inevitably shared with Bond, Ford and Henry Fonda. When they got drunk together, wherever they were, all hell let loose. They started fights with anyone who happened to be around, though more usually it was with each other, and one or other of them was generally suspended from the bars and clubs in Hollywood until they paid for smashing them up and scaring away more dignified customers. Their fun together, as their fishing trips amply demonstrated, was far from sophisticated man-about-town stuff, but was rather more slapstick, and could have had tragic consequences, if they had been less lucky. Once when Bond and Duke went hunting they became hopelessly drunk before they had even spotted anything to shoot. They started laughing hysterically at nothing in particular and fighting each other boisterously, as they often did. Duke took a strong liking to Bond’s new gun and asked to have a look at it. When Bond refused he begun pushing and pulling at the gun and, in the midst of the drunken brawl, he managed to shoot Bond in the back. Terror sobered him up and he carried the prostrate actor, who weighed more than he did, on his back until he reached help. Once he realized his friend was in no danger he found the whole escapade highly amusing, and continued to demand to see the gun, telling him he would buy it from him, “Just name the price.” Bond replied, “You can have it over my dead body.” Duke continued to laugh, but years later he was deeply traumatized to find the gun had been left to him in his friend’s will.
Despite the fun he continued to find in the company of his friends, he still struggled to come to terms with the split from Josie, and he was about to be hit another devastating blow. His father had been ill for some time, his heart trouble worsening along with Duke’s domestic problems. He and Duke often went to football matches on Sundays with Florence and Nancy, Duke’s stepmother and sister. In 1936 Duke noticed his dad had difficulty climbing the stadium steps and Nancy told him his dad was always tired now and had trouble breathing. Just days later he died in his sleep. Florence called him at work to break the news and he dropped everything to race to his step-mother’s home and the two of them then went to collect Nancy from school. Duke was heartbroken. He cried all day, felt crushed by life, and sobbed uncontrollably in the car as they drove home together.
Salvation lay in work. It no longer satisfied him, but it exhausted him and drove other thoughts from his mind; not even alcohol did that for him. He flung himself at it, drowning his sorrows in effort. It saved him at what was a dreadful time but it may also have been his downfall, for it took him further away from any hope of reconciliation with Josie. He worked all the hours he could, starting at dawn and continuing late into the night. He had long since become fed up with Westerns, but after his dad died, he found even less pleasure in them. He told close friends that he sometimes felt ashamed of his efforts, trapped in the horse opera, when he didn’t even particularly like horses.
When his Monogram contract expired he decided to escape the western for good and he talked Trem Carr into letting him make some other pictures. They were all disasters, “I made a big mistake, not because they weren’t westerns but because they were cheap pictures.” His fans wanted to see straight-shooting Wayne. They weren’t interested in seeing him as anything else, and only his fans seemed to b
e interested at all, “I lost my status as a western star. I got nothing in return. Finally I had to go crawling back to Old Man Yates and beg for mercy. Yates put the screws in me. Sure he would sign a new contract. But there was no more talk of twenty-four thousand. I had to settle for sixteen. And I still had to do those terrible stories they had. He wanted a five year deal. Mr Ford had told me not to sign any long term contracts. I held out for a two year deal. Yates promised me a shot at a high budget picture they were planning about Sam Houston if I’d sign the five year deal. He knew if I could choose one character to play it was Houston. He had a philosophy of life that I have done my best to live by. The ring he wore was inscribed with the word “Honor.” It was buried with him. I signed the deal. When they started shooting I was not given the part.”
Instead he was given the most boring roles ever, in movies that looked as if they were strung together in a morning. If he had been ashamed of his work before he now felt complete humiliation. Still, his fans were glad to see him back in the saddle, they hadn’t deserted him whilst he had been away. Duke didn’t understand why they loved his good-guy western hero, especially as he saw most of the films as nothing more than junk. He did not understand them perhaps, but knew Old Man Yates was telling him clearly just where he stood in the industry. He had sunk even lower than the B-movie and been left to pick up juvenile trade. He was at his lowest ebb. Mary St John had just started working in the typing pool at Republic and she long remembered his haunted look, his sadness at the loss of his father, the obvious fear that his career was bottoming out, and the sense of defeat in his personal life, “He was absolutely a wounded puppy.”
Many film-goers noticed that after the trauma of his father’s death and his divorce his face often carried a wistful smile, he appeared more remote, and was never again possessed of the child-like, carefree air that so marked his earlier performances. Directors used the pathos of his own life in all his next films, and Ford at last began to see what he had been looking for.
Duke surveyed his life with dark despondency. In 1937 he felt he had achieved nothing and contemplated only the same pattern for his future. Whilst he still often spent his social hours aboard John Ford’s boat laughing, drinking, playing cards, the director had never shown any inclination to find that better movie for him that he’d always promised. Sometimes he made a point of letting Duke know he was no good. His constant and unjust criticism saddled Duke with self-doubt for much of the rest of his career and he certainly never anticipated getting any work from him.
His moods swung from sullen acceptance of what was on offer at Republic and the feeling that he’d reached the end of the road. Still, whilst he hated everything he was turning out, he continued to plod on. And he discovered his strength lay in his ability to plod, to outlast everyone around him with endurance greater than everyone else’s and in his inability to quit. Right then he wasn’t striving toward success, rather, he was running as hard as he could away from failure. He wasn’t shooting for the stars but fleeing the nightmare of darkness. He made so many cheap films for Republic that his audience continued to consider him part of the family and, as he raced onward, he carried with him a whole generation of fans. When he finally graduated to the A-movie they simply moved on with him. Wherever he went the increasing army of fans travelled. They had grown up together, learning together just how hard life could be. To them he had become the ultimate symbol of how a simple man could control his own destiny. It was an attractive message to Americans and he provided the handsome embodiment of the American ideal. The very fact that he had to fight so hard for his prize, that success wasn’t handed to him, that he was just like one of them, made the image so much brighter and more attractive. He felt at the time that he had reached a dead end. In fact he was standing on the springboard that would thrust him into superstardom in the decades that followed.
Ford invited him on a fishing trip in November 1937 and Duke expected a drinking session and possibly a game of cards. They both liked to play cards and Coach was good at poker, though he was better, he was usually the only one who could beat the old man. They always played for high stakes (fortunate then that he usually won). Ford later said he only continued playing against Duke to beat him out of a few dollars, in fact he rarely managed to, unless Wayne took pity on him, or was too drunk to concentrate. On that trip he was the only person Pappy had invited and there would be no cards. Instead Ford placed a short story in his hands, “The Stage to Lordsburg” written by Dudley Nichols. Since the advent of sound Ford had not made a western, but he loved this story as soon as he saw it. He paid four thousand dollars for the movie rights and, together with Nichols, created the screenplay himself. He said nothing as he handed the script over. Duke had looked at hundreds of western scripts and knew instantly he was holding something very special. He studied what later became the screenplay for Stagecoach, about a hazardous journey made by assorted characters through Indian Territory. One of the passengers was the lonely gun fighter, Ringo Kid, who had escaped from prison, seeking revenge for the murder of his father and brother. Duke knew he was a natural for the part but considered himself second rate, a no-hoper, because that was what Ford had kept telling him.
“I need some help from you Duke.”
“Sure Coach.”
They had dinner. They did some serious drinking and talked of other things.
Duke had a headache, which was unusual, but he was tough enough not to let Ford know how much the game of cat and mouse bothered him. Ford, as usual, enjoyed the sport of tormenting his favorite son, “You must know plenty of young actors. Do you think any of them would be right for Ringo?”
Duke was tired, mad, and knew Ford was toying with him. Sometimes he almost hated him. However he didn’t expect any favors and eventually he gave up hope and began to consider some of the young actors he knew, “How about Lloyd Nolan?”
“Jesus Christ, I just wish to hell I could find some young actor who could ride a horse, but act a little too. Goddamit Duke, you must be able to do better than Nolan. But then you’ve been out at Republic. I guess you don’t get to see much talent out there.” The verbal swipe stung; he was used to Ford’s cruel jibes and though he tried not to take them too much to heart, on that occasion he felt hurt. It was standard fare for Ford to attack him in front of their drinking friends, but Duke never commented, he didn’t enjoy it, but he always let it go, and it was rare for Coach to bother when they were alone. He was confused to suddenly find himself under fire again.
Ford, ever eccentric, said nothing further, got up and went to bed, leaving his baffled friend alone to think about it. Duke had another drink, and then another and finally gave up and carried the bottle off to bed with him where he continued drinking until he passed out. He spent the night fitful and restless, tossing and turning, dreaming and seeing his situation clearly, knowing that every major studio had a sign up under his photograph, “John Wayne. Over 30. Blue Eyes. Six foot Four. Brown hair. B-westerns.”
When the blue eyes finally struggled open next morning it was to look, yet again, at the ten years he had spent in the business, in which he had achieved precisely nothing. He had been going to tell Ford what he could do with the story, but instead he collapsed back onto the bed, out cold. When he did finally get up it was very late, the headache was worse, he was hung over and dry-mouthed, and the last thing he wanted to do was play games. What he wanted didn’t matter, and for the rest of the trip Ford tormented him with references to his work at Republic, and the problem he was having casting Ringo… Duke said, “I felt like a spider having its legs ripped off, one by one.”
At last as they docked, after Coach had had his fun, he snarled, “Duke, I’ve made up my mind. I want you for Ringo.”
“Sure Coach, I know.” He smiled, but later admitted, “I felt like he’d hit me with a baseball bat!”
Obviously that had always been Ford’s intention from first inviting him aboard. He had always intended to offer him the part and many have
commented that though he was a brilliant director he was a rotten human being, sadistic even. He had spent ten years watching his “friend” sink before finally offering any help. The deeper Duke sank after The Big Trail the more plaudit Ford expected for pulling him up and establishing him, once and for all as a star. He had to “de-create” him after The Big Trail so that he could establish his own role in the rise and rise of John Wayne. Duke had to be a no-body before he could “discover” him. Of course, on the other hand, it could just have been that he didn’t realize until then that Duke was good enough to play such a role; that he hadn’t then acquired the haunted look he was after. Duke later heard that Ford originally wanted Gary Cooper for Ringo and still felt second rate after all.
Ford was petty and Duke was certainly intimidated by him, he believed the director when he told him he was no good, and believed that he would never amount to anything unless he was being directed by him. It was not until he made Red River with Howard Hawks, ten years after Stagecoach, that he realized he had any talent at all. He often wondered whether Coach had kept him squirming just for the fun he had watching him? He had never really known but steadfastly refused to hear a word against Pappy Ford. He had been the catalyst, and he owed him everything. He was Pappy’s creation, and without him in his life he would have been nothing. Duke always believed Ford provided the trip out of the degrading world he had sunk into. When he’d been at his very lowest along came Coach to offer him the ride on the Stagecoach that led him on to the next glorious part of the adventure. He felt he owed a huge debt.
Duke had been the last cast member hired, but Ford had known since first buying the story exactly who he wanted for Ringo, and he never seriously considered anyone else, not even Cooper, for the part. He carried with him the vivid images of Duke in his earliest roles, and he believed (though never told him) that once he had shed his youthfulness, put on some weight and a little character that he could be a fine actor, if only in his hands. He later told anyone who would listen that, “Wayne always moved like a dancer.” He sensed in him the charm, charisma and vulnerability, which he knew audiences would identify with, but beside those things, which were increasingly obvious to all, Ford also saw Duke’s phenomenal, pathological drive. He knew that he had what it took to survive in Hollywood. He knew he was now hungry in every sense, and that he had a huge appetite for life.