John Wayne: The Life and Legend (57 page)

At this point, Wayne was juggling a couple of possible properties. One was a movie about Heartbreak Ridge, written by the actor Barton MacLane; another was “Thunder in the South,” about the Civil War, and there was “Earthquake McGoon,” a story about a Chinese adventurer by Corey Ford and A. S. Fleischman.

Instead, in December 1957, Wayne went to Japan to star in
The Barbarian and the Geisha
, the first of the three films for Fox. It was the story of Townsend Harris, the first American envoy to Japan. The director was John Huston, and the picture was problematic from the beginning. An early script, from December 1956, describes Harris as “a Robert Mitchum type,” but as written he’s more of a John Wayne type; a still earlier script contained a reflective character that could have been played by Spencer Tracy.

In years to come, Wayne blamed Huston for the entire debacle, explaining that he signed on to a fragmentary script purely to work with Huston. Whereupon Huston, instead of working on the script, took off for four months in Mexico, digging up pre-Columbian art and staying out of the country to avoid taxes.

The surviving memos from Fox production chief Buddy Adler to Huston prove that Adler was a smart executive with a good story sense and Huston was more interested in his images than his story. After reading the script by Charles Grayson, Adler wrote Huston, “I feel that on the whole the script: a. lacks emotional impact; b. there is a lack of depth to certain characterizations; c. there is very little excitement in the love story.” It simply wasn’t as good as it could be.

Adler pointed to
Sayonara
, a Marlon Brando picture that was just about to be released and would prove a smash hit.
Sayonara
had an interracial love story and a script by Paul Osborn that worked; the Townsend Harris script didn’t. Harris had evidently been an alcoholic, and Adler was fine with not making him an alcoholic, “but we have to make him
something
. What do we know about Harris in this script? Only that he has had a post in China; that he has no family or marital ties; that he has a quick temper; that he is brave and he is determined to do a good job. That is all very admirable but it is not enough.”

A week later, Charles Grayson had done some rewriting that was an improvement, but Adler still felt the script lacked depth to go along with the premise and the setting. It’s probable that Huston felt that the gaps in the characterization would be filled by the presence of John Wayne; that, as is often the case, the personality of the star would make up for the impersonality of the character.

As soon as he showed up in Japan, Wayne presented Huston with thirteen pages of notes about the script. He was evidently ignorant of the fact that Huston had recently walked off David O. Selznick’s production of
A Farewell to Arms
because of the unceasing flow of memos. Huston took Wayne’s notes, but never read them or referred to them.

When Pilar arrived in Japan just before Christmas, she found her husband furious. “I ask him what’s on tomorrow’s shooting schedule,” Wayne groused, “and he’ll tell me to spend more time absorbing the beauty of the scenery and less time worrying about my part. When I tell him I can’t memorize the script unless I know what we’ll be shooting, the bastard says, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll improvise.’ ”

Wayne saw no reason to be discreet with reporters. “After a couple of weeks out here with no action, I had to make up my mind whether to quit and go home and let them sue me, or stay and trust in God and Huston.

“I decided to stay. Anyway, I was in too deep to get out. . . . Mister Huston is on a Japan kick, and as I see it he wants me to walk through a series of Japanese pastels.”

Wayne expressed his contempt in a letter to John Ford: “It’s a little frustrating trying to arouse the . . . sleeping talent of our lead, Mr. Huston, who wears the clothes of an Irish country gentleman. Maybe I’m prejudiced, but I’d say without the manner.” Wayne’s only consolation for what he was correctly convinced was a disaster in the making was the opportunity it gave him to buy some Japanese art, which decorated his homes for the rest of his life.

Angela Allen, Huston’s script supervisor, ascribed the breach between the men to a complete lack of shared outlook. “They had nothing in common. John Wayne loathed him. He used to say, ‘I’m gonna kill him!’ I said, ‘I’ll fix up the appointment, what time do you want to come?’ But he didn’t want to be left alone with Huston. He was very regimented and could only go in one way. Very professional, but he wasn’t that bright.”

Huston was always a sucker for visual experimentation, and his original intent was to hire an all-Japanese crew so the film could reflect some of the beauty of Japanese films such as
Gate of Hell
. But Fox wanted the film shot in CinemaScope, and the studio wanted a cameraman experienced in the format. It wasn’t an excuse that made much sense, but Huston capitulated and used Fox’s Charles Clarke, who had worked in Japan before.

By December 20, the picture was a whopping eleven and a half days behind schedule. Fox’s Sid Rogell wrote a letter to Charles Clarke imploring speed. “Anything you can do to speed things up or to suggest eliminations will, of course, be important steps in the right direction.” Besides the lagging pace, nobody could figure out what to call the picture. Wayne’s suggestion was
Pine and Bamboo
, symbolizing East and West, which Huston liked a lot. Buddy Adler and the sales department were horrified. Among the alternates were
First Ambassador, East Is East, The Kimona Curtain,
and
Geisha!
—the ideal title for a Samuel Fuller movie.

When the studio came up with
The Barbarian and the Geisha
, Huston cabled Adler, “Are you serious? If so I am changing my name, too.” Huston assuaged his irritation by embarking on an affair with co-star Eiko Ando.

Wayne spent his off-hours stewing and working on the script for
The Alamo
. When the unit returned to California, Wayne leaned on Buddy Adler, who ordered Walter Lang to reshoot five or six scenes in April of 1958. (The remade scenes: Harris explains about his credentials being in limbo; after Okichi has been ordered back to see Harris; Harris packing up to leave Japan; in the marketplace; Harris burns the house.) One scene was remade because Wayne thought his sideburns were unattractive, another because he thought he looked too old, and a couple were redone, explained producer Eugene Frenke to Huston, “to give [the character of Harris] some vitality.”

In short, Wayne took over postproduction. When Huston wrote his memoirs over twenty years later, he was still angry at being outweighed by a movie star: “When I brought it back to Hollywood, the picture, including the music, was finished. . . . It was a sensitive, well-balanced work. . . . John Wayne apparently took over after I left . . . and when I saw it, I was aghast.” Later, Huston told a writer, “It was really a fucked-up proposition.”

The film was a miserable financial failure, earning $2.5 million in domestic rentals against a cost of $3.4 million, although it can be viewed with considerable pleasure as one of Huston’s visual experiments (
Moulin Rouge, Reflections in a Golden Eye
). Dramatically, it feels garbled; after all of Buddy Adler’s complaints, Townsend Harris still seems to appear out of nowhere, with no backstory and no motivation for coming to Japan. And there are bewildering continuity gaps—the scene that moves the geisha Okichi from the status of spy to mistress is nonexistent.

Years later, Wayne said that John Huston was the single biggest mistake of his career in terms of directors, and grew agitated at the mere mention of Huston’s name. “I found it impossible to make any contact at all. When I look back at his career, Bogie and his dad helped him get started. Outside of
Moulin Rouge
and
Asphalt Jungle
, I don’t think he’s made anything worthwhile when they weren’t there to help him.”

Wayne thought Huston wanted him to play Harris with the stiff demeanor that Gregory Peck brought to Ahab in
Moby Dick
. “There was no life in [Peck]. Then I started to work with Huston and found out that was how he was going to have me play this drunken, riotous man, Townsend Harris, who had a great love of people. He had me started out dressed like Abe Lincoln and everybody knows I’m John Wayne. He had scenes where the Americans caused an epidemic of typhoid—wonderful chances to have me be something more than a textbook illustration. But no.

“There was a scene where the Japanese won’t sell us food, so I wanted to go out and come back with fish. The kids ask me where I got it, so I take them out and show them how to fish. There were all sorts of things he could have done to make us human beings, but he was only concerned with his tapestry, which he thought was more important than the human story. Huston? You can have him!”

In June 1958, Wayne made a live appearance on the NBC series
Wide, Wide World
for a segment about the western. John Ford, Ward Bond, James Arness, James Garner, and a dozen other stars past and current were scheduled to appear on the show that was being broadcast from a western set in New-hall built decades earlier by Trem Carr and that Wayne knew all too well.

The night before the show Wayne had been drinking with friends. Seven A.M. came, and no Wayne; eight o’clock, and no Wayne. Finally, at nine, Wayne showed up, hungover and struggling.

Ford was furious and berated Wayne for being unprofessional and holding up rehearsal. Wayne just kept his head down, scuffing his toe in the dirt and saying, “I’m sorry, boss.” “You’re going to pay for this and you’re going to pay for it hard all the way,” Ford snarled. He ordered Wayne to go all the way to the end of the western street and walk toward the camera while delivering a speech about westerns.

Wayne was searching for the words on the first rehearsal, so Ford ordered another rehearsal. Back they went to the end of the street. And again. This went on for about six long, hot rehearsals. About twenty minutes before the show was to go on the air, Ford took Gene Autry aside and told him to help Wayne out a little, but under no circumstances was he to tell Wayne that Ford had suggested it.

Autry was no stranger to carousing and always had a supply of adult beverages on hand. He brought Wayne a Coke that had a little something extra in it. Wayne didn’t want a Coke. Autry insisted he try the Coke. “He took it and said, ‘Not bad, not bad.’ So we went ahead then and did the show and after it was all over, Wayne came over and he said, ‘Look, you saved my life. I don’t know whether I could have made it or not.’ ”

Wayne’s four children from his first marriage were starting their own lives. Twenty-year-old Toni married Don La Cava, a Loyola graduate, in May 1956. Wayne gave the bride away, then sat in the second pew with his former wife Josie. Pilar did not attend the wedding. Officiating was Cardinal McIntyre, who read an Apostolic Benediction from Pope Pius XII. Attending were such notables as Bob Hope, Ray Milland, and Ward Bond.

Wayne’s oldest son, Michael, married Gretchen Deibel in 1958. They had met when they were both fifteen, on a blind date at Gretchen’s school, Immaculate Heart, where Toni—a friend of Gretchen’s—was also a student. (Mike was going to Loyola.) It was a square dance, but neither of them could square dance, so they sat there the entire night and talked. From then on, remembered Gretchen, “We were off and on sweethearts. I spent my life with him; I knew my father-in-law when I was a teenager.”

In those early days, Gretchen always addressed Wayne as “Mr. Wayne,” which was fine, but once she and Mike were married, something else seemed to be called for. “Call me Dad,” he suggested, but she was too intimidated by his size and presence. “Call me Duke” was the next suggestion, but Gretchen couldn’t manage that either.

In short order Gretchen got pregnant and presented Wayne with his first grandchild. At that point, he told Gretchen, “Call me Granddaddy,” which sounded all right to her. She called him Granddaddy for the rest of his life.