John Wayne

by Aissa Wayne

  During my life I had never seen anyone die. And although my father went gently, it surprised me how quickly his life went when it did. One instant he was still breathing, still my dad—he died too fast. It was over too soon.

  He really is gone, I thought, kissing his forehead. Moving aside for the other children and Pat, I heard someone say, “He’s in a better place now.” It could be true, I said silently. He was so sick for so long. But it might not be true at all. He really liked living.

  Brought back by all the hugging and sobbing, I started to worry for poor Marisa, only thirteen and crazy about her dad. “Make sure Marisa’s okay,” my father had said, the closest he’d come to addressing our lives after his death. I went to Marisa and held her, told her how much her daddy loved her, and about this time the nurse returned to draw the white sheet across my father’s shoulders. “I love you, I’ll miss you,” I whispered, then with one look over my shoulder I crossed to the door.

  “Don’t cry, sweetheart,” my mother said that night, sounding frail and far away. “It’s a blessing. He’s finally at peace.”

  37

  According to Michael Wayne’s plan, no outsiders could learn that our father had died yet.

  To ensure his death not turn into a media sideshow, we were all told to conceal our grief, to pretend this was just another ordinary Friday. The facade went up even before we shuffled out of my father’s ninth-floor room. Michael had hired a security guard to sit at the door and fend off the press and visitors, so we cleaned up our tears and nonchalantly walked out by the guard one at a time, smiling, saying, “See you in fifteen minutes,” or “See you after lunch.” Most of us then returned to the Westwood Marquis, where we checked out in staggered shifts to allay any suspicions.

  “My sister and I are going home for the weekend,” I told the clerk, squeezing back tears, feeling like a liar and a fool. “We’ll be back on Monday morning.”

  At the time it felt bizarre, but looking back I can see the flawless symmetry. The same day my father the Hollywood star died, I was still performing, sterilizing and masking my real feelings, concerned only with how things appeared.

  Days before the funeral, I received phone calls from several friends and relatives. Had I seen the morning paper? My father, a news story alleged, had died a Catholic. He was baptized by a priest, according to the report, while he lay dying at UCLA. Knowing my father, how he felt about religion, I couldn’t believe it.

  I’d also been standing right there the alleged day. That morning, Michael Wayne said the Archbishop of Panama would be coming in to see our dad; there was no mention, to me, of any conversion. I knew my father had met the archbishop before, and that his relationship was warm with Panama’s Catholic church. But friendship is one thing, religious belief entirely another. I knew firsthand how my father felt about Catholicism. I was raised a Catholic, and my father took no interest at all, never once attending church with me and my mom. Our entire lives, he showed no inclination toward organized religion of any type.

  “I don’t belong to any church,” my father said. “I believe in God and Jesus Christ, and I pray. If anything, I guess I’m a Presby-goddamn-terian.”

  He said this with mischief in his voice, and it epitomized his offhanded feelings toward organized religion: more power to those who take it seriously, but I’m not one of them.

  By the day the archbishop came to see him, my father was heavily drugged on intravenous morphine. He mostly drifted in and out of sleep, and even when awake not did appear coherent, but rather in some sort of dream state. When my father’s eyes opened that day, the priest began reciting prayers in Latin. Under the bedcovers, I saw my father slightly nodding his head.

  Was he converting to Catholicism on his death bed by this small movement of his head?

  In my opinion, absolutely not. I believe he was only acknowledging that a priest was in his presence, and that they were praying together. My father never said a word about wanting to convert, or wanting to be buried instead of cremated. Frankly, I think he was too drugged up to know a conversion was even being attempted. It may comfort certain people to believe John Wayne died a Catholic, but I was a witness and I don’t think so.

  Remember, my father disliked funerals. Ward Bond’s in particular had been sorrowful and drawn out, dismal and punishing for those in attendance. For himself, my dad preferred a memorial reflecting his life and his spirit. He asked to be cremated, and his ashes strewn over the channel between Newport Beach and Catalina Island. He so treasured that stretch of sea, it gave him so much peace during his lifetime, he wanted it for his final resting place. Fiercely superstitious, my father also heard tales of human scratching inside of caskets. “I want to be cremated,” he said. “Just don’t put me in a box.” At their more sardonic moments, he and my mom used to joke that someone should slit their wrists after they “died.” That way they couldn’t be trapped alive.

  After his ashes were scattered to sea, he wanted his family and friends to return to his Bayshores house for a lively Irish-style wake. “When I die,” he told my mother more than once, “I want you to have a big party, and I want everyone to get DRUNK! Let everyone eat and drink and talk and remember the good times.”

  Unfortunately, he made no such provision in his will, and Michael Wayne made other arrangements. In the days after my father’s demise, national tribute poured in from statesmen and entertainers, many of whom my father considered his friends, but none were invited to his funeral. Most of his friends, in fact, Hollywood or otherwise, were not invited to pay their respects. This included Joe DeFranco, my father’s business associate and perhaps his closest friend at the time of his death.

  Since everything was arranged in elaborate secrecy, even I wasn’t informed of the funeral’s time and setting until one day before. Only then did I learn that my father would not be cremated, but buried. He’d also receive no headstone, supposedly in the fear that his body could later be stolen by grave robbers. To keep things further obscured, the Catholic service would be held at 5:45 in the morning.

  This whole thing stinks, I recall thinking. This is not the valedictory my father desired, or the one he remotely deserves. Let his old friends lavish him today with love and affection; allow them to miss him now, not just after he is gone; this is not the time to hoard him; this is when John Wayne should be shared; I hate it, all of it, and my father would hate it too.

  All that, and still I mounted no protest. I told myself it was too late, there was no time, I was twenty-three years old and had never planned a funeral. Instead of even talking about it to Michael, I merely stood back and fumed, watching my father denied a fitting farewell. At that stage of my life, it was a classic Aissa Wayne nonreaction.

  On June 15 I woke at four A.M., then drove half asleep to a Newport Beach church, where the same archbishop performed a Catholic service. The predawn gathering was small: the seven Wayne children, my mother, Pat Stacy, a few of my father’s friends. Later, I rode to Pacific View Memorial Park, where the summer sun was contemplating rising over the graveyard. It’s dawn, I said to myself, at least you’d like that, Dad—you always loved the dawn. Encased in a shiny coffin, my father’s body was lowered into an unmarked grave. The words were said, the dirt shoveled over him. And then he was gone from my sight. My father. Into the earth. Fatherless now? That was all? Over so fast?

  Chick Iverson came to me then. He said he had been a fine and big-hearted man. Together, Chick and I wept. His son, Chick Jr., lay in a grave only yards from where we stood. So much sadness in this life. I walked next to Chick from the grassy knoll out toward the gates and the cars. It was warm now but I was trembling.

  Following the burial, my mother held a short and subdued and awkward reception. Even more so because of the funeral, which my mother knew my dad never wanted, her relations with Michael were strained. When most of the mourners had gone, I gazed at my mother across her dining room, recalling how much my father loved her. I remembered how he loved zipping her up as s
he dressed for a party, how on those Encino nights they always looked so young and carefree. I remembered their huge, safe, warm bed, and my climbing between them mornings when I was a child. “Three together,” I used to say. “Three together always.”

  I felt a soft smile on my face for the first time that dark day.

  My father was gone.

  And would not be coming back.

  But memories, I knew, wield a magic, a power, a comfort, a resiliency, all their own.

  In memories, my father would always burn bright.

  EPILOGUE

  As my father’s death crept closer, I often considered how I’d react when he was no longer around. I would be paralyzed by grief, I was fairly sure, unable to cope and perhaps unable to function. And then it came, my father’s death, and my life was less than shattered. I lost weight, regained my healthfulness, and found a degree of success selling homes. For nearly two years, when I acknowledged my father’s death at all, I felt hurt for Marisa, or Ethan, or my mom, while secretly feeling shame that my father’s death had not done more to cripple me. For my father, for the public, had I subjugated my feelings so long that now I could no longer find them?

  Whatever the causes, this numbness lasted nearly five years. Then, although I recall no turning point, although I can’t even tell you what triggered it, I was able to properly mourn. I admitted my father was gone, and how much that hurt, really, really hurt, and that this emptiness inside me would never completely fill back up. It was during this time, about five years after his death, when I first returned to my father’s grave.

  My mother had already been there several times, but I had refused all requests to join her. I did not really understand why I told my mother no, just as I didn’t comprehend the stirring I felt that cool April morning to speak with my father. Amidst no crisis, there was nothing profound I felt I must say. And yet the impulse felt strong.

  What was it?

  I didn’t know.

  I let the feeling pull me where it wanted to go, to a corner store, where I purchased a bottle of liquor: Commemorativo tequila, his favorite. Arriving at the graveyard, I hurried past marble headstones, hunting for Chick Jr.’s grave, the signpost to my dad’s. I found it and knelt on the moist morning ground above where my father lay. Over the grass now carpeting his grave, I poured the first shot for him; he always enjoyed tequila far more than I. Still, whatever this was, we were in it together. I downed a small cup myself. The brown liquor jolted my brain and burned my stomach. How could my father drink this? He always said he was only half-Irish, but I think he was all Irish. Was I talking outloud now or thinking? What was I doing here anyway? It was unnatural, to be drinking this way first thing, drinking tequila no less, among the dead at that. Still, for close to an hour I knelt there, sipping but mostly pouring. Talking to my father. Crying and laughing. Remembering. Forgiving. And understanding. The spring sun was heating the air and felt good on my arms. I did not want to leave him. Not yet. But I was feeling tipsy, and I still had to get back home. I knew there was just one solution. I sprinkled the rest of the liquor above him. Pictured him healthy and whole in my mind. Pictured my father smiling.

  “I have to leave you now, Dad. But I’ll come back soon. I love you. I know you love me. And wherever I go I’ll take your love with me.”

  Then I stood up straight and started moving forward.

  INDEX

  The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below

  Academy Awards

  public relations campaigns for

  Wayne nominated for

  Wayne as presenter of

  Wayne as winner of

  Acapulco

  Africa

  Alamo, The (film)

  financing problems

  press on

  and Wayne

  Alaska

  All the King’s Men (film)

  Andress, Ursula

  Angel and the Badman (film)

  Anne of the Thousand Days (film)

  Arias, Tony

  Arizona

  Art

  Bacall, Lauren

  Bacon, James

  Balboa Island

  Ball, Lucille

  Barney Miller (TV show)

  Batjac (production company)

  Bauer, Chata

  divorce from Wayne

  marriage to Wayne

  Wayne’s life threatened by

  Beatty, Warren

  Belin, Ina

  Bennett, Tony

  Blood Alley (film)

  Bogart, Humphrey

  Bogdanovich, Peter

  Bond, Ward

  death of

  and Wayne

  Boone, Richard

  Brando, Marlon

  Brannigan (film)

  Bren, Claire Trevor

  Bren, Milton

  Bringing Up Baby (film)

  Brown, Helen Gurley

  Buck, Pearl S.

  Burton, Richard

  B Westerns

  Cabo San Lucas

  Cagney, Jimmy

  Canby, Vincent

  Candy’s Man (film)

  Carter, Jimmy

  Cast a Giant Shadow (film)

  Catalina Island

  Chandler, Raymond

  Chandler Pavilion, Dorothy, Los Angeles

  Chicago Sun-Times

  Christian Science

  Christie, Agatha

  Churchill, Winston

  Cimino, Michael

  Circus World (film)

  Clift, Montgomery

  Cobb, Lee J.

  Coleman, George

  Comancheros, The (film)

  Connery, Sean

  Cooper, Gary

  death of

  Coppola, Francis Ford

  Cosmopolitan

  March 1961 issue on Waynes

  Crawford, Broderick

  Curtis, Ken

  Darby, Kim

  Darin, Bobby

  Davis, Sammy, Jr.

  Deer Hunter, The (film)

  DeFranco, Joe

  Depression

  Derek, John

  DeSanctis, Roman

  Disney, Walt

  Doner, Debbie

  Donovan’s Reef (film)

  Douglas, Kirk

  Dunphy, Jerry

  Duvall, Robert

  Easy Rider (film)

  Ebert, Roger

  Eisenhower, Dwight

  Encino estate

  Evans, Linda

  Fans

  Film industry

  effect of television on

  of 1950s

  of 1960s

  See also Hollywood; specific actors, directors, and films

  Flying Leathernecks (film)

  Flynn, Errol

  Fonda, Henry

  Ford, John

  and Ward Bond

  and Clark Gable

  and Wayne

  Foreign Press Association

  Fort Apache (film)

  For Whom the Bell Tolls (film)

  Gable, Clark

  death of

  and John Ford

  and Wayne

  Gardner, Ava

  Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (film)

  Gleason, Jackie

  Glendale, California

  Goldwater, Barry

  Gone With the Wind (film)

  Good Housekeeping

  Grant, Cary

  Green Berets, The (film)

  Hackman, Gene

  Hangman’s House (film)

  Harvey, Laurence

  Hatari! (film)

  Hathaway, Henry

  and Wayne

  Hawaii

  Hawks, Howard

  and Red River

  and Wayne

  Hayworth, Rita

  Hayworth, Yasmin

  Heaven Can Wait (film)

  Hemingwa
y, Ernest

  The Sun Also Rises

  Hepburn, Katharine

  High and the Mighty, The (film)

  High Noon (film)

  Hilgren, Lea

  Hitchcock, Alfred

  Hoffman, Dustin

  Holden, Ardis

  Holden, William

  Hollywood:

  children

  of 1950s

  of 1960s

  Wayne’s views on

  See also Film industry

  Hollywood Athletic Club

  Hollywood Reporter, The

  Homosexuality

  Honeymooners (TV show)

  Hope, Bob

  Hopper, Hedda

  Horses

  Houston Press, The

  Howard, Ronnie

  Hudson, Rock

  Hughes, Howard

  I Love Lucy (TV show)

  In Harm’s Way (film)

  Iowa

  Ireland

  Iverson, Chick

  Iverson, Chick, Jr.

  Jackie Gleason Show, The (TV show)

  Jones, Howard

  Kael, Pauline

  Kelly, Grace

  Kelly, Patrick

  Kennedy, Edward

  Kennedy, John F.

  Korean War

  Lancaster, Burt

  Last Tango in Paris (film)

  Lido Island

  Life magazine

  Lindbergh kidnapping (1932)

  Linden, Hal

  Lion in Winter, The (film)

  London

  Longest Day, The (film)

  Los Angeles Examiner

  Los Angeles Times

  McClintock (film)

  Madrid

  Martin, Dean

  and Wayne

  Martin, Jeanne

  Marvin, Lee

  Marx, Groucho

  Mason, James

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  Mathis, Johnny

  Mexico

  Midnight Cowboy (film)

  Milland, Ray

  Mineo, Sal

  Mitchum, Dorothy

  Mitchum, Robert

  Mix, Tom

  Mogambo (film)

  Mojave desert

  Monroe, Marilyn

  and Wayne

  Monte Carlo