by C McGivern
When Hollywood had first heard that Wayne, Douglas and Preminger were going to be working together, a disaster was predicted. Many of the cast did find Preminger difficult as he strutted around shouting, “I am the man with no hair, who shoves around people with hair.” The self-confessed bully and hater of actors was merciless but Duke somehow managed to escape in one piece, “I know he’s supposed to be a sonofabitch but he had my respect. He was terribly hard on the crew and on those people he thought were sloughing. But this is a thing I can understand because I’ve been there and I know that if a fellow comes on and he’s careless and he hasn’t thought about his… well, I just come ready, that’s all, and he appreciated that. I was usually there ahead of him on the set, and he couldn’t believe it. But that’s how I always work. So we got to have a really nice relationship… except there was no way to tell him… goddamm, he wanted to have his picture taken on all those miniatures! You know, a film can’t be a success once it loses its credibility. That’s why I don’t try to outrun Paavo Nurmi, nor outplay some 6’11’’ basketball player; I keep within my own limits so that my audience can accept me. I get kind of anxious about that.”
Just as Duke obviously respected Preminger so the director commented that he had never worked with anyone who had so intuitive a sense of the camera as the star, “I was surprised at his ability to gain maximum effect from any situation. He was the least ego-ridden man I ever met. It was unusual to work with a star who was unconcerned about anyone stealing his lines. He had a deep interest in making movies, he loved everything about the business.”
Preminger gave Duke a wider latitude than he offered anyone else, and was almost fatherly toward him. Like many who had heard he was a right wing monster, Preminger expected Duke to be rude, brash and primitive, and was surprised to find almost the exact opposite, “He was an urbane and civilized human being; well-read, sensitive and gentle. What professional discipline he had, in make-up by 7am every morning, staying until he was dismissed, and often long after he had been dismissed. There are stars who disappoint you when you first meet them, but John Wayne was even taller, more majestic, than I expected him to be. He had none of the usual tricks of a star’s temperament. When a take was spoiled he simply always thought it was his fault and he apologized to everyone involved. In fact he rarely made mistakes when the cameras were rolling. He never argued with my decisions, he listened attentively and accepted correction and direction without comment. He listened to every suggestion and did his best to follow it.”
Wendell Mayes, who wrote the screen play, enthused, “Wayne never blows a line and when the other actors blow theirs he stands patiently waiting for them to get it right.” Despite their political differences, Kirk Douglas agreed, “The perfect movie star is John Wayne… he brings so much authority to a role. He can pronounce literally any line in a script and get away with it.” One line was so corny that Douglas waited, amused as Duke tried it out, “I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.” Douglas held his breath, “But you know what? He said it, and he got away with it. Now that’s John Wayne. No one else could have done that line and got away with it.” Hollywood had predicted a disaster but the three men worked professionally together and proved the pundits wrong.
The director was worried about Duke’s hacking cough but was reassured when the star told him it was just a cold.
“Do you have any fever?”
“Oh a notch or two above normal, but Hell, it’s nothing, Otto, nothing.”
In fact getting through each day was proving to be a tough assignment and as far as Preminger was concerned, the fact that he was obviously sick throughout filming was further testament to his pure acting ability. Pilar had gone to Hawaii with him and was scared, “He rarely complains. He amazes me. He is addicted to danger, but he scares me and I worry all the time. It keeps me up nights. I wish he would take things easier. I’m so afraid of losing him. He is blind and indifferent to hazard. He takes too many chances and we fight about it all the time. I wish he would see a doctor, but he won’t... there’s nothing I can do…”
The Hollywood Reporter commented favorably on his performance and admired his “Tremendous masculinity, his massive physical strength and his casual acting,” but in the four months that had passed between filming Circus World and In Harm’s Way he had aged considerably, he no longer looked strong or fit, his eyes were watery and clouded, he looked older than his fifty-seven years, and he’d gained weight despite the fact that he was off food. He admitted that even walking across a room left him shattered. He found it difficult to breathe and was aware of a strong and rapidly increasing pain across his chest.
He had promised Pilar he would go back to the clinic after finishing In Harm’s Way, but then changed his mind again and told her he would go after completing The Sons of Katie Elder instead. She stood strong and insisted, “No. You are going now.” Duke caved in and drove himself down to Scripps Clinic, “He was like a little boy about attending the clinic, he hated hospitals and doctors. He detested the loss of privacy and control when he entered the clinic. He usually forced me to go with him and have all the same tests that he had. This time he went alone.” He had arranged to meet old friend Louis Johnson after the physical was over to go to the races.
The unusual thoroughness of his medical surprised Duke. Tissue samples were taken and various other tests were carried out. The probing, draining, repeated blood tests and X-rays annoyed him. He was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of fear, and he wished Pilar had gone with him. Lately they had been arguing ferociously, but he trusted her, loved her, and knew she wouldn’t let him down if there was anything seriously wrong with him. He felt old, ill and deeply troubled. On paper he was still all but broke and the future of his family rested on his ability to remain one of the top ten box office stars. He left the clinic at the end of a harrowing day of tests worrying how he could support them if he could no longer work because of ill health.
When he reported back into Scripps the next morning for his results a dark shadow crept across the sky, hiding the sun. The receptionist told him he needed further X-rays and a number of shots were taken from several different angles. Two hours later a surgeon gave an ashen-faced Duke the stark details of his illness. He was told he had a one in twenty chance of surviving lung cancer, “I think I might have been treated with a little more humanity.” He felt cold and vulnerable sitting all but naked in a hospital gown, as the doctor tried to decide how far it had spread, “I had flu when I was about eight. I had an appendicitis operation. I’d had some trouble with an ulcer. Now I felt like somebody had hit me across the belly with a baseball bat. It wasn’t just the fear of death, although there’s that too. When the doctor taps you on the shoulder and says, “You’ve got cancer,” the sun sure doesn’t shine any brighter.”
He called Pilar from the hospital, knowing she was waiting for news, “How to tell my wife, my mother, those kids who are the joy of my life and who’d never seen me sick? I’d always been big, healthy, somebody they could kind of depend on. It’s…the helplessness. I couldn’t see myself laying on a bed, not able to do anything for myself, no damn good to anybody. I felt like a jerk.” He decided it would be too cruel to tell her over the phone and he lied that all was well.
He set off for home in his old green Pontiac station wagon that was almost as famous as he was, and the custom-built model with its raised dome drew plenty of attention as he turned out of the hospital grounds. People stood to watch and wave him on his way up the Pacific Coast Highway, oblivious to the devastation that had left him reeling. Normally, when he drove he pointed the wagon where he wanted to go, put his foot flat to the floor, and weaved in and out of traffic. Pilar and the children thought his driving was so bad they never volunteered to sit in the front with him, preferring instead to huddle together in the back with their eyes shut. This time he drove slowly, with care and deliberation, as he planned his next moves.
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sp; Even driving home, facing a bleak future, he hungered for a cigarette, “It sure was agony. The doctors had told me I had to stop, and I was going to do as I was told, but it wasn’t easy. My mouth was dry and I ached all over. I’d smoked all my life; I grew up with a cigarette in my mouth. But now I had my family to think of and I was running scared. So I was going to quit… but even on that drive home it was murder. I had the most terrible craving and it felt like I was being dragged through Hell backwards. But I intended becoming a non-smoker, I was going to stick with it. I guess it’s never easy.” He had smoked since he was a young boy and for over forty years had averaged three packets a day. Aissa said, “I never saw my dad without a cigarette in his hand.” When he was under stress he got through six packs of unfiltered Camels a day, lighting each cigarette from the one he was putting out, “I loved smoking, it was part of my identity.” The mannerisms he used were peculiarly his own; he held his cigarette deep inside his hand, his huge palm obscuring his face when he took a drag, “No one else smokes a cigarette like John Wayne.”
As he continued his drive along the coast his hands trembled on the steering wheel, “I even craved the sensation of tearing the cellophane wrapper, unfolding the tin foil, and pulling out that first one, putting it between my lips, lighting it and inhaling deeply. These were sensations I loved and had become used to over many years. There had been many times during my years making movies that I could have died. I was thrown off and under horses, I had jumped out of windows and off roofs. I had been living on borrowed time for years… when that rhino charged in Hatari, during the fire in Circus World, when I jumped from the roof in McLintock! … I could have been killed so often… I ruptured a disc in my spine in McLintock! and was left in agony. I’ve had lots of serious injuries, I’ve bust my ribs, ankles, I’ve torn tendons, had my nose smashed. What the hell did just one more cigarette matter?” Even as he was hit by the impulse to stop and buy one last pack he began coughing, pictures of his young dependent family sprang to mind, and he couldn’t do it.
He drove on until he reached Newport Bay where he could see The Wild Goose, his pride and joy, anchored in the distance. No, he had a greater love, and the thought that he might not be able to work struck him again. He had contemplated his family, his life, and his boat on the long drive from the clinic, and now it hit him… work… would he ever make another picture? If he couldn’t fall off roofs or horses any more, if he couldn’t make movies he had no future to contemplate and he might just as well be dead.
He drove on, more slowly, scared of arriving home where he knew he would have to face Pilar’s questions. He had hidden the truth over the phone; he wouldn’t be able to do it face to face. He rehearsed his lines, “Everything will be alright. I know the man upstairs will pull the plug when he wants to, but I don’t want to end up my life being sick. I want to go out on two feet, in action. I’m not ready. Everything’s going to be alright,” he repeated it over and over. Nothing could touch him, he was John Wayne, the guy who faced and beat all-comers, the man with the huge appetite for life with the enthusiasm of a young football star, he was the man who took everything in his stride; he smoked too much, drank too much, ate too much, worked too hard, loved too hard, he was John Wayne, “Christ, how can I live if I can’t get up at four in the morning, drive to work as the sun comes up, get into make-up and costume, how can I live if I can’t chat to Jack, or Henry or Howard. How am I going to make it? There’s so much to do.”
And then he had a brilliant idea! “If I can’t have a cigarette, I’ll have a drink every time I want one instead.” He had already entered the outskirts of town but there were lots of bars before he got home and he stopped at a small roadside café. It was against everything he believed in to drive after having a drink, he was a fanatic on the subject, and he had an arrangement with local police who took him home whenever he had been out drinking. Nevertheless he was fairly smashed by the time he got back, “Yeah, I was scared. Real scared. I realized I’d been self-centered, had never given my family the real consideration I should have. I guess we’re all like that. I’d taken so much for granted. When they told me I had cancer I realized I wasn’t worth much without the people around me that I loved. At first I sort of gave in. I cried. I sobbed. I needed Pilar’s courage and support but I was scared to tell her, I was scared to look her in the eye.” When he walked in, he looked at the floor instead and mumbled, “I’ve got a little problem Pilar. The doctor says I’ve got a spot on my lung, but don’t worry.” They had been married almost ten years, he was afraid they wouldn’t be celebrating any more anniversaries, “I wasn’t even sure if the next day would be my last. I wondered if this would be the day I’d see the sun for the last time, the day I’d have to say goodbye to Pilar and the kids. I was afraid to tell her how I felt.”
On September 3, 1964, two weeks after the initial diagnosis, he met surgeon John E Jones at Good Samaritan Hospital, “The cancer is quite obvious. We have a fine surgical team here.” Duke couldn’t hide any longer, “OK, When? I’m contracted to make The Sons of Katie Elder in November. Can surgery wait?” Jones told him to either reschedule the picture or forget surgery altogether. He had told no one other than Pilar that he had cancer, now he had to confess to Henry Hathaway, who was directing the movie. At the time almost every form of cancer was a death sentence but Hathaway himself had survived cancer of the colon. He talked to Duke at length about what he now faced; he reassured him about his chances of recovery but also warned him not to expect it to be a piece of cake either, “Surgery will be as painful as hell, but everything’s going to be fine Duke.”
At home he became increasingly introverted. He refused to discuss the future, made no arrangements and wouldn’t discuss his illness, he made no special effort to see any of his friends, he kept himself to himself and felt isolated as the days before the operation dragged on, “I was tough to get along with. I’d discovered I was fallible and my body was craving tobacco. Pilar was the real strength then. She forced me not to give in and stuck with it when I wanted to surrender. I guess I should have talked to her about it more. People should talk. But like so many others I was afraid of the very word cancer, I didn’t want to say it… to anyone.”
Pilar knew him well and understood how he felt, “Duke was a chain smoker. I never saw anyone smoke as much as he did. It went on constantly and I don’t know how he gave up something that meant so much to him. I knew he was scared about having cancer, but I think not getting his tobacco hurt him much more. Even if he hadn’t been so unwell I would have expected him to get snappy if he wasn’t smoking. I tried to be understanding, but sometimes he pushed me to the limit.”
The two weeks waiting for the operation were torment for them all as he did his best to hide his fears. In the end he stopped communicating altogether, he was afraid to let his guard down as he tried to protect the inner man. He acted tough and was left unable to share his anxiety or even to acknowledge it himself. On the only occasion he let the mask slip he confessed to Pilar that his constant coughing reminded him of the unhappy boyhood nights when he had listened to his father, who had tuberculosis. He told her that feeling ill was torture to him, but so was being made to talk about it and he begged her to leave him alone to deal with things in his own way.
Before going into hospital he’d been undecided about what to tell the press. His agent, Charlie Feldman, warned that his image as the tough, virile, action man, would be harmed if people knew he was suffering from lung cancer. Duke found falsehood difficult to sustain but Feldman, his son Michael, and his son-in-law Don La-Cava, who now handled his business affairs, all advised him to keep quiet about the impending surgery. They told him no studio would hire him once they heard he had cancer and he didn’t feel well enough to argue the point.
He wanted to tell the truth but once he saw how the people closest to him were reacting he guessed the studios would also panic. He didn’t want to survive only to find himself unemployable, and because he knew he couldn’t surv
ive without work, he became trapped in an image of strength that he no longer possessed. He had to be seen to be invincible, audiences had to believe he was a man immune to life’s ravages. He’d invested so much energy into creating the image that every role he was offered reflected the stereotype and John Wayne, weakened cancer victim, as vulnerable as the next man, could be forced out of Hollywood. He had no alternative but to live his life according to the image. He reluctantly agreed to say nothing and Feldman took matters into his own hands, telling the Press that Duke was going into hospital to have an old football injury repaired.
“Everything is going to be alright,” he whispered to himself as he walked nervously into the Good Samaritan Hospital on September 16th 1964. He laughed and joked with staff and behaved in the only way he could; the toughest son of a bitch in the West had arrived for the showdown. Pilar stayed with him in the bleak hospital room, afraid to be away from him for too long. She also guessed that he must be afraid, even if he couldn’t give voice to those fears. Neither slept the night before the operation, and a million unspoken thoughts ran through Duke’s mind, but as he was wheeled away to theatre he gave his wife a warm kiss, a John Wayne smile and a cheery wave.
The scalpel of Dr Jones entered his chest just under the left breast. It ran a full twenty-eight inches up under his left arm and into the middle of his back. Muscles were separated, ribs were cracked and one was removed to expose his diseased lung. An average four packs of cigarettes a day for forty years had done their inevitable damage and Jones uncovered a dark grey inflexible organ with a large tumor present in the upper lobe. It was self-contained with a well-defined border. The doctor was hopeful the cancer cells hadn’t spread. He removed most of the lung and surrounding lymph nodes in a procedure lasting over six hours before finally emerging from theatre to tell Pilar things had gone well, and that he believed Mr Wayne would go on to lead a “fairly normal” life. She smiled gratefully, aware that there had never been anything even close to normal about her husband’s life and that there was no way he would ever be able to lead a fairly normal life, “My husband was a rare man! He simply couldn’t live as other men did.”