by C McGivern
His generous act put the marriage back on track for a while. And then mother-in-law moved back in and the fighting started all over again. Duke complained that she was a drunk and an embarrassment to him. He didn’t want her in his home, and he told Chata he badly needed some privacy and peace. Chata screamed that he had no sensitivity. Every day was an intolerable struggle for them all. He resorted to old habits, rising long before anyone else in the household, eating alone and then escaping to work, doing anything to avoid the conflict.
Duke and Chata had planned to have children. She never became pregnant and blamed him, saying publicly that he was infertile. He felt so ashamed he agreed to undergo tests but later told Pilar, his third wife, that he thought, “Chata was too evil to conceive.” She wanted them to adopt children but he showed no interest and a close friend said he knew by that time the marriage was doomed. He was deeply concerned about her drinking problem. Most of his friends were alcoholics and he was hardly likely to miss the signs. She and her mother were usually so drunk during the later years of their marriage that he spent much of his spare time nursing the sorry pair.
In December 1951 they had an argument. Neither could later remember what it was about, but he ended up throwing a glass of water at her in temper. She retaliated with an ice bucket before starting a more sustained attack. He had rarely fought back before, he generally held her off at arm’s length, but this time he threw his drink at her. She consulted a divorce attorney soon after the incident. Duke murmured when the story hit the Press, “I blame myself for our troubles. I devoted too much time to business and not enough to her.” But he had lost interest in reunions and when Chata later sent a forty fifth birthday present to his office, he told Mary to return it. He made no effort to contact her or to chase her to Mexico, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to go get her; if she thinks that she’s crazy.”
Eventually he wrote to advise her that if she didn’t come straight back he was renting the house out. He was angry that he had spent a fortune on an estate he’d never wanted and now found himself alone in. She didn’t reply and he leased it out and rented a small apartment for himself. Chata, commenced immediate legal action against him, petitioning for maintenance. She demanded he throw the new tenants out and she moved back into the estate herself. She didn’t want divorce, but equally she didn’t want reconciliation either, she only wanted to keep him dangling, uncomfortably. Duke, although sickened by the thought of a second failure, unhappy because he hadn’t been able to make it work with Chata, filed for divorce himself in a rare move for the time. He agreed to every demand she made but left his lawyers to sort everything out, “Oh hell, give her everything she asks for, I’m not going to haggle-I’ll do four pictures a year instead of three.” He didn’t even want to go to court and took himself off on location instead to try to forget the soap opera that was his life.
When he arrived back an employee, J.Hampton Scott, informed him that another man had been staying in the house with Chata. He asked for a private interview and Duke emerged from it pale and shaking. Scott had given him an envelope containing a scrap of paper from a note pad. Chata had doodled the name Nicky Hilton on the pad. She had also written Chata Hilton a number of times, and “Chata and Nick.” Duke later said he had to go to the bathroom to throw up after seeing it. There had long been speculation about the state of the marriage in the Press, but now things became very difficult. Ernie Saftig, a close friend, advised him to get away from Hollywood for a while to do some location scouting for his Alamo project in Peru. He left almost immediately. Chata rang Mary to find out where he was and screamed, “The bastard, he knew I always wanted to go there.”
Chata hadn’t realized this fight was any different from the other times she had fled from him. Duke had always come running and been consistently tender, passionate and full of remorse. Now she waited in vain as Duke took off. Both their lives were about to change dramatically when Duke was introduced in Peru to Richard Weldy, a tour guide who led safaris up the Amazon. Duke liked him immediately and they shared many drinks before Weldy recommended they set off to look for exotic locations. Duke wanted to see a remote area called Tingo Maria, a small village surrounded by dense jungle where local films were often shot.
At that time it took ten years before American movies hit Peru, and whilst many locals had heard of John Wayne, he was by no means a star there. That had always been the attraction of South America for him, and when he first arrived in Tingo Maria he strolled unnoticed into the local hotel. He was immediately struck by the sight of a Peruvian actress dancing barefoot in front of an open fire. He was introduced to the girl, Pilar, who turned out to be the estranged wife of his tour guide. A photograph taken on the instant captured pre-ordained destiny, she is gazing longingly at the man towering above her, his shirt hanging out, a huge hand tightly clutching his drink. He is beaming down, eyes fixed intently on hers.
When he set out to charm someone, Duke didn’t fail. He was tall, handsome, rich, famous, had that walk and that talk, and within minutes of meeting him Pilar was lost, “All I could do was stare. He was the handsomest man I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe anyone’s eyes could be so turquoise, so piercing. He looked at me with lively curiosity. Standing barefoot, my head didn’t even reach his shoulder.”
He spoke to her but she felt awkward, especially as her estranged husband was with him, but later said that when he spoke he had an interest so intense and powerful that it left her feeling breathless, “He possessed much more than sex appeal, good looks, had more than his success, more than fame, there was something very special about him, a sense of great strength, something millions of filmgoers already knew, something real, something essential about him as a man. It had nothing to do with his status as a film star.”
Pilar continued to sing and dance until he beckoned her to join his party. He stood up and waited politely until she sat down. She said, “He did everything with such natural grace.” She had dinner at his table that night. She told him she thought he had been good in For Whom The Bell Tolls. He smiled and answered, “Do you like Westerns?” She shook her head, “Not really.” He laughed and never told her he wasn’t in For Whom the Bell Tolls.
She may not have known who he was, but she loved his deep drawl and the way he spoke almost exclusively to her that night, she loved his sincere charm, his graciousness. All through the dinner she felt too embarrassed to speak, but found herself unable to prevent herself staring into his blue, blue eyes as he made small talk. Whenever he stopped they gazed at each other. That night she told Weldy, her estranged husband, she was filing for divorce.
Pilar was very like Josie to look at, small, thin and frail, with huge dark eyes and a warm, open, innocent smile. She was quiet and sweet. Chata had offered exotic pleasure but made his life hell, Pilar appeared tranquil by comparison, and that was exactly what he needed then. Although he didn’t stay in Peru long, Pilar soon turned up in Hollywood. She was there to dub the dialogue for Green Hell, the film she had been working on when he met her. Their paths crossed on the Warner Bros. lot, by accident, according to Pilar, by design according to many others. When she was leaving the set she pushed open a heavy stage door to find him waiting to come in on the other side. He looked every bit the big movie star as he stared down at her in an apparent effort to recall her face, before breaking into a broad, lopsided grin of recognition and inviting her to dinner that night. It was suggested that he arranged for her to be brought to Hollywood. He always smilingly denied the charge, tongue very much in cheek.
He was late for their first date and Mary St John eventually rang Pilar to explain that his house had been mobbed by the press and he couldn’t get out. He had just been voted top box-office star for the second year in a row. Mary continued that he was very anxious for her to go to his place instead. When Pilar arrived she was surprised to find his modest rented apartment surrounded by a pack of reporters all pushing and fighting amongst themselves. She rang the bell a number of times befo
re anyone came to let her in. The rooms were crowded with more members of the Press.
She couldn’t see Duke and felt very nervous until he finally strolled into the room, he towered above everyone else and smiled straight over at her. He beat a determined path toward her, gently elbowing other guests out of his way. He took both her hands in his huge ones, “I’m so glad you are here to share this with me.” She noticed immediately how much he enjoyed being feted by the Press, how he responded generously to all their questions with good humor and charm. Although he held onto her hand tightly all night he let her know, right from their first public meeting together, that his heart belonged to his fans, to the Press and to the movie world at large. Everyone else got leftovers. Still, he rang and sent flowers daily after that, they went out together every night, and she said, “It was impossible not to fall in love with him.” He made no attempt to hide his feelings, he loved Pilar and didn’t care who knew it, even though he wasn’t yet divorced. Pilar said, “I’d never known a more confident man, so comfortable with his own body. He never took a false step or made an awkward move. The nicest thing was that he seemed to be completely unaware of it. He was so attractive.” Certainly he was more confident than he’d been in the past. The circumstances surrounding this affair were almost identical to when he had first fallen in love with Chata, but then he had been so unsure of his place in the world. He was now Hollywood’s leading man; he had power, wealth, and was no longer dependent on one director, one producer or one studio.
Just two short weeks after her arrival in Hollywood, Wayne begged Pilar to stay with him, “I don’t want you to go. I want you to take a chance on me. I love you and I don’t want you to ever leave me.” He pleaded his case well and she found herself willing to ignore the twenty four year difference in their ages, the other women who had shared his life, the fact that he was a man who didn’t like to be alone, that he was a film star who put his work above everything, that she would only ever get the scraps he threw, she ignored everything when she decided to stay, “I don’t think any couple has ever been more in love or needed each other more than we did that night.”
But Duke was a complex man, full of contradiction; he was romantic down to his boots, deeply passionate, and at the same time, highly moral; traits which didn’t fit together comfortably. Whenever Duke fell in love he wanted to marry the object of his desire. He constantly sought the perfect marriage, the perfect love. He loved and wanted Pilar, but he was also put off by his previous failures. He couldn’t bring himself to talk to her about it and he was in a tough spot. He was still not free from Chata either, and though public morals may have relaxed, living in sin was not acceptable, and the film industry remained particularly puritanical in its outlook.
Although he was now in a stronger position, an open affair could still have ruined his career. Once more his quest for love had led him down a path fraught with danger, causing a surge of nervous tension that manifested itself in depression and jealousy. He suffered from insecurity, rooted deep in his troubled past perhaps, but which was re-ignited every time he saw his career under threat. Pilar witnessed that insecurity and realized that his self-assurance was just as fragile as the next man’s when Marlon Brando asked to be introduced to her. Duke bellowed, “NO” and stormed away, dragging her off behind him. He had seen in Pilar his chance to have exactly what he’d always wanted. He grabbed hold of her and held on as tightly as he could and she understood that he was really nothing like the tough guy he appeared on screen, “He was far more romantic, his masculinity was mellower and yet deeper.” She agreed with the writer who commented, “He never appeared in a fleshy, exciting way, as Errol Flynn and the like did, because his erotic potential was more substantial, was focused more deeply in the heart than in the genitals.”
Once she had seen the insecurity she also recognized his need for the care so long denied him. He might play the rough and ready macho-man but that was not the man she saw. She understood instinctively the damage caused by his mother so long before, “He danced to his mother’s unrealized dreams. She made sure the dance was painful, holding tight the strings of his emotions and jerking them sharply whenever she wanted to keep him in line.” Once she understood his hunger and craving for praise, Pilar knew how to get her man. His mother had unfailingly rejected his every effort to win her affection, now she offered him the things he had been starved of, lavishing praise upon his head, constantly telling him how special he was. He thrived as a man.
He had grown up not knowing what was wrong with him, what it was about him that his mother found unlovable. All his adult life he had been sexually attracted to women and yet his mother’s legacy left him terrified of them, afraid of the moods he couldn’t fathom, afraid of their open expression of emotion. He guarded his own sensitivity under a strong, thick protective skin, rarely allowing anyone inside. But once he found Pilar it didn’t take him long to realize it was safe to open up to her, she wouldn’t hurt him. There would be none of the violence he had experienced at Chata’s hands, none of the cold, indifference he had known with Josie, none of the scorn his mother had heaped on him. At long last, at the age of forty five, he found some personal happiness in the arms of a woman.
And on a professional level too things couldn’t have been better. His political movies were making profits; they were acceptable to his audience. He resented being labelled a right wing extremist perhaps, but never realized it was the films he was producing himself that directly caused the way the reviewers treated him then and for the rest of his career. The critics didn’t share his beliefs; they were unwilling to accept the heavy handed stories, unwilling to accept him as an actor, branding him instead an activist, a political animal, a monster of the Right.
In the early fifties none of that bothered him. He had Pilar and he remained Hollywood’s biggest box-office draw. His standing then was such that when one very sophisticated political writer went to interview him at his home, she asked him one question and then, to his amazement, turned and fled. Later she laughed nervously as she explained, “When I looked up and realized I was actually talking to John Wayne… the John Wayne… I was speechless.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE WARRIOR DOES BATTLE
The Alamo
“Nobody should come to the movies unless he believes in heroes.”
“My problem is I’m not a handsome man, like Cary Grant. I have to be a director. I’ve waited all these years to be one. The Alamo is where I start. This picture is America and I hope that seeing the battle will remind Americans that liberty and freedom don’t come cheap. Making it has made me feel useful to my country.”
...1952 saw John Wayne named Hollywood‘s number one box office star for the second year running and voted one of the most popular men in America. Many US towns ran several “John Wayne’s” simultaneously; films where good triumphed over evil and where his image was powerful and all conquering. America loved him. He had reached the summit and was finally reaping top financial rewards. During the year he made Big Jim McLean, Trouble Along the Way, Island in the Sky, and The Quiet Man. Much of the pain he felt over his war record was eased in his anti-communist crusade, the Republican Party finally captured the White House, and he had Pilar. Politically, professionally and emotionally he felt close to fulfilment.
However life didn’t run smoothly for the hero as he hit another series of challenges. He wanted to marry again, he didn‘t want an affair, but he needed Pilar urgently and couldn’t wait. Whilst he fully intended having his way long before his divorce was finalized he did go to some lengths to hide the relationship. He discreetly rented an apartment for Pilar close to his own home. He enjoyed having her close at hand but still felt uncomfortable with the old dilemma. He knew that if he allowed her to move in more openly it could lead to the sudden end of his career. He’d taken chances before but was unsure about risking it now he’d reached the top.
No matter how big he still felt too insecure to put everything to the test. There
was another messy divorce to get through first. The more professional success he knew, the more happiness that appeared on the horizon, the more bitter were the disappointments that followed. Chata was making things particularly difficult and the more embarrassment she caused him the better she liked it. She demanded a full blown divorce trial with huge media coverage; nothing he offered her moved her. At that delicate stage of proceedings he began staying as far away from Pilar as possible, spending long, lonely and frustrated weeks away on location, and taking pains not to get caught with her when he came home.
But get caught he did when Pilar blurted out that she was pregnant. She was surprised by his unexpected response, for whilst he was shocked he wasn’t unduly unhappy about the accident. Of course he knew it would make life difficult when the news broke, and would probably affect not only his career but also the outcome of the impending trial. He would have preferred things done in the right order but he fully intended marrying Pilar anyway and he wanted more children, “I’ll talk to my lawyer. I’ll tell him to give Chata whatever she wants. I’ll get the divorce sorted out as quickly as possible, then we’ll go straight to Mexico and get married.” Pilar wanted the baby and was sure from his reaction that he did too, but she was also certain that even he couldn’t get rid of Chata in time for them to get married, give their baby his name or save his career, “I couldn’t let him destroy everything he had worked so hard for. Chata was taking delight in being difficult, nothing Duke offered had moved her before, she was unlikely to change now. She wanted to take him to court, wanted the scandal to hit the papers, wanted to hurt him in the most painful way she knew, by destroying his career.”