by C McGivern
Duke may only have been concerned about his wife’s opinion but from the day Playboy hit the street he was unmercifully caricatured, misunderstood, dismissed by the liberals, and attacked with venom and brutality by the Press. He was personally more tolerant and forgiving of human mistakes than most of them were toward him.
By the time the filming of The Green Berets commenced he was under immense pressure, he faced a multitude of production problems and felt under attack at every turn. The weather was cold and damp. His eye infection flared up again. His back hurt. He lost his appetite as he had when making The Alamo, and he was coughing violently again and often using oxygen to aid his breathing. One of the stars, Edward Faulkner, said, “He was under terrible pressure and, sure, he lashed out on a number of occasions. He had a temper, but he only ever attacked people he thought weren’t giving a hundred percent. He was giving 110 or 115 % himself. He did intimidate people, but he respected those who worked hard and could stand up to him. He didn’t like “yes” men. He was an absolute, complete professional. Yet I thought he was also a decent man. He was one of the most generous, big-hearted men I have ever known.” Everyone who worked on, or visited the set, were incredulous at his power and determination as he got on with directing, producing, starring, checking scripts, stunts, props, checking everything.
When he fell behind schedule he started shooting scenes through the night, personally working fourteen hour days. His lonely figure was often seen stalking back and forth across windswept hilltops as he planned each scene, a raincoat slung across his shoulders, and his green beret set at a jaunty angle as he barked out orders to the cast and crew. He was lost in a world of his own, his mind far from profit and loss, friends and enemies, his wife and even their children. David Janssen, another star, said, “He was like a man possessed by a demon that had him in its grasp. How he summoned up the physical and moral strength to go on like that for over three months, in the condition he was in, I had no idea.”
He had been sure about The Alamo, but it had not been the success he had hoped for. He was sure about this too, yet was now astute enough to know that nothing in life was certain. If the critics could hit The Alamo as hard as they had, he could only guess what they were going to do with this one. Still he believed in it, and when he stood alone on the hillside making changes to the script, getting things together, forgetting his body and thinking about his own vision of beauty and truth he really didn’t care what they did with it. He was making it honestly, saying what he wanted to say.
In 1968 Renata Adler, a sensitive, thoughtful reviewer, was hired as the movie critic at the New York Times. No one, least of all Duke, anticipated her savage attack, “The Green Berets is a film so stupid, so rotten and false in every detail that it passes through being fun, through being funny… through everything, and becomes an invitation to grieve, not for our soldiers … but for what had happened to the fantasy-making apparatus in the country… it is vile and insane. On top of that it is dull.” Duke smiled, “The critics were condemning the war, not the picture. Renata Adler was almost foaming at the mouth because I showed a few massacres on the screen. She went into convulsions. She and other critics wouldn’t believe that the Viet Cong are treacherous … that the dirty sons of bitches are raping and torturing. However their comments ensured the success of the movie. Luckily for me they overkilled it. It might have taken the public longer to find out about the picture if they hadn’t made so much noise about it. And I agreed with them that it was a shameless propaganda film. It was an American film about American boys who were heroes over there. Yes, in that sense it was propaganda. That little clique back there in the East has taken great personal satisfaction in reviewing my politics instead of my pictures. They’ve drawn up a caricature of me. It doesn’t bother me; their opinions don’t matter to the people who go to the movies, never did.”
Of course their opinions bothered him very much. Perhaps they never hurt his pocket, but Duke, the man, had always wanted to be loved and was hurt when he wasn’t. Later reviewers and critics came to see more in his films because they stood isolated in time from the politics of his era, those critics respected his saltiness, grandeur and loneliness, respected the honesty of his achievements on screen and only the image he created mattered. It was the reason TV continued screening his work, the reason his career could still go on after the battering he took over the Green Berets.
He spoke disdainfully about awards, especially the Oscar, but he was hurt not to have received that symbol of respect from fellow members of the industry that he loved. After the hammering of the picture he was sure he would never receive one, “I’m not hurt and I’m not angry. I’m aware that I’m unpopular in the industry because my political philosophy is different from the prevailing attitude. But I don’t reply when they gang up on me, because I think political street fighting is unprofessional. Yes, I sometimes feel lost, but my convictions are my own and I’m entitled to them. The films I choose to make are a matter for my own conscience. There is little I can do to satisfy the critics.”
He received frightening hate mail after the film’s release and the Press dug up past failures and personal problems to show him as a brute, lacking intelligence. But his belief in both his own, and his country’s actions didn’t waver and although, inevitably, he wearied of defending his stance, he still gave his time unstintingly and did his best to answer every criticism thrown his way. Eventually, once he realized that many people chose to misrepresent him, and there was nothing that he could do about it, he said, “If I depended on what the critics had to say about me, if I depended on their recognition I would never have gone into this business. It really doesn’t bother me when they are disparaging.”
Pilar begged him to retire. He was washed out, bone tired, but he reaffirmed, “I can’t retire. I would die. I’ll not stop until they just don’t want me anymore. Working makes me feel like a worthwhile citizen.” Retiring would have been giving up on himself. He talked briefly to her about buying a property in Mexico, where they could go to escape the world, where he would be able to relax, somewhere she would be happy. She laughed telling him he’d have to improve his Spanish, but knew he wouldn’t bother, because they would never be going to live in Mexico. And she was right, because his life was set for another astounding change of direction.
Politically, he had taken a massive side step to defend President Johnson and the war. He had seen LBJ standing alone, as he so often did himself, against a domestic siege, and said, “I think our film will help re-elect LBJ, because it shows that the war in Vietnam is necessary.” However, with or without the support of John Wayne, Vietnam destroyed Johnson’s presidency and he wasn’t re-elected. Another period of great change and turmoil was beginning; Martin Luther King was assassinated, followed by the black riots, Bobby Kennedy was shot, and The Green Berets was released with its weak script, doctored by The Pentagon, into a period of severe civil unrest. It was attacked as if it were the cause of the war, instead of one man’s reaction to it, and Duke was targeted as THE primary cause of the war, when he hadn’t even supported it. He was also lucky, the political backlash gave him millions of dollars’ worth of free advertising, and Duke was grateful for it. He was sure that Middle Americans, the true patriots, would come to his rescue again, back his judgement against the Adlers of the world and turn his film into a huge box-office hit. Within eighteen months receipts were up to $20 million. Foreign rentals took its earnings even higher.
In 1970 the “hardhat demonstrations” exploded as many ordinary workers gathered to express their love for their country. They waved flags, sang songs, and many carried Duke’s picture. The Green Berets had tapped into their feelings; they were the very people who had grown up watching his movies, and despite the poison pen letters he became even more popular with vast numbers of American citizens. He thought the time for political change had arrived. Johnson had gone and he believed Richard Nixon was the best man to be next president and he lent him unstinting support t
o help him get elected. Once in power Nixon began a phased withdrawal from Vietnam, at the same time, sending troops into Cambodia to eliminate the communist bastions there. Duke was delighted by the message Nixon was giving. Punish the communists and then bring the boys on home. All Americans were relieved that the war was ending, he was no exception.
In January 1971 he was out celebrating with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Ronald Reagan at the Memorial Auditorium. During the evening three hundred anti-war protesters gathered outside in the hope of forcing a public confrontation. When it was time to leave the police asked the stars to go out of the side exits, warning them that the crowd outside was hostile.
Duke, hardly the man to slink out of a side door, refused, “The hell with that, I’m 63 years old, too damn old to run away from a bunch of kids.” Since the 1920’s he had portrayed men of courage in the face of an external enemy. He had long been seen as the protector of American values. His screen persona, by the time he made The Green Berets, had already assumed mythological proportions, based on that reputation. He simply could not walk out of side gates. The others left as requested but he ploughed headlong into the crowd which soon engulfed him. He asked them politely not to push, but when one of the protester’s flags nicked his nose he lunged after him. It was the old man of sixty three who had to be restrained by a security guard, not the protester, who fled in the face of Duke’s fury. What he’d have done if he caught the boy even he didn’t know, he might have “held him kinda hard!”
The movies John Wayne made now struggled to keep up with HIS image. It had been that image that persuaded many young men to join the army in the 1960’s, and influenced the whole generation of men and officers serving in Vietnam. Still, the image was severely dented by the war, and often the boys who joined up because they wanted to be John Wayne, forgot his persona often died for his country. Just before The Green Berets was released Richard Schickel wrote, “For some of us who have grown up in his shadow, measuring our changing personalities against his towering constancy, Wayne has become one of life’s bedrock necessities. He reminds us of a time when right was right, wrong was wrong, and the differences between them could be set right by the simplest of means … Most men of his paunch have given up righteous violence in favorof guileful acquiescence in the world’s wickedness; the Duke is still banking away at it… an unconscious existential hero.” Vietnam had shown a whole generation that wrongs couldn’t always be put right by the simplest of means, well, not unless you happened to be John Wayne, and even he admitted life could be a struggle.
Until the release of The Green Berets, whilst he was recognized as a huge film star, he was still known primarily as a cowboy who always fought for good, after its release he became much more than that. On one hand his career was destroyed, on the other he was turned into the most popular working class hero America had ever seen. He had thrown down the gauntlet, had opened himself up to the bitter attack he knew would surely follow and the liberals behaved just as he expected them to. His own behavior was also typical, pure John Wayne, right, wrong or indifferent he stubbornly refused to back down or apologize for one word of the film. He could not be sure what the outcome might be, but he was absolutely certain about his own stance.
As a grand old man of sixty three his friends and family told him he was too old for all the stress he brought on himself. They begged him to take up golf or tennis, to take a well-earned break and allow the rest of them some peace. They told him what he already knew, that he was far from well and needed to slow down and allow himself time to recover. He had so much, his land in Arizona, his boat, his wife, children and grandchildren, and at last, new friends to replace those he had lost. They all advised, “Duke hang up your six-shooter and throw the spurs away. It’s time to retire.” After his two operations he had amassed goodwill and love from his public; he agreed, he could have sat back then, illuminated in that and his achievements for the rest of his life. But like the ox in harness that Zolotow called him, the need to work consumed him. Away from the movie industry he would not have to face hostile reviewers or critics, or have to read threatening, abusive letters, he could have rested his aches and pains by the ocean instead. Now, the very scale of the attack following The Green Berets meant he could not sit back, he had something to prove. It was not adoration that pushed him on, nor the need to please his fans that drove him, it was the stern words of the fiercest critics who reviled him.
Many reviewers said the film didn’t work because the Wayne persona had lost the ferociousness of Stryker, Edwards or Dunson; there was none of their hidden bitterness in Colonel Kirby. He had acquired a more tender and protective quality, there was less of the hurt man, damaged by life, to be seen. The gentleness had always been there, the aching vulnerability clearly present in Dunson, now though it seemed to seep into every corner of his being, and all his ruthless harshness was softened, the raw emotion smoothed away. Pilar and cancer had made a more accepting soul of Duke and he could never again play the ruthless loner whose sadness and pain lay hidden deep in shaded eyes, and Colonel Mike Kirby, adrift in Vietnam, was his last attempt at such a character.
He had always possessed an amazing ability to bounce back from life’s disasters, he had made and lost fortunes, he made bad films and been slated for them, he made some great ones too, and been slated for them, he got cancer and survived. Come what may, John Wayne struggled back to take all the gifts life offered, “Tomorrow is the most important thing we have.” Sometimes it took him a little longer to get over a setback, but somehow he always managed to put his losses behind him. Every time he was knocked down, he got up again and seemed even bigger than before. When he lost one fortune, he just worked that bit harder to recover it, when one film flopped he tried harder on the next one, when one wife stopped loving him he moved on to the next. He was as driven now as he had always been, as desperate to face the challenge that tomorrow brought as when he started out along The Big Trail.
The master of change was already preparing the next re-invention. This one, like the last, was rooted in a fight for survival, but not in ill health. He was entering his fifth decade in the industry, he should have been close to the end of his chosen road, but the next series of characters, against all the odds, became the most successful of his illustrious career. He agreed he had changed as a man and now saw the world differently, as did his audience. To survive required evolution, and whilst he had to remain familiar to his fans, it was time for change.
He went back to the drawing board and began piecing together the new patriarchal character that he had indeed become. He sketched an older man, still striving in the crusade against evil, a man who remained in the service of community and it was through this characterization, brought miraculously to life in True Grit that he was transformed into the true mythic hero of all western legend. Embodied in Rooster Cogburn, the first of the new group of characters destined to make his fiercest critics sit up and take notice, it became the defining role in his life and the one that belatedly won everything for Duke that his admirers believed he was due.
Just before making the film Duke became interested in another capital venture. He had lost untold thousands of dollars in poor investments over the years, but when he came across an invention for separating oil and water in a ship’s bilges he decided to take a chance on the local company that was developing a process to prevent ocean pollution. He read everything he could about the discharge of bilge water into the sea and spent many happy days promoting the company, investing heavily, enjoying a personal input into a project that he took on almost as his own. He was bouncing back again... but the best was coming up behind fast.
Many people who read the novel by Charles Portis believed he based the character Reubin J. Cogburn on John Wayne and when Henry Hathaway first came across it he immediately called Duke to tell him to get hold of a copy fast, “There’s a great part here for you.” And as soon as he read it he knew his old friend had been spot on and he said, “
I wanted the part of Cogburn so much I could taste it.” His company offered Portis three hundred thousand dollars for the movie rights, and Duke was confident he would get it.
But Hal Wallis, the independent producer working out of Paramount, had other ideas and more financial clout. He went to five hundred thousand to leave Duke devastated by the loss of what he suspected would make a first rate movie. When he had considered his position he decided it was too good a story to miss, there was no time to waste on anger or frustration, and instead of bemoaning his fortune he rang the producer to beg, “Come on Hal, just give me a chance at it.” Wallis had made The Sons of Katie Elder with Hathaway and Duke, and had been looking for another property in which to use the two of them together again for some time. He refused to sell the movie rights but had never considered offering the part to anyone else. Completing the deal was easy and they had no problems, Duke was offered one million dollars and thirty five percent of gross, he accepted and the agreement was signed. Henry Hathaway went with the deal.