by C McGivern
Duke was hurt by the lack of recognition, but while members of the Academy sat around voting he was already hard at work on his third film of the year, Three Godfathers, another Ford film. By the end of the same year he was busy on another two of the best films ever to come out of Hollywood, Wake of the Red Witch, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Most of Hollywood’s other leading men would have considered any two of the films he made in that year a stunning basis for a whole career, to John Wayne they represented seven months of work and a truly heroic effort.
Harry Carey, friend of John Ford, and father-figure to Duke, died in 1947 leaving both men devastated. Three Godfathers was Ford’s tribute to the great star of the silent era and Duke’s memorial to a man who had been such an influence on his life. Ford decided to make a new version of the film he first shot in the silent days with Harry Carey himself in the lead role. Now, following his death, he decided to use his son in the remake that carried the opening title, “To the memory of Harry Carey, bright star of the early western sky.”
Duke played the leader of three bank robbers, Dobe Carey and Pedro Armendariz the other two. Armendariz had made other films with Ford and Wayne, but on this one he made the mistake of arguing with the director about his costume. In the end he wore what Ford wanted but he was never asked to work for him again! The heated argument set the tone for the rest of the time they spent together in Death Valley, the most horrific location, and none of them much enjoyed being there.
Duke shared a tiny room in a cabin with Armendariz, and Ward Bond and Carey another. If Ford was tough on Armendariz, he was even worse toward young Dobie Carey. It was his first big role and he was nervous and had little confidence in his own ability. The film was also being made to the memory of his father, he wanted it to be good. Though he was polite and followed every order Ford gave, he rarely satisfied the director. He, like many before him, was terrified of Ford, although he had known him most of his life and called him “Uncle Jack.” Occasionally Ford even kicked him to stir him up.
He once ordered Duke to do it for him and although he felt embarrassed, he did as he was told. When Ford became too tough on the boy though it was always Duke who smoothed things over, and he knew Ford was using him for that very role. He was often heard telling Dobe, “Don’t take it seriously, he’s just kidding.” At the best of times Ford mumbled, at more stressful times he chewed on a handkerchief and his speech became incomprehensible. Carey said he was “bearable or unbearable, but never nice.” Again Duke had to resort, as he had with young Agar, to telling stories about the vicious treatment he had suffered at the hands of the master, reminding him that he was only really nasty with those he liked. This time even Duke’s generous spirit didn’t help much although Carey later admitted, “When he stood up for me I could have kissed him for his brave intervention. Duke was something special.”
Dobe’s earliest memories of his hero dated back to 1939 when Duke often stayed at his parents’ home. Just after finishing Stagecoach he had arrived in town to open a rodeo, “He was slumped against Josie on the back seat of a chauffeur-driven car. She had to help him out of the car he was so smashed. He had bleary eyes and couldn’t even stand unaided. Together, Josie, the chauffeur and myself maneuvered his weight to a couch in our house. He tried to explain that he was just exhausted, he’d had no sleep. He and his wife had been out celebrating. He said they had danced and got drunk, and then they had gone straight on to the rodeo. They had both obviously had fun and enjoyed being together. Dad said they looked like they had in the old days. He lay on our sofa for some time and then sat up, rubbed his eyes and said he thought a drink would straighten him out. My mother brought him a bottle of whiskey. He drank a large tumbler, shook himself like a big dog and then straightened out with a huge grin on his face. His eyes had cleared. Then he ate a huge breakfast. Within a couple of hours he was completely normal again, making jokes, telling stories, and smoking cigarettes by the dozen.” Dobe had grown up with Duke always around, he thought of him as a big brother, and he remained ever grateful for the way he protected him against Ford.
Working on Three Godfathers was a terrible experience for everyone involved, with central scenes of the three stars struggling through a desert storm. Sand became lodged in their eyes, mouths, inside their clothes and boots, and became unbearable for all of them. They worked for three days without shade from 8am to 6pm. Duke and Dobe both had fair skin and they got badly burnt by the relentless sun and raw from the sand blasting them. Although Duke drank gallons of water his mouth became burnt and painful.
Life only improved a little in the evening when it was cooler and they sat around talking, playing cards or dominoes. Duke asked with a wry grin at the start of each game, “What’s worse than going to Hell?” The others answered in harmony, “Playing dominoes with Pedro Armendariz as your partner!” Duke, who teamed up with Bond against Ford and Armendariz, was kept in a permanent state of amusement by the other three. He laughed at Ford’s attempts at cheating, at Armendariz who lost his temper with Bond, and at Bond who was useless at all the games they played. Every time he and Bond lost a game Duke laughed, “Thank God fellas… the heat’s off! Ward’s done it again.” He knew problems only really started when Ford lost. Winning at night meant punishment the following day and Duke often tried to get the others to throw the games as he did, always to no avail… Of course he had plenty of unintentional help from Bond.
Repartee between them was brutal. Bond greeted every day with the words, “This would be a helluva picture except Wayne’s got my part again!” Duke fell about as Ford quipped, “Oh hell. There goes my day… I thought the shit had a day off.” Ford allowed no alcohol at all on the desert, not even at the weekends. Duke, Bond and Armendariz broke the rule only once and Ford’s revenge on Duke was swift and cruel. In the scene where he is awaiting trial after being captured he is seen eating a piece of chicken. Ford forced him to do eighteen takes before he would print it, and Duke repeatedly had to excuse himself to go and throw up before continuing. Carey said that although Duke did have fun, he could also appear distant and withdrawn, “I loved “Himself” but no matter how many times I worked with him, unless I was totally alone with him and had his full attention, I was never quite sure he had heard a word I said. This trait of his, this, “I don’t really know you’re there,” expression drove everyone bonkers. It made people butter up to him … and he couldn’t bear that. If someone on set told him off he would most likely say, “Jesus, I’m glad you showed some guts.” His faraway look probably had more to do with his personal problems than anything else at that time, and whilst he might have been less alert than normal he was certainly well aware of everything going on around him.
By the time he started work on his third film of 1947 Ford was helping Hawks edit Red River. The footage he saw shocked him as he realized for the first time that Duke was a good enough actor to carry a film on his own. As soon as he saw what he had done with Hawks he decided to use him for She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, a narrative about the last week in the military career of Captain Nathan Brittles, a man who at 64, and after forty-three years of service, is about to retire. Ford wouldn’t even have considered Duke for the role of the dignified officer who was weary of Indian fighting, was warm and kind hearted, powerful and sensitive. But after seeing him act his way through Red River he knew he had the required finesse to do a good job.
Bond and Armendariz were both missing this time when Duke and Ford returned to the splendor of Monument Valley. Dobe commented, “It must have been pretty hard on Duke, here’s a man who is carrying the whole picture, trying to learn his lines, has to make sure he never misses his mark, and he has to play cards every night on his own with Ford, and make sure he loses!” Carey even thought the film was finished ahead of schedule because there was less card playing than usual. But Duke didn’t mind being alone with Ford, he appreciated working with him and late nights on location never bothered him, he enjoyed the old man’s sense of humor and they shared muc
h laughter. As they filmed a scene were Quincannon, played by Victor McLaglen, makes a special announcement to the assembled troops, a stray dog wandered onto the set and fell asleep in front of the line of mounted soldiers. Typically Ford decided to write the dog into the scene so that when McLaglen began to speak he had to notice the dog and pause before asking who it belonged to. In the re-written version the Irishman was supposed to say, “Nice dog, Irish Setter.” Unfortunately McLaglen didn’t get the joke and said, “Nice dog, Cocker Spaniel.” Duke began laughing and Carey later said he thought he was going to have a stroke. Filming was delayed for hours because each time the shot was set up again Duke began giggling helplessly.
In a very un-John Wayne-like movie, Duke had little action, was not his normal aggressive self, he counseled peace and sorted arguments out amongst his men. He had more strength of character than physical strength. He was fearless, gruff, warm, sensitive and understanding, with more than a touch of sadness about him.
Ford had allowed the co-star, Joanne Dru to bring along his own daughter, Barbara, for company on location. Together they stood mesmerized as they watched Duke film a scene, “Why are we standing out here watching him film this?” Barbara asked her friend. Dru replied, “Because he turns us on.” Barbara agreed, “When he was on horseback he was the sexiest man alive, but once he got down he returned to being Uncle Duke.” He was Uncle Duke to her and big brother to Dobe. They trusted him and often turned to him for help and advice, which was always freely given, though he didn’t always give the answers they hoped for. After his father died Dobie asked Duke what name he thought he should use in the movies. He was shocked when Duke advised him not to go into the film industry at all, “Find yourself another line of work. You’re gonna have a rough time in pictures, you just aren’t a handsome looking fella. You can’t be a leading man. There aren’t many parts for young character actors. What did your father-in-law tell you?”
“He said to ask you!”
“Well my advice is, get a side-line because you aren’t going to get steady work in movies.”
The advice was offered before they made Three Godfathers. After they finished it Dobe again approached Duke to ask how he should be billed, his reply was very different, “Don’t make any difference now what you use, Dobie, Harry Carey Jnr, Joe Blow. Fortunately, you have a little talent!” He added, after a long pause, “but I’d still get a little side-line, were I you.”
By the end of the decade he felt confident about his career and knew he had never looked better on screen, “I was at my best age physically and mentally, and in my attitude to life in general.” All the other stars of his generation were aging, but somehow, his face had only just begun to weather. The early callowness had been replaced by experience, loneliness and pain. And he had never been in greater demand.
Over the next three years he starred in a further eight films. By 1950 he was firmly established as Hollywood’s leading box-office attraction. His image was securely linked in the public imagination with American’s past, present and future. He had become “an American hero.” Finally some of his detractors were beginning to notice, “He’s a champion who belongs to everyone, and thus we can kick him around. Wayne himself doesn’t give much of a damn what anyone says of him. He was middle-aged before he reached the top, and he’d already been twenty-five years in the business. After all that time, he knows he’s good. To some, he may be just a big man. But to those who understand, he’s a giant.”
Whilst all the films he worked on in 1947 and 1948 were hits, and some were beginning to be aware of the John Wayne phenomenon, each performance was conspicuously ignored by the voters of the Academy. He thought they were afflicted with a curious blindness. He understood they never found a way to cope with his creative force because he didn’t fit into any of their theories, “The critics ride me, but there’s too much emphasis on it and I really don’t care. I try not to fight them, they’ve never been able to overcome me. I don’t accept anything they write… I don’t accept anything, and what they write is their own palaver. Lately however they have started to observe me, rather than subject me to their writing. Sometimes I see they have taken some notice of my work. I think I did quite a good job in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and a helluva good job in Red River. But I really didn’t get any recognition. Maybe I deserved a kudo here and there.”
He went on, resigned to the fact that the critics would never recognize his technique, “I don’t think it matters. Motion pictures are like sitting in a room with someone and talking across the table. If you overact, they’re quite aware of it. If it’s your ego they can have fun with it, but you can’t get away with it unless it’s that. If they start looking at you, trying to work it out, you’ve lost them. You can’t stop what the Press chooses to say, the average critic comes along and says, “You’ve had lots of fights in bars,” and I say, “Well actually I haven’t.” Then in two minutes he’s saying, “I’ll bet guys have said to you after a few drinks…” and I say, “Well, actually, no.”
But they keep the same question coming at you until you give some kind of answer to shut them up. That puts you right in the framework they have already decided to put you in. They get irritated when you won’t fall in line. So as a rule I just go along with whatever they want. After about the third question I usually know what they’re after, and I say, “OK what do you want?” Gets me in plenty of trouble of course, but it saves me time and them irritation. Meant I stayed in the saddle even when I was overlooked, sometimes broke, and incidentally, blackballed over the years. They damned near shoved me out of the business. I’m not kidding. But I learned how to deal with them.”
After finishing three films in seven months he told Hedda Hopper, “I guess I’m pitching for the record.” Some of his critics were asking if it was possible to star in too many films, how much exposure could he take before his public tired of him? John Wayne, they thought smugly, would surely soon find out. He was unconcerned about over-exposure, “Who can complain if a man sees a chance to make a buck? That’s business. And I jump at the chance to keep on working.” What the critics wrote stung although he continued to deny that he cared. Their words never affected how the public saw him or his films, but the fact was he cared very much that his talent was consistently overlooked. Luckily his fans understood him instinctively and he felt they were much more aware of his talent than the critical intellectuals. And from 1948 business couldn’t have been better; there was no sign of flagging interest. The critics might try, but there was no way big John Wayne would be shoved out of the business.
At the start of the year he lay thirty third in the Motion Picture Herald poll of exhibitors, by 1950 he was number one. In the same year Photoplay readers voted him Favorite Male Actor, that was repeated in all the movie journals. In 1951, 1952 and 1953 he was voted number one film star in all the polls, and for the next twenty years he remained in the top five, setting records unlikely ever to be equalled, “I’m a box-office champion with a record they’re going to have to run to catch.”
In 1949 he received his first Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Sergeant Stryker in The Sands of Iwo Jima. He didn’t win, and he later commented dryly, “I don’t need an Oscar.” Ford consoled him, “You’ll never win anything. You’ll always be taken for granted. It’s just a cross you’ll have to bear.”
Though he was now at the top of his profession, was always in great demand, and not a day went by without he received an offer or a script to look at, he still analyzed himself and his performances to try to explain his treatment at the hands of his peers, “I guess that I am never chosen because the kind of acting I do is not considered acting by anybody. I know the hardest thing to do in a scene is to do nothing, or seem to do nothing, because doing nothing requires extreme work and discipline. I just stand there- or so it looks to the critics. They say “Well it’s only John Wayne being John Wayne. He is not acting.” They have an idea that acting is putting on a disguise and being somebody you are not in a
kind of blatant way. But, look, when I played Tom Dunson-was I a cattle rancher, a Texan? Or was I a marine sergeant? Or was it me being the captain in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon? I was disappointed at not even being nominated for that, because I played a man sixty years old.”
Those critics mystified by his sudden upsurge equated acting with distortion of what was assumed to be the actor’s real self and they always assumed John Wayne played himself, without ever bothering to find out who he really was. But to the directors and producers who chose him to star in their films, above every other star, his acting was recognized as something very special indeed. He was a mountainous presence on screen, a gift to them, the movie industry, and the audience.
Two generations had watched him foil corrupt business men and criminals and win the war almost single-handedly in a collection of work almost painful in its sincerity. His position at the top rested on a bedrock of honesty that was never simply part of the act. He had cemented his success in his country’s need for a hero. Conflict had arisen in his own life because he had only been able to fulfil his country’s needs by not going to war, by not being a hero. By not going he had claimed his predestined place in the imagination of the world and remained secure there in the face of the critics. As a result he became his own sternest critic. He was a man to whom integrity was everything and yet here he was, the most successful star of them all, a hero in everyone’s eyes, who never could be in his own.