John Wayne

by C McGivern

  Duke didn’t feel alienated, he was aware he was doing a good job and he was as happy that summer as he had ever been. Harry Carey Jr remembered, “The minute we all arrived there you could tell that this was something really special, something different from anything any of us had known before. It sounds like I’m dramatizing but I’m telling the truth. The whole thing had a mood about it and Wayne was so powerful. He’d really done his homework. He became Ethan Edwards. I think it really was his greatest performance. I was mesmerized by the power of his performance. His acting brought tears to my eyes in the scene where he tells me my girlfriend has been killed. When Ford liked a scene he went, “Right!” Well, even he was satisfied and he went “Right!” after the first take. Everything was perfect but as Pappy sat back to light his cigar there was some mumbling behind the camera. Someone confessed that the cameras had stopped right in the middle of the scene. What had happened was that Ward Bond had arrived on set, unplugged the camera, plugged in his electric shaver and started shaving! Ford moaned we’d have to do it again but no one ever told him what Bond had done. I think he would have killed him. I was even more impressed the second time we did it. I was amazed at Duke’s talent during the filming of The Searchers. When I looked up at him in rehearsal, it was into the meanest, coldest eyes I had ever seen. I don’t know how he moulded the character… He was even Ethan at dinner time. Ethan was always in his eyes.”

  Ford, at the pinnacle of his career, framed the closing scene in a doorway to reinforce Ethan’s isolation. The shot was acknowledged as one of the most harrowing in film history and Olive Carey, Harry’s mother, was reduced to tears as she watched it unfold, “All Duke had to do was walk up to the door, turn around and walk away, The End. He did so much more than that. I think he has the grace of Nureyev, he really is the most graceful man I’ve ever seen, his co-ordination is so fantastic. I love to watch him move around. He rehearsed the scene twice. After the five year search he had finally brought Debbie home. He stands alone outside on the porch as everyone else goes into the house with the girl. He is looking in after them longingly. The others move back into their close-knit community and Ethan is left out on his own, unable to re-join society. His eyes showed his pain.” Harry Carey recalled that Duke had a hangover when the scene was shot, “There he was! The big man standing alone in the doorway… he was to look in and then walk away, but just before he turned, he saw my mother, wife of his all-time hero, standing behind the camera, and as naturally as taking a breath, he raised his left hand, reached across his chest and grabbed his right arm at the elbow. It was a typical Harry Carey gesture seen by Duke in countless movies when he was a boy; he’d spent many a dime just to see that. He looked at my mother for a couple of minutes, then turned, and walked away into the loneliness of the desert. A sign should have been put up on the door of Duke’s room at Goulding’s Lodge, “In this room John Wayne got drunk before he shot one of the most famous scenes in motion picture history.” It was filmed in the late afternoon. Ford didn’t suspect anything special was going to happen when the cameras started to roll, but he loved the way Duke instinctively closed his picture. It was an unexpected and emotional personal tribute that touched my Mother’s heart.”

  Duke hadn’t realized anyone would notice, and he was surprised at the reaction, “Jesus, people noticed that? You know why I did this at the end of the picture? In the last scene Harry’s widow had taken the girl in, and as they went by me I could feel the wind blowing on me, then I saw them all turn round. She and I had been talking about Harry and I saw her looking at me, and I just did it. Goddam, tears just came to her eyes. I played that scene for Ollie Carey. Turned out to be a great shot didn’t it?”

  Hank Worden played Mose Harper, a part Ford added to lighten the tone of the grim story. Hank had Duke to thank for a successful career as a character actor. They had worked together from the start at Monogram, “Duke helped me get a part in Red River, mentioning me to Mr Hawks. I had been a wrangler until then. He always asked for work for me and many of the jobs I got later were due to the exposure I got working with him. He was a first class friend, just the way he was in his pictures, and we often shared tents out on location in the old days. When we made The Searchers I bunked in one of the tents at the trading post in Monument Valley but Duke often came down there to eat with us, saying that our food was better than what was being served in the star’s dining room. He turned up, threw his arm round me and said, “Hank, you old son of a bitch, what’ve we got? Let’s eat.” I have to tell you he called everyone he liked a “son of a bitch.” If you were a SOB on his list, you were in. All his crew were sons of bitches and he loved them all. I’ve seen him on location talking to truck drivers, not big wheels you understand, and he’d be asking them about their wives and their kids. And he remembered all their names and all their stories and problems. We remembered him for his kindness and his courtesy in remembering.”

  All the members of the Ford Stock Company were working at the height of their popularity. The books of Zane Grey and Louis L‘Amour were selling in their millions. Television was showing up to thirty five westerns a week. The Searchers could hardly fail. Still none of them anticipated the spectacular success of a collaboration that saw the picture hailed as the ultimate western. Film critic Andrew Sarris wrote, “Wayne acts out the mystery of what passes through the soul of Ethan Edwards in that fearsome moment when he discovers the bodies of his brother, his beloved sister-in-law and his nephew. He is invested afterward with the implacability of a figure too much larger than life for any genre but the western.”

  Ford’s west had become a place of anguish for John Wayne. The hero had grown hard and obsessive. Ford knew he could portray “the tragedy of the loner” to perfection, now he wanted to draw out the darker side. In all the films they had made together up to The Searchers the Wayne hero was always the savior of civilization. Now he became isolate, unwanted and rejected by society, a hostile, restless and impatient man, doomed to be a wanderer, he is masculine, repressed, celibate, and brutalized by civilization. Ford said, “What interested me most were the consequences of one tragic moment and how Ethan reacts to that moment, his search for the naked truth and the brutality of his actions. He endures everything the desert offers and in such a hostile landscape it was his own brute strength that determined his own, and finally Debbie‘s survival. We largely dispensed with language. Ethan was a man of strength and few words.”

  His face, movement, the cold stare of hard eyes, all tell of pain, endurance, and his commitment to see things through and Duke admitted, “I felt personally closer to Ethan than any other character I ever played.” A lifetime of regret can be seen in Ethan’s eyes at his first appearance in opening shots that establish him immediately as a man to be reckoned with. He is seen to be quick to anger, ready to explode, a time bomb. Hidden deep, but instantly visible when he glances at his sister-in-law, is one tiny spark of gentleness and warmth and it is obvious that he loves her. It is equally obvious that she shares his feelings. He gazes after her with longing as she lovingly unfolds and holds his coat against her body. Ford never makes clear what has happened between them before the war, “I don’t think it came over very well that I was supposed to be in love with her. The story really called for a man that was fighting his instinct with reasoning that this was his brother’s wife. That was the way I felt, though it wasn’t in the script or anything, and with Jack, a lot of his work was instinctive, he came on with one idea, but maybe when he got on set he changed his mind.”

  Once his sister in law has been murdered Ethan’s last shred of tenderness is lost and he becomes a totally hard character. Even the niece he has been searching for becomes his enemy, committing the ultimate betrayal with the Indian chief who kidnapped her. In the final scenes he steps back from the edge of insanity to recall that Debbie is all that is left to him of the woman he loved. She is terrified of him and expects him to kill her when he catches her, instead he holds her close against his chest and mur
murs, “Let’s go home Debbie.”

  French director and Marxist, Jean-Luc Godard said, “In that instant I realized the power and complexity of John Wayne.” He had been determined to hate all Wayne films, and then he saw The Searchers, “How can I hate John Wayne upholding Goldwater and yet love him tenderly when he abruptly takes Natalie Wood in his arms in the last reel of The Searchers?” In no other film had he shown the emotional range that he now displayed and Mary St John said, “When he watched the rushes he knew he was giving a special performance.”

  At the time of its release few critics picked up its dark message or its splendor and it fell to a new generation of filmmakers to discover the classic. Reviews in 1956 only looked at John Wayne in another John Wayne movie, Duke doing business as usual, in itself that was hardly anything special.

  But the next generation of critics noticed that he had taken his Western hero to the edge of evil, that he had pushed his accepted image way past the implacable, good guy of his earlier work and into another realm and the Western gunman became an anti-hero for the first time. As cruel Ethan Edwards, Duke attracted a whole new generation of fans, youngsters who wouldn’t have been seen dead at his earlier movies, but who now identified with his truculence and willingly adopted him as one of their own. Ethan’s catch phrase, “That’ll be the day” was turned into a song by Buddy Holly within weeks of the film’s release. It remained at number one in the charts for months and the phrase emerged into American teenage vocabulary. Duke was surprised to find himself an accepted part of the youth cult along with James Dean and Marlon Brando.

  On the whole it fell to younger film makers to recognize the quality and power of the picture. Whilst Howard Hawks said, twenty years after its release, “I rank it as the best color picture that I’ve ever seen,” it was the likes of Martin Scorsese who raved about its grandeur, “The dialogue is like poetry! I see it once or twice a year,” and Steven Spielberg who agreed, “I never tire of seeing it. It’s John Wayne’s best performance… It’s a study in dramatic framing and composition. It contains the single most harrowing moment in any film I’ve ever seen.”

  On the home front too Duke made an announcement fitting his spectacular year. For months since their wedding, Pilar had followed him around from one location to the next, they had been exciting and fulfilling times for him, but less so for her. She was bored when he was working. She wanted a baby, partly to replace one lost and partly to fill the long lonely hours she spent on film sets. Duke also felt a baby would complete their happiness and was more than willing to oblige her. He had done his best with his first family, it had never been enough and now he knew a strong urge to make amends and to put past failure behind him. Pilar was offering him a second chance and he wanted to prove he could be a good husband and father. He took every opportunity that presented itself and a month after arriving in Monument Valley to shoot The Searchers, and just eight months after their wedding, Pilar knew she was pregnant again. She didn’t tell him until filming was complete and they were back home. He was ecstatic when she shouted the news down the stairs to him. He ran up them two at a time, crying as he realized that yet again the Gods had smiled on John Wayne, “It isn’t often a man gets a second chance in life. This time I swear I will do it right!”

  The films he made during the fifties reflected changes in his own identity and he was increasingly portrayed as having hidden passion and eroticism, as a self-mocking, sometimes violent man who, appreciating his own huge image doesn’t want to lash out as he is often forced to do. The toughness was a means of hiding his underlying vulnerability and in many of the films of this period he either draws away from violence, is seen to disapprove of it, or ultimately is killed himself. As an alternative to the graphic violence he so opposed, he regularly used his fists, and when he resorted to guns he lost as often as he won. When he failed it wasn’t because of any lack of courage or endeavor, but because he was outnumbered, or because of circumstances outside his control.

  His strength lay in his willingness to accept responsibility, a willingness to die protecting those in his care, an ability to provide comfort and protection. His power of endurance and devotion to duty were constantly highlighted. His performances were marked by his actions and his personality rather than by words. As he aged and accepted more responsibility in his own life the next generation of films reflected the emotional and physical changes taking place in the man. He provided the mould for the directors and his physical characteristics still gave them much to work with, even though he no longer possessed the hard muscularity of a true action hero.

  His stature now tended to display his sense of discomfort or awkwardness and his body was increasingly referred to in unflattering terms. At the same time he was better able to demonstrate the endurance that was so much a part of the characters he chose to play. He was tough and could still stand much abuse despite the loss of muscular power. His body, softer now, was perfectly suited to providing shelter and comfort, and in film after film he could be seen lifting women or children and holding them safely protected against a broad expanse of chest.

  The dramatic changes abounded both in his film persona and in his private identity. Visibly older, he was stiffer and heavier, and the eyes held hidden depths behind increasingly drooping lids. The parts he could play may have altered but they only reflected those changes happening in the man and the domestic path he now trod led straight to superstardom where he became the stuff of legend, the ultimate Hollywood film icon. He chose his own direction every step of the way; it led him to a secure place in the hearts and minds of the public but also carried him inevitably away from his beloved Pilar. When she first realized she was pregnant again she was as excited as he was but she instinctively feared that when the baby arrived things were going to get difficult. He was driven, compulsively, obsessively, to make more and more films, always adding to the myth that surrounded and isolated him. When Pilar told him she was expecting he was overjoyed but he didn’t stop to think how a baby might alter their relationship. She began staying at home when he went on location, driven by her own obsession, as great as his, to raise their family.

  Changes were inevitable. For three years he and Pilar hadn’t been separated, he expected and needed her at his side. When he made three films in a year he was away from home for up to nine months, during which time she had become vital to his comfort. He tended to work in remote locations suited to the kind of films he preferred to make. They were tough on him physically and demanded great effort; he was often tired, uncomfortable and irritable. But he also possessed energy that others didn’t possess, and even as he approached his fiftieth birthday he could hardly control it. For those around him things were even more difficult, and Pilar began to find going on location exhausting and incredibly boring.

  There was no way she would consider taking their longed-for child to desolate locations. She was suddenly torn by the realization that even had she wanted to be with him all the time, she wanted to be a good mother to their baby more. For the first time she had the worrying notion that perhaps her children were going to mean more to her than he did, and knew that once he realized that he would be lost to her.

  She kept her fears to herself and he welcomed the pregnancy as if he were a first-time expectant father, strutting round the house, drawing up plans for a new nursery. He thought his four older children would share his excitement but was shocked by the deafening silence that greeted him when he announced the news at a family dinner. Shrugging helplessly he moaned, “Well don’t blame me. She’s the one who’s pregnant!” Pilar was furious to find herself the target of his children’s displeasure, “Forceful though he was, he simply couldn’t abide arguing with his children. He was always the one to back down in the face of family conflict. He could stand his ground in any situation except were his own family were concerned. He had his huge, furious temper that terrified many an onlooker, but he resolutely refused to be drawn into battles at home. He had lived through enough conflict in
his life from his childhood onwards that now, whenever he could, he avoided anything even resembling an argument. At the first sign of trouble he simply turned his back and walked away. Strangely, he never got involved in disputes in his office either. Whenever voices were raised in his presence he beat a hasty retreat and disappeared until the unpleasantness passed.” It was actually pretty typical Marion Morrison behavior and he never grew out of the need to run from raised voices.

  Still, he felt piercing shame. He had failed his wife when she had most needed his protection. The stunned faces of his children told him they were having difficulty swallowing his enthusiasm for a second family when he had done so poorly by each of them; his divorce from their mother continued to exact a heavy toll and Pilar continued, “He was Hollywood’s leading man. He cast a huge shadow, and sometimes those closest to him got lost in its darkness. To his first family everything must have seemed so complicated; I was only six years older than Michael. The children of his second family would be the same ages as his grandchildren. Duke might still be able to keep his life in neat compartments, but we had difficulty conceiving the permutations of the relationships now approaching. He had defied the natural rhythms of life, and he was big enough to do that, but we were all left struggling along in his wake, we couldn’t keep up with him, and we resented it.”