by C McGivern
When filming was complete the whole crew lined up to get his autograph and Dave Grayson said, “He was quite irresistible. In spite of some of the things he’d done to alienate some of the people on that picture, they still all wanted his autograph … these were professionals, not fans. It was quite astonishing, and unprecedented.” It was almost as if they sensed the unwelcome twist in the tale that was to follow. As soon as he had signed every request he slipped quietly away. He had not enjoyed making The Shootist, it had a lot to do with the realization that the good times had gone forever.
As soon as he got home from location he went back to hospital, terrified of what might be found this time. He was relieved when X-rays revealed nothing sinister, but also worried because he felt worse than ever. He had anticipated a speedy recovery once he got back but instead he was continuously sick and could hardly breathe even at sea level. Any exercise at all left him struggling following the removal of his lung, but now nothing made any difference and even at rest he couldn’t suck in sufficient oxygen for his needs. The famous soft drawl became gravelly, and in his ears at least, unpleasant. He felt dizzy and his weight ballooned. From the sixties he had been forced to diet before each new film but whatever he did now he remained bloated with a marked puffiness around his eyes and neck. He had never cared much about his appearance but whatever was wrong now stripped him of the rugged quality he so prized. And his problems weren’t purely physical, “I was a little cranky about the way the studio were handling the release of The Shootist. In some cities there are no ads… nothing, not a goddam thing. There’s always a tendency to do that with my pictures, no kidding. They give me less publicity because they figure… “It’s a Wayne picture, it’ll do business anyway, why throw money at it?” … some of my pictures… Christ… I wish they HAD been released that way! But I felt irritated about this one… it was too nice a picture for that to happen.” He felt the responsibility and decided to publicize it himself, setting off on a gruelling series of tours to promote it. If the studio were prepared to see it swallowed up, he wasn’t, “Here was a picture about a man facing life’s hardest obstacle, death, the last thing anyone wants to face up to. I couldn’t let this one bomb.”
He pushed himself all over the world until he could carry on no longer and, weak and ill, he finally went home and back for further hospital tests. The problem that had dogged him for four long years was at last diagnosed as congestive heart failure. The mitral valve, connecting the upper and lower chambers was not closing properly causing blood and other fluid to back up from the heart to his lung, causing the puffiness in the rest of his body. The damage to his heart was thought to be the result of his violent coughing. A cocktail of drugs was prescribed and Duke came to see his medicine cabinet as a reflection of his weakness. He hated taking so much medication and told friends it was responsible for his increasingly bad temper. He began to think he would never feel well again. He complained about an overwhelming dizziness that forced him to stand motionless for long spells as he fought to regain his balance. And if all that wasn’t enough he suddenly found himself having to get up several times during the night to go to the bathroom.
At first he gave little thought to what was an acceptable sign of advancing age, but his condition deteriorated rapidly, and he could find no relief for his discomfort. Finally, forced to admit there was something else going wrong, he jumped to the conclusion that he had prostate cancer. He decided to ignore the constant pain and closed his eyes to the possibilities. He could face no further surgery. He was frustrated and angry with life but still refused to give up on it, “I may fail, but I can’t quit.” The sentiment that haunted his every waking hour. Each day became frantic and extreme for him and he told Pat, “Every day has to count for something.”
Professionally in the months after completing The Shootist he chased around everywhere, promoting the film, doing benefits, TV specials and spending hours searching for another good script. When he wasn’t working he invited guests to the house, kept busy and filled his days to overflowing. He knew he was ill but was not prepared to go back to hospital again, at least not until he was forced there.
As busy as he was, he took on more, returning to politics in an effort to deflect the mind from the body again, offering his support to both Reagan and Ford, “As long as a man has a project; something to look forward to; there’ll always be something important to him. He’ll never really get old. If I had nothing to look forward to, I might as well be dead. You know hard work never killed anyone. But you can’t turn back the clock. I’ll be sixty nine this year, sixty nine goddamned years.”
When he did eventually take himself for a check-up the doctor found an enlarged prostate gland, but did not think cancer was present. Duke was given more medication but was warned he would probably need surgery to clear the problem. How he hated the sound of the word. He didn’t have cancer, surgery could wait. He delayed as long as he could, finding one excuse after another not to go back to hospital. When he finally succumbed, the procedure was uncomplicated, he suffered little discomfort and he breathed a mighty sigh of relief.
Though he kept busy, the surgery did force him to slow down, and he stayed closer to home than was his usual habit. There was a positive side and the operation gave him extra time to prepare for the festival he loved best; he had invited Pat to spend her first Christmas at his home, as part of the family. The very thought of it excited him. Best of all would be the procession of highly decorated ships and local boats sailing by his patio. Most owners fitted special microphones so they could shout the season’s greetings to him. He held a loudspeaker and bellowed his back to them. Standing on the patio watching the colorful procession was a ritual he would not miss, it was as big a part of Christmas for him as trimming the tree and wrapping and giving his gifts. He always kept a supply of extra presents ready wrapped, in case someone turned up unexpectedly.
He collected his presents through the year, either from his mad catalogue sprees or shopping trips around the world. He dedicated a lot of time to the gift hunts and no one ever left his home empty handed at Christmas, whether they had been invited or not. All through the week of solid festivity the house burst at the seams as people floated in and out and whoever happened to be there when dinner hit the table was expected to stay and share the meal. His older children arrived and departed in some unspoken agreement, and his grandchildren swarmed through the house. They were free to do as they pleased in his home. It was noisy and wild, vibrant and alive with their energy and life force. Duke reflected on times gone by.
Throughout the year his health had been failing rapidly, with each week bringing some new problem. In January his great friend Andy Devine died of leukaemia. He was one of Duke’s favorite people and they had been friends long before they worked together on Stagecoach. They hadn’t seen each other for some time but Duke was again left vulnerable by the loss of another dear friend. He attended Devine’s funeral at Pacific View Memorial Park. He had always said he wanted to be cremated like his brother and Ward Bond, but that day he commented on the beauty of the spot.
Soon after the funeral he went back to Monument Valley to shoot a commercial. He found the experience particularly harrowing. He wandered away from the film crew to be alone, to remember scenes from some of his most famous pictures. Memories of the old days flooded back. He could almost hear Pappy’s voice and see Andy driving the stage along the valley floor; their ghosts returned briefly to remind him of the glory years, then disappeared in a swirl of dust, “All gone, never to return. Nothing remains the same.”
He had worked tirelessly all through 1977 to see the Panamanian Zone treaty through but when President Carter invited him to attend the formal ceremony of ratification he was too ill to attend. The cough had grown steadily worse, he could barely walk, and he felt awful. In March 1978 he was rushed back to hospital and an angiogram showed the faulty mitral valve had to be replaced immediately or his heart would fail, Pat said, “When I put my head against
his chest things had become so bad it was possible to hear his heart making a gushing sound.” But he didn’t want to go back into hospital, and even the surgeons were worried about the risk involved in cutting into the chest of a frail seventy year old that only had one lung. His chances of survival looked bleak.
Although he sank into a mood of the blackest depression and was particularly angry with the never ending round of doctors’ appointments, he continued to make business commitments and to plan his future. He signed a contract with ABC to do six two-hour spectaculars, appearing in them as himself. He also came across the galley proofs of a novel that interested him greatly, Beau John by Buddy Atkinson, “I loved the humor in it; there was even a part in it for Ron Howard. I so enjoyed working with that young man in The Shootist.” Mentally, he was creating a project to keep him going through what he anticipated coming his way, but he could do little more than plan, “I felt so weak I couldn’t even pick up my make-up case, and so bad that I could barely breathe.” Finally the doctors decided surgery was his only chance and they told him Massachusetts General Hospital was the best in the world for heart operations. A heavily sedated Duke was flown to Boston on the Flour Corporation’s private jet on March 29th. He was admitted under the name Marion Morrison; he wanted to avoid reporters and film crews, he felt too ill to talk to them and too sick to be photographed. Despite the blanket of security, the news that he was back in hospital leaked out by the next morning and extra security guards had to be hired to keep strangers out of his room. He didn’t want to see anyone and he was uncharacteristically quiet.
Duke had arrived in Massachusetts with chronic bronchitis, one lung, and a serious heart condition and when Dr DeSanctis started a series of pre-surgical tests, one of which was to measure lung capacity, he looked a worried man. Duke had already told the doctor to spare him the details, “You can tell my family, and you can tell Pat, but don’t bother telling me,” but now he sensed the doctor, who had planned to replace his mitral valve with one from a pig, was being evasive. In fact he considered the risks involved in surgery were too great and he didn’t think the dying man he saw now had sufficient strength to survive another lengthy operation. On top of that he didn’t want to go down in history as the man who killed John Wayne.
Duke knew DeSanctis was stalling and felt frustrated. Up to that point he had been the one dithering but as soon as he sensed opposition he took control of the situation, suddenly announcing to a shocked Pat, “We’re all going out to dinner tonight, you, me, the kids, everyone who’s hanging around in the hallway. The pig is being led to slaughter. All systems are go for Monday. Meanwhile we’re going to live it up a little.”
DeSanctis had warned that he probably wasn’t strong enough to survive, but if there was one thing Duke understood it was his capacity to survive and he had pleaded, “Just give me a chance.” When the doctor persisted, setting out the risk factors involved he responded testily, “Open that window. You’re going to operate on me or so help me I’m going to jump out. Measure the risk factor in that.” He was John Wayne and he would rather die than lead the life of an invalid.
The night before the operation the whole family went out for dinner. Everyone at the table was subdued except Duke who seemed to be in high spirits. His doctors had given him permission to have one drink and he ordered, “The largest martini the bartender can concoct.” When he was handed his drink he stood up and raised his glass, “To the last supper!”
On April 3 as he was wheeled out of his room he murmured, “Ten horsemen left, but only nine came back…” Surgery lasted three hours and was later described as “uneventful.” His recovery was also uneventful this time although his family were shocked by the sight of the white and battered body as he lay unconscious, strapped to the bed so he wouldn’t dislodge any of the tubes. He looked worse than he was, the great survivor had pulled it off again. He regained consciousness quickly but was disorientated and, for some reason, thought he was drowning. A nurse rubbed his forehead until he came round fully and remembered where he was and what had happened. Because of the risk of infection no one was allowed to kiss him, and the family had to squeeze his ankle to demonstrate their affection, and Duke didn’t mind, just so long as he had some physical contact. He was encouraged to sit up and once the drains were removed he was soon looking and sounding more like himself as he made an unexpected but remarkable recovery. He didn’t want to rest and despite the doctors advising him to give himself a chance to heal up properly he was soon back on his feet. He set off walking and refused to stop, and no one could hold him back.
When he left the hospital he was presented with a mounted mitral valve and he cried as he thanked the staff for their care, “I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am to all of you, I think you’ll all understand if I don’t suggest we do it over again sometime.”
This time when he arrived home he was glad to go straight to his own bed. Pat stayed within shouting distance so he knew he wasn’t alone and that things were getting back to normal. He began to look ahead with hope, convinced the suffering was at an end, sure nothing else could go wrong. He began giving serious attention to all the projects he had been planning. And if he was glad to be back home so too it seemed, was everyone else in the world, for no one had expected the fighting Duke to emerge the winner this time. The Press had never stopped referring to his earlier survival, how much more incredible he appeared now. In fact he felt and looked better than he had for years by the time he went home at the end of April 1978. The doctors told him he could live another fifteen years, and he believed them. He felt immortal and told George Burns, then eighty one himself, “People have begun to speak about me in the past tense. They wanted to do a TV special for me, like it was my epitaph or something. But I told them I was just getting my second wind.”
Newport’s neighborhood nautical fraternity gave him a welcome home fit for a hero, with the entire flotilla, consisting of over five hundred boats, sailing past the bottom of his garden waving flags, blowing whistles and carrying huge banners proclaiming, “Welcome Home, Duke.” He stood on the patio with his children to watch and he noticed one boat with a sign that read, “Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.” Lines from Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem, “Requiem” that he had himself spoken in the film They Were Expendable. Well the hero was home and all was well in his world.
He bought new sports clothes and resumed his ritual daily dawn walks, either doing laps of his boat or grounds, stopping to talk to whoever he bumped into. He talked about flowers or changes made to local houses, about anything, just because he wanted to be out doing something and because he needed to be with people, talking to anyone so he could feel alive in their company. It was not long before he felt the urge to get back to work and when Bob Hope asked if he’d do a spot on his birthday special he jumped at the chance. It was close to his own birthday and after he had finished his spot Hope wished Duke many more birthdays, “I hope I look as good as you do when I’m your age.”
“You did,” Duke quipped, “I hope you live forever, and mine is the last voice you hear.” Bob Hope got in the last word as usual, “I know he’s in good shape, because when he left the hospital he offered to shoot it out for the bill.”
He looked good but Pat knew something was wrong when he didn’t finish his glass of wine after the show, and it was not many days before he became irritable and listless again. He developed a fever, pain, nausea and severe fatigue. When he went for a routine check-up, blood tests revealed hepatitis which he had picked up from a blood transfusion. He was ordered back to bed where he was forced to rest for six weeks. The disease knocked him back and delayed the recovery that had begun so well. He felt so ill that even he did not complain too much about the bed rest. He did complain when he became allergic to alcohol. It was the greatest of the tortures he had so far faced, “I would have died for a drink.”
As soon as he started fidgeting and pacing again he knew the time had come
to get back to the only world in which he could function. His doctors hated the fact that he was so determined to get back to work again and would have preferred to isolate him on his boat for the summer. It was useless talking to him and they reluctantly gave him the go-ahead, telling him not to overdo things!
He had been troubled about how he could reply to the thousands of letters and cards he had received whilst he was in hospital. The task of sending personal replies had proved to be too much for him. Then he came up with the perfect solution. He was taping a segment for the hundredth anniversary of General Electric and had rehearsed his part of the show with Elizabeth Taylor, Henry Fonda and Michael Landon. On the day it was recorded, without telling anyone his plans, he made an impromptu speech, “This is the first time I have been with many of you since my recent hospital tour. So I’d like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your good wishes, telegrams, get well cards, and your prayers. They came at a time when I really needed them. I wish I could thank each of you personally, but that’s not possible. So I did something else. I got down on my knees and asked God to double them, and send them back to you with the gratitude of a man you’ve been awfully nice to for a long, long time. Thank you.”
Once during that difficult summer he attended a function. He didn’t want to go, but Crown Prince Hussein of Jordan had asked to meet him and the State Department pleaded with him to go. He felt grouchy after driving himself to the reception and his mood worsened when he was kept standing around waiting for guests less punctual than he was himself. When the Crown Prince finally arrived he was seated at a small table with Duke and some friends. There was little conversation and everyone was on edge. Dinner was ordered. Wine was served. Duke was offered a small taste and he unthinkingly took a sip. His face went red and he started to cough. All the guests in the room sat stunned as he tried to catch his breath and coughed helplessly for a long time. When he finally stopped he grinned at the prince and said, “It’s all right with me.” Prince Hussein laughed until tears rolled down his face. When he managed to control himself he raised his glass to Hollywood’s box-office king and said, “I’ll drink to the Duke.” Duke’s reaction had saved the night, he had retained his dignity and at the same time provided a memorable occasion for everyone else.