by C McGivern
Duke, horrified, rushed to place an immediate disclaimer, “I wish to state that the Chill Wills ad is an untrue and reprehensible claim. No one in the Batjac organization or in the Russell Birdwell office has been a party to his trade paper advertising. I refrain from using stronger language because I am sure his intentions were not as bad as his taste.” Groucho Marx had the last laugh, writing that for John Wayne to criticize Mr Wills for bad taste was like Jayne Mansfield criticizing Sabrina for too much exposure.
Blinded by his own love of America, as much as by his hopes for the film, he remained personally convinced that he had made a noble and worthy statement and had allowed a campaign to develop that suggested a vote for The Alamo was also a vote for the United States. He had compounded mistake after mistake and perhaps the biggest was his failure to realize that no one liked having their arm twisted. He failed to spot quickly enough that his eagerness had rubbed people up the wrong way, but as soon as he saw the Wills advert he smelt impending doom, “From the morning the ad turned up there was just a pall, like something had hit town.”
Out in Africa he contracted flu and became extremely ill. He was physically and mentally all in. Suddenly, and unusually, he was overwhelmed by self-doubt and a sense of terror. He suffered a panic attack, and on the spur of the moment, sold his stake in the film back to United Artists. Eventually it went on to make enormous world-wide profit but Duke, who saved his sanity by selling his stake, never saw any financial reward for all the years of devotion and superhuman effort.
As he sat through the 1961 Oscar ceremony he witnessed the fall of The Alamo again. The Apartment won Best Picture, Peter Ustinov won Best Supporting Actor, and the only Oscar his film took was Best Score by Dmitri Tiomkin. He went home empty handed to lick what he feared were fatal wounds. No matter what he told reporters that night, he felt both humiliation and disappointment. He had devoted fifteen years to a film about honor and decency, now he felt sick to his stomach on, “The day indecency triumphed.”
Elizabeth Taylor and Shirley Jones both took Oscars playing prostitutes and Burt Lancaster won his as a flawed preacher, “My politics definitely interfered with the fucking critics but, sonofabitch, after all that work I thought we’d win something. It was a damned good picture.” He was defeated, but hardly surprised.
After twelve months The Alamo had made $14 million. United Artists went on to release the film several times and by 1970 it was one of the most profitable films in Hollywood history. They did well out of their deal with Duke, who emerged able to repay his debts, but without a penny to his name and hardly owning the shirt on his back, “I couldn’t even buy a pack of chewing gum without a co-signer!”
When he sold out to UA it was to protect Batjac and ensure the future of his production company, but at that point he walked away from the dream that had consumed him for so long. He closed the door behind him. He had done his very best and took some pride in his achievement, but the price had been too high, he had been all but devoured in his obsession, “Financially the film didn’t really fail, it made fifteen million the first time round. Of course I didn’t make a cent because I made a bad goddam deal. I know the rumor was always that it was a bomb, but listen, I’ve only directed two pictures, both of them did fifteen million first time around. Show me another director who’s done that.”
The critics continued to laugh at him and his film but they never understood his dream and ignored his intent, instead they dwelt on what The Alamo wasn’t, “I saw the story as an ode to an heroic era, I aimed it at a generation that didn’t believe in heroes anymore.” In the process he at last became the man he’d always wanted to be. Few film makers had ever had to fight as hard or as long as he did, against such overwhelming odds. He’d jeopardized his health, well-being, his wealth and his reputation to make his testament to heroism and its production became his crowning glory.
Duke sold his set back to Happy Shahan. It was turned into a Western film set and tourist attraction. He had already sold his stake to UA. Neither action recovered his losses and his only solution was to throw himself into another orgy of work. He was staring ruin in the face and his wife commented dryly, “The trouble was he had trusted too many people and put his confidence in people who let him down. It was his biggest fault and was why he got hurt so many times. Right then he was extremely vulnerable. He was ill and tired but he couldn’t afford to rest and through the next years he had to work at a frightening pace. It was a hard time for him.”
Shortly after selling out to UA he discovered they had been holding spare production capital back from him all along. He felt cheated and immediately broke away from them. He never worked with them again and they ultimately paid a high price for crossing him. But Duke was fast running out of friends. He had already ended his business partnership with Bo Roos and alienated many people in the industry who had previously liked him.
He found he now had many enemies, all intent on bringing him down. Unbiased observers felt much of the damage was self-inflicted and of long standing, the result of his anti-Communist activities and Duke conceded, “Well, there might be a little truth in everything you hear, and the Alliance thing was used pretty strongly against me. I sometimes feel lost. The critics didn’t work on The Alamo, they worked on their feelings about me. They kept saying the picture was a failure, well, Christ, it was far from a failure.”
In itself it didn’t fail, but neither did it give him the security he had been looking for. Hollywood made it plain on Oscar night that he would never be recognized as a director and he was forced to accept that the world saw him as a cowboy, soldier, or sailor. He had to resign himself to the fact that he would have to take action parts for as long as they were offered. He had no way of knowing then that the offers would continue to flood in, or that his financial security was safe in his own hands. He had never been a man to look back or bemoan what might have been, now all he could do was carry on as though nothing had happened, “I’ll just keep working.”
Anti-climax after fifteen years of hard labour, public humiliation over his effort, ill health and exhaustion, fear about how long he could survive in what had become a hostile environment, panic about how he could put his finances back in order, all contributed to an overwhelming sense of black depression. And then the bitterest blow of all landed. One week after The Alamo premiered in San Antonio Ward Bond suffered a heart attack and died in a Dallas hotel room. The years of bleak, unabated gloom began and on that day his eyes filled with the haunted sadness which rarely left them again.
Many years later he was asked what he thought about the advertising campaign for The Alamo, the hound-dog sadness was on his face as he spat out pithily, “It hurt us. Hurt the way the film was accepted.” It also turned him into a media-generated political enigma when, in truth, he was a film star obsessed only with the business of making films. He spent his every waking moment involved either in film making or trying to create some kind of order from the chaos that was his life. After The Alamo he was weighed down by emotional and physical inertia and his heart and mind were fully occupied. He could spare little of his depleted energy in the political arena. On the other hand he was intelligent and interested in everything going on around him. He read the papers avidly and watched TV. He had opinions about how the country should be run and he enjoyed expressing them. He reacted to the situations he saw emotionally and, because he was a film star, his outpourings were always widely reported.
The Press loved the larger than life image he had created; almost everything that came out of his mouth sold copy, and almost every word that escaped was reported to the world. Because he had often been asked about, and been widely quoted on political matters, people assumed he had a real and deep interest in politics per se, and was possessed of a political sophistication he always denied. He unashamedly said what he felt at a given moment, hardly sophisticated stuff, but his comments were always good news to a media more than willing to use them and him. He was fully aware he was used to sell
papers, he anguished over misquotes, and often told himself he should take more care. He then waded straight into the next interview.
If the repeatedly self-inflicted wounds didn’t hurt him enough there were plenty of others waiting in the wings to lend a hand. Soon after Bond’s death, Darryl F Zanuck, a man Duke considered a friend, unexpectedly launched an amazing attack. Zanuck moaned to the Press, from his home in France, about on-going problems in the American film industry, complaining about the stars who were busy setting up film corporations of their own. He saw men like Brando, Douglas and Duke at Batjac as usurpers to his power. He unleashed a viscous blast, blaming them for Hollywood’s ills, “Actors are now producing, directing, and writing; they have taken over Hollywood completely, together with their agents. What the Hell-I’m not going to work for actors. I’ve got a great affection for Duke Wayne, but what right has he to write, direct and produce a motion picture? … Everyone is becoming a corporation and you can’t talk to individuals any more. You can’t work as I used to, assigning one man to a story. Everyone has a percentage of everything. As a result they end up with nothing. Look at poor old Duke Wayne. He’s never going to see a nickel. He put all his money into finishing The Alamo.”
Duke, deeply hurt by the comments, immediately lashed back at producers who ran away to foreign countries to make pictures! He used no ghost writer when he sneered, “So Zanuck has decided to stop working for actors has he, and is shedding crocodile tears for poor old Duke Wayne and his Alamo? Please inform him that as far as old Duke and his picture is concerned-which was made, by the way, in the United States-it has made just under two million in three months in thirteen theaters and has ten thousand more play days to go.” Whatever he said in public, Zanuck’s unprovoked attack, coming as it did so soon after Bond’s death, affected him badly. It was a final crushing blow and one from which Old Duke Wayne didn’t recover for a long time.
At home his family found him mean, moody and distracted. He hardly bothered to talk to anyone and was rarely his usual smiling, whistling self. When he met his fans he continued to do the business, disarming them with joviality and politeness, but that was just an act he happened to be very good at.
He had sunk into a mood of profound crisis after exerting the most enormous amount of energy to capture a prize that had eluded him at the last gasp. And now, with the death of his best friend and the blows raining down on him from all sides, he realized that perhaps the prize wasn’t enough anyway and, for the very first time he wondered if there was any point to his artificial existence. He had found a wonderful new life with Pilar, he was deeply satisfied in his love, he had a new family, he had made his dream film. Nothing compensated for his loss. Despite all his achievements, which he knew to be great, he remained unfulfilled. He felt unsure of himself, didn’t know what to do or where to turn to find relief from the sadness that gnawed at him. Death had stolen his friend and darkened his world. He couldn’t escape the terrible pain that had to do with going into battle and not winning, with being badly wounded but left alive to fight another day.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE WARRIOR’S SUPREME ORDEAL
“Goddam! I’m the stuff men are made of! Working makes me feel like a worthwhile citizen. I can’t retire. I intend to stay in the saddle until I drop.”
“I loved smoking; it was part of my identity. I’d smoked all my life, I grew up with a cigarette in my mouth.”
...His plane touched down ten minutes late at London Heathrow. He was tired after the long flight from Los Angeles. He had often stayed in England, home of his own hero Winston Churchill, where his fans were every bit as loyal and devoted as those in America, and he liked to visit. He was rarely attacked by the Press on a personal level and, on the whole, British reviewers tended to give him an easy ride. Now he hoped the critics would see The Alamo in a favorable light, their reviews had become vitally important to him after the savaging he had received at the hands of the American Press.
Still casually dressed in a T-shirt, as he had been at home in Encino, he was hit by the icy northern hemisphere air as the aircraft doors were opened. He had misplaced his jacket but as he stepped out of the plane he was immediately warmed by the greeting that met his eyes. It was a universal welcome that he had never got used to and it never failed to move him. A slow smile spread across his face as he began the task of shaking hands. The grin stretched wider at the welcome more normally reserved for Churchill himself.
A man from British customs was waiting patiently, “Mr Wayne, I have made special arrangements for your luggage, if you’d like to follow me,” he smiled up at the rugged face which appeared to have been rearranged in countless bar-room brawls, and he thought there was only one other person in the world he would have gone to so much trouble for… and his name was Churchill …
“Mr Sutton,” Duke drawled, draping the mighty weight of his arm across his shoulders, in a friendly, trademark gesture, “thanks.” He added with a shiver, “Cold tonight isn’t it?”
Mr Sutton could not believe that this man, his hero, had remembered who he was from his last trip, and had also recognized the favor that had been done for him, “Yes sir, it is, don’t you have a coat with you?”
“Seem to have misplaced it. Never mind.”
His bags were cleared through customs in double quick time and Duke knew no other celebrity ever had such a smooth passage into Britain. He was relaxed and happy, if a little cold, “Mary, we’re missing a trunk. The only clothes I NEED are in it. Where is it?” “I’ll go see.” He smiled after his devoted secretary as she scuttled away to find the baggage containing his dress suit and, he hoped, a warmer jacket. If he couldn’t get warm on the outside it struck him that if he could find a drink he could warm up his insides a little. He looked around hopefully and spotted the studio officials sent to meet him, “Ah, just the men I needed.” he said handing the young executive a roll of notes from his pocket, “I’m cold son, go see if you can find me a bottle of Wild Turkey will you.”
“The bar’s not open Mr Wayne, and anyway, we’ll be out of here in a few minutes.”
“OK,” Mr Wayne drawled in his softest voice, but with eyes turning to steel, “a few minutes is all I need to have a drink … if I could get one. I’ll go look for one myself … but I don’t think the studio is going to appreciate my disappearing off into London alone.” He started to pace up and down the length of the lounge, muttering to himself and rapidly losing his fragile temper, commenting, “A man could get a bill through Congress quicker than he could get a drink around this place.”
He was well aware it would be no easy task for the boy to find a drink so late in the evening, but smiled as he saw him returning with a bottle in his hand.
“Duke, we can’t find the trunk. It may not even have been put on the plane at all. Mr Sutton has gone through everything with a fine-tooth comb, but it’s not in the airport now.”
“Alright Mary, thanks for looking. I’ll sort something out tomorrow, can’t go to a Royal Gala in a T-shirt.”
The studio executive unhappily handed over the bottle of Scotch and a glass, “This was all I could get Mr Wayne … why don’t you just let me get you to the hotel, and then I’ll sort out whatever you want … oh and if the case doesn’t turn up tomorrow I’ll personally see to it that you are correctly dressed… and if you feel cold in the car I believe there is a fur rug in the back … Mr Wayne?”
“Yes son?”“I’m really sorry about tonight. I did everything I could to get you in and out of here smoothly. I don’t know what went wrong.”
The icy mountain melted immediately, “It’s OK Tom, really, I’m just tired and cold. Let’s get to the hotel.”
He might have forgiven Tom but he was far from happy to be told he had to give an interview on the way. He got into the back of the car that he was sharing with two reporters, huddled his weary frame into the huge fur rug and poured himself another large Scotch. The Press men sat waiting quietly as he made himself comfortable for
the twenty minute drive to Windsor. They were nervous and he was well aware of it. He rested his head back against the leather seat and wished he could sleep. He couldn’t of course and he smiled resignedly, knowing he had to go through his paces again because it was expected of him. He opened tired, aching eyes, “You fellas want some scotch?”
Both shook their head and waited, “Well, you’ve got twenty minutes... ask whatever you want.”
“Mr Wayne, I’ve seen a studio news sheet saying a mountain in Utah is being named after you; is that true?”
Duke nearly fell off the seat. It was a new one on him, and he roared laughing, “That’s great. I’d not heard that one. That’s really funny. No one has told me that one before.” He added more seriously when he saw they didn’t share the joke, “No I don’t think that’s true.” He lay back again, lost in thought, wondering if any one would ever share a joke with him again. Though the reporters continued to probe he only answered briefly, nodding his head from time to time. Mary, sitting in the front with Tom, sensed the sudden change in his mood, noticed again how unusually subdued and withdrawn he had become since Ward Bond’s death. Though he occasionally flashed a broad smile he was certainly not his normal self. He asked no questions himself and looked out of the window at the passing scenery.