John Wayne: The Life and Legend

by Scott Eyman

  Fellows gave an interview outlining the philosophy behind the new company: “Our format is basically the same simple one that originally made our industry the greatest entertainment medium in the world. We start with a story that’s about something tangible. We’re not going to make outdoor dramas necessarily, but we do recognize the fact that film fans want to break through the confines of four walls when they are seeking entertainment.

  “We haven’t any tricks up our sleeves, nor do we have any dreams of collapsing all the major studios. On the contrary, our idea is to make money, a good deal of it, through offering the kind of entertainment that will lure people into the neighborhood theaters.”

  Jimmy Grant was working on the script of McLain and took time off to give an interview about his friend. When asked why he thought Wayne was so popular, Grant said, “Lots of guys think Duke is a big, dumb lummox. He isn’t. I’ve written half a dozen scripts for the guy and he can pick out the holes in them faster than I can. He’s a good cameraman, a sensitive director, and if a stunt man won’t work a stunt, he’ll do it himself. He says he can’t act his way out of a hat, and his success is just one big lucky fluke. But don’t kid yourself.”

  Some people at Warners were bothered by the script of McLain; it was about investigators for the House Un-American Activities Committee in Hawaii, and the script had them enthusiastically engaging in all manner of illegality—wiretapping, intimidation, breaking and entering. “I think this could play in a Maltese Falcon manner and with cooperation from the writers could be shaped so as to avoid any legal pitfalls,” wrote one story analyst.

  Just before the picture started shooting, Warners sent out a synopsis that stated the picture was about a Texas cattle buyer who followed “a trail of excitement” to Hawaii. Robert Fellows later acknowledged that the studio didn’t “wish to play up the fact that we were making an anticommunist film. The studio didn’t want to scare off exhibitors. A lot of them got burned in the past with anticommunist pictures that didn’t do much business.”

  After the picture was finished shooting, Warners’ sales department immediately began pressing Wayne to speed through the editing, but production people warned them off: “The only hitch which I think you should be forewarned about is Duke Wayne saying that if it needs a few more days . . . work after the preview, he will not sacrifice the picture in order to make a precise August 16th date. . . . I know for a fact . . . that he is the kind of actor who rears back at any show of the quirt. He is also a very honest man about his own work and very critical thereof.”

  The previews were good, not great: “good in spots, except for the too, too obvious propaganda (and I am NOT a Commie)” wrote one member of the audience. Another commented, “[Stephen Vincent] Benet would turn over in his grave the way he was quoted,” and “one wonders about the future of this country when this sort of tripe passes for Americanism.”

  Actually, this sort of tripe was quite widespread. It was a time when conservatives were angry (conservatives are always angry) and liberals were nervous (liberals are always nervous). Mark Armistead, an associate of John Ford’s during World War II, had gone into the camera rental business and felt it necessary to present Cecil B. DeMille with a check for $1,000—the amount Armistead had been paid for his cameras by the producers of the left-wing film Salt of the Earth. Giving the money to the Motion Picture Alliance, on whose behalf DeMille accepted the money, was the only way Armistead could maintain ideological purity.

  Warners promoted Big Jim McLain with a tagline that seems more amusing sixty years later than it did at the time: “He’s a Go-Get-’Em Guy for the U.S.A. on a Treason-Trail That Leads Half-a-World Away!” The critical response reliably divided along political lines. The Hearst columnist Lee Mortimer wrote that “It combines thrills, excitement, suspense, sock comedy, high adventure, blood and thunder, tender romance, patriotic emotion, the lure of the tropics AND John Wayne, all in one huge soul-satisfying package and at the regular admission prices.” He ended by calling it “one of the best movies ever made.”

  The New York Post’s Archer Winsten called it, “One of the worst movies ever made.” (The Post was a liberal newspaper back then.) Another critic referred to its “storm trooper patriotism” for the way it pointed an accusing finger at intellectuals—the communists include a biologist, a psychiatrist, a labor leader, and a labor relations counsel.

  Overseas, the strident anticommunism of Big Jim McLain was not the selling point it was in America. In Italy, the title was changed to Marijuana, and the dubbed soundtrack altered to make Wayne an agent looking for drug smugglers.

  Wayne-Fellows’ obvious intent was to start their company with a success, and it worked. The net profit of Big Jim McLain was $261,641. Wayne-Fellows was also in for 47.5 percent of the foreign income. (The not bad Plunder of the Sun, in which John Farrow directed Glenn Ford, was less successful, but eventually went into profit.)

  Fellows and Wayne gave every evidence of trying to build a company with a wide foundation; in October 1952, they were in talks to make a comedy starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, the current TV comedy rages. Also in the pipeline was a TV series to star Alan Hale Jr., and there were also discussions about a radio version of Big Jim McLain to star James Arness and Doe Avedon.

  Right after Big Jim McLain, Wayne was back at Warner Bros. returning to the passion of his youth—in Trouble Along the Way he played a football coach who shapes up a team and saves a Catholic college about to go under. It was a variation on the cozy Catholicism of Going My Way, and the director was Michael Curtiz, beginning the downhill slide that marked the last ten years of his career.

  The movie was shot under the title Alma Mater, and Wayne thought the change killed the picture’s chances. “[Trouble Along the Way] made it sound like the story of an oil truck which had busted a rear axle going up Cajon Pass,” he said. “Who would buy a ticket to that?” The movie cost $1.6 million and had world rentals of $2.5 million, so it made a little money, albeit not as much as Wayne thought it would have under the original title.

  But Trouble Along the Way was trivial compared to what was happening off-camera. While the marriage to Chata was crumbling, Wayne had taken a trip to South America, where he met Pilar Pallette Weldy, a young actress from Peru, whose husband, Richard Weldy, styled himself as a big-game hunter. She was shooting a movie where she did a dance scene by firelight. She was still out of breath when she was introduced to Wayne.

  “That was quite a dance,” he said, looking her over appreciatively. They had dinner. “I was a very good guitar player,” she reminisced. “Near the end of the evening I played guitar and sang and Wayne listened and he was entranced.” The next day he sent her a beautiful new guitar. Wayne came back to America and told Bö Roos that Pilar was very attractive, very nice, and “very normal.” Roos undoubtedly sensed another domestic disaster in the offing.

  Wayne was not a man who enjoyed isolation, domestic or otherwise. Soon, Pilar was divorced and moving to Los Angeles. She was one of five children of a Peruvian senator. Her quiet, aristocratic childhood was occasionally interrupted when the family would have to go into exile in Chile or Argentina when her father’s party was out of power.

  Like so many conveniently cast-off spouses, Richard Weldy disappeared into the mists of time, until September 1956 when he shot Robert Harrison, the publisher of Confidential magazine, shortly after the magazine ran a story about Wayne and Pilar. The incident took place in the Dominican Republic, and the two men supposedly ran into each other by accident, after which, Weldy explained, “the gun fell from my hand. It accidentally went off and hit Harrison in the shoulder. “All in all, a great many accidents to befall a professional hunter, but Harrison declined to press charges.

  Wayne didn’t want to just set up Pilar as his mistress in Hollywood, so he followed the time-honored tradition of movie producers. On February 20, 1953, the Los Angeles Herald Express ran a picture of Wayne and Bob Fellows signing what they claimed to be the twenty-three-
year-old Pilar to a contract. “The South American charmer recently completed her first picture, Sabotage, filmed in Peru. . . . Miss Palette will alternate her acting between Hollywood and Lima, Peru. Her first American film is a recently completed story, as yet untitled, which affords her a singing, dancing and dramatic role.” But there was no recently completed story, nor would there be.

  Wayne was still beset by guilt over his treatment of Josephine. Before he introduced the new wife-to-be to his four children, he told Pilar, “He’s still angry at me,” referring to Michael. “I’m afraid he always will be. It breaks my heart. I let those kids down. Don’t expect too much from them at first. They haven’t forgiven me yet.”

  Gretchen Wayne eventually met Pilar at Jimmy Grant’s house, on the dock by the lake. “She was a tiny thing who wore a taffeta suit and high heels—a strange thing to wear in the daytime. Her hair was naturally curly, and she always wore high heels because she was short. In the early years, she overdressed. He loved sportswear—casual slacks, sweaters, cashmere, leather jackets. He would say to her, ‘Why can’t you dress more like [Wayne’s daughter] Toni?’ But Pilar gradually developed her own taste and style.”

  And then Pilar became pregnant. Wayne told his lawyer to ram through the divorce from Chata—money was no object. But Chata wouldn’t be rushed.

  Wayne delegated the excruciating decision to Pilar. He told her that if she wanted to have the child, he would stand by her and suffer the consequences. But she knew the scandal would destroy Wayne’s career—Ingrid Bergman’s affair with Roberto Rossellini was only a few years in the past. She decided to get an abortion, an act, she recalled, that “almost destroyed” her.

  Wayne still had a loose agreement with RKO, but dealing with Howard Hughes was always chaotic. Wayne was the complete professional, and Hughes’s sloppy procedures and catch-as-catch-can attitude toward commitments drove him up the wall. “My racket isn’t writing letters any more than answering them promptly is yours,” Wayne began a letter to Hughes. “I must get some serious beefs off my chest. . . . At the other studios and for my own company . . . I seldom get involved on a picture for more than eight to ten weeks overall. I am paid top terms for that time. At RKO, I wind up giving six months of my time . . . and it’s hectic, uncomfortable and unpleasant time . . . for a fraction of the compensation paid me by the other studios. You can resolve this by paying me what the others do for the two pictures I owe you.”

  Wayne went on to complain that contractually the studio was obligated to provide a suitable story by March of 1952. Five months after that, he hadn’t heard a word so took a job with another studio. Wayne’s two-picture commitment for RKO had been hanging over his head for nearly three years at this point, and both pictures should have been completed a year earlier.

  RKO’s loss was Warners’ gain, for Wayne was demonstrating considerable commercial power for the Burbank studio. Besides the success of Big Jim McLain, and the middling Trouble Along the Way, the equally ordinary Operation Pacific would earn nearly $4 million in rentals.1

  Given the ongoing difficulties at RKO, it made perfect sense that, in November 1952 Wayne-Fellows entered into a very ambitious long-term deal with Warners.

  The company agreed to make eight pictures within thirty-six months, four with Wayne, four without. Island in the Sky would be the first picture. Warners would advance $2,000 a week for office expenses, which would be charged to the negative costs of the pictures. The non-Wayne pictures would cost around $600,000 each, while Wayne’s would cost more, the specifics to be worked out later.

  After eight years, ownership of the pictures would revert to Wayne-Fellows, provided that Warners had recouped all its costs, plus an adjusted 37.5 percent fee for foreign distribution. Any pictures that didn’t recoup stayed with Warners. At the same time, Charlie Feldman floated yet another opportunity past his client—a deal with RKO for five pictures that would pay Wayne-Fellows 50 percent of the gross for the entire world after the pictures doubled their cost. As Feldman knew, this was potentially a bigger proposition than the Warner deal, but it didn’t happen, either because it was simply too ambitious coming on top of the Warners arrangement, or because Wayne didn’t want to tie that much of his professional future to Howard Hughes and RKO’s distribution.

  The Warners deal was going to be profitable only if Wayne-Fellows could contract with efficient, experienced directors. Once again, Wayne’s sympathy with industry veterans came into play, as he entered into serious discussions with Leo McCarey to direct one or more of the pictures.

  McCarey was an ardent Catholic anticommunist; he and Wayne probably met in the Motion Picture Alliance. Despite his alcoholism, McCarey was one of the most respected directors in the business, with such accomplishments as Ruggles of Red Gap, Duck Soup, Make Way for Tomorrow, The Awful Truth, Going My Way, and The Bells of St. Mary’s. As such, his perks were considerable. Among other things, McCarey had the right to approve all ads and publicity and approve all final sales contracts on his pictures.

  The prospective McCarey deal ultimately fell apart, but Wayne signed contracts with similarly efficient veteran A list directors—John Farrow and William Wellman, the legendary “Wild Bill” who had made Wings, Public Enemy, the original A Star Is Born, and The Story of G.I. Joe, among many others.

  During 1953 alone, Wayne-Fellows shot and completed Island in the Sky, Hondo, Ring of Fear, and The High and the Mighty. Wayne’s grim childhood had shaped an adult who would always be hustling, a man who was far more comfortable working than relaxing. In May 1953, Wayne wrote Jack Warner’s assistant Bill Schaefer that he and Bob Fellows wanted to lease a vacant lot the studio owned in Mexico City and build a car wash on it. He offered 800 pesos a month, or about $88, plus 2 percent of the profits. Schaefer noted at the bottom of the letter that the property was worth 2,500 pesos, or about $275 a month. A Mexico City car wash was not going to be the difference between a comfortable or impoverished retirement, but that was irrelevant. Wayne was always in search of income.

  The new contract with Warners made Wayne-Fellows the talk of the industry. Wayne gave an interview explaining that “I’ve profited by the mistakes that friends of mine—stars, directors, and producers—have made with their own companies. Other companies have failed because they haven’t been able to buck the big companies. They make deals that look swell on paper. But when they finish up they’re taken for all kinds of hidden charges. You just can’t make a go of it unless you can keep the companies from piling up the costs on you.” The grim experiences of John Ford’s Argosy Productions and Howard Hawks’s Monterey Productions were obviously on Wayne’s mind, but he and his partner would also eventually be victimized by the core problem of independent producers.

  Island in the Sky, the first film made under the eight-picture deal with Warners, cost $962,000, earned $2.4 million in world rentals, and was more or less unseen for fifty years because it reverted to Wayne, after which Wayne and his son Mike sat on it. It’s one of William Wellman’s finest films, far outstripping the more commercially successful The High and the Mighty.

  “I never had a more difficult location in my life,” said actor James Lydon. “There were five actors working in fourteen feet of snow in Donner Pass and Donner Lake. And the only way everybody could get from the hotel five miles away to the location was a Greyhound bus. We parked on the side of the road and then a Snowcat that held about twenty-five people took us to the location. Cast, crew, electricians, everybody. They would drop us off in the snow about a quarter to eight in the morning and pick us up about five or 5:15 in the afternoon, when the light would start to fade.

  “We didn’t even have chairs, because where are you going to put chairs in fourteen feet of snow? So mostly we stood up for a dozen hours. For meals, the Snowcat would take us back to the Greyhound bus, where we ate.”

  The valley, which was six miles from Truckee in the Sierra Nevadas, served as an airplane runway during the summer, stretched out flat for six thousand feet, an
d was surrounded by pine trees similar to those in Labrador, where the picture was set. But they were shooting in February, and it was miserable.

  “Duke was a love, as usual,” said Lydon. “Wild Bill Wellman was no cinch to work for, and when things would get tough, Duke would say, ‘Now, now, come on, everything’s fine . . . ’ He was a peacemaker. He never put on his boss hat. He was a very kind gentleman.”

  The appalling conditions forced Wellman to ramrod the shoot in an even more ruthless fashion than usual. He did 114 setups on location; seventy-three of them were done in one take, and only five location shots needed more than two takes. The picture started shooting on February 1 and finished on February 25, nine days ahead of schedule. Interestingly, Robert Fellows was never on location and was not a presence on the interiors either. Wayne functioned as the line producer as well as the star, and Lydon said he was “a very competent, quiet, easygoing boss.”

  Lydon was accustomed to martinets, but Island in the Sky was his first and only go-round with Wellman.

  John Ford on the set did exactly what he said he did in interviews. He said, “Come in the scene, say your words and get out. I don’t want fancy shots and sunspots and zooms. I want that camera to be unnoticeable to the audience. If I need a close-up I’ll punch it in, but I leave the camera alone.” He was a master at playing a scene in masters or full shots.

  But Ford did not keep it all to himself. Ford would chew on his handkerchief and mull things over. Sometimes he’d spend half an hour just thinking, and everyone would wait. Ford was not a shouter; he would just say something and we’d do it.