John Wayne: The Life and Legend (62 page)

Once he saw the set, Relyea suggested to Al Ybarra and Wayne that the walls of the Alamo be built a bit higher, but Wayne wouldn’t hear of it. “I want to see thousands behind every wall,” he said. His ambition was laudable but expensive, because every time the camera did a reverse, people had to be moved to fill up the vast spaces visible beyond the low walls.

Just before production got under way, Wayne estimated that about $1.1 million was already spent. Once the cameras started turning, the weekly charges would range from $200,000 to $350,000, depending on the number of people before the cameras. That money did not include much salary for Wayne, who was making only Directors Guild minimum ($13,000 and change). Wayne was working for what he fervently hoped would be the profits. He was up for 7.5 percent of the gross, to be deferred until all the first and secondary loans were repaid. In case the loans were not repaid, then Batjac would pay him 7.5 percent of its net proceeds, although his compensation was limited to $100,000 in any calendar year, in order to avoid a huge tax bite.

On Wednesday morning, September 9, 1959, production began on
The Alamo
with an 8 A.M. blessing from Father Peter Rogers of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in San Antonio. “O, Almighty God, centuries ago, Thou raised a magnificent mission—a harbor for all, of peace and freedom. This was The Alamo. Today, we ask Thy blessing, Thy help and Thy protection as once again history is relived in this production.”

Wayne had been waiting more than twelve years for this moment, and he was completely prepared. “Duke knew that script backwards,” said William Clothier. “He knew every line better than the actors did. In the morning we’d have our breakfast together and go out on location and discuss every shot we were gonna shoot that day, and figure out which we should start with and when we should do such and such a shot for the light.

“Wayne was always on the set. He was the first on the set in the morning and the last to leave in the evening.”

One production problem that immediately presented itself was a result of Wayne’s insistence on physical realism—the interior sets had been built without movable walls or ceilings. This meant that Clothier had to struggle to keep his lights out of the shot. A more easily solved problem was Wayne’s tension, which manifested itself with him silently mouthing another actor’s words while he was in the same shot. Clothier grew used to cutting the camera and telling Wayne to stop moving his lips.

After a couple of weeks of production, Wayne wrote Charles Feldman that “we are working like hell, but the cast is wonderful and the backgrounds are magnificent. [Richard] Boone did a wonderful job . . . [and] I can’t tell you how beautiful the weather is here. We haven’t had one unusually hot day.”

But soon after that letter, Wayne’s anxiety ramped up, and for a good reason. Right after lunch one day, John Ford walked onto the set. “He plunked himself down in the director’s chair and stopped Duke’s scene,” remembered William Clothier. “ ‘Jesus Christ, Duke, that’s not the way to do it . . .’ ”

The company at large was flabbergasted, but Wayne had known he was coming. Ford’s participation had been whispered about for some time, before and during the start of production, perhaps as a result of the bogus agreement with George Skouras. In July 1959,
The Hollywood Reporter
had written that “scenes in which Wayne appears will be directed by John Ford.”

The night before Ford showed up, Wayne had taken Clothier aside and ranted: “Goddamn it. I want to make this picture and I don’t want Ford directing. What the hell am I going to do?” Clothier thought for a moment then offered up a solution.

“Look, I’ve got a big crew here. Let’s give the Old Man a second unit.” Wayne loved the idea, so Clothier got a crew together, and actors who weren’t scheduled to be used in the next couple of days.

The next morning, Wayne called the production’s twenty-seven stuntmen together. “Gentlemen, I want to tell you something. Old Man Ford’s coming up to visit and I know he’s going to ask for a camera. And I’m going to give it to him. And I know that he’s going to ask for you guys to do stunts. And you’re gonna do them. But, whatever he shoots, I’m telling you now, none of that will be in the picture. So do what you want, it makes no difference, but it’s not going to be in the picture, because all they have to do is find out in Hollywood that Old Man Ford shot a scene or something, they’ll say, ‘Well, he shot
The Alamo
.’ And this is not going to happen!”

John “Bear” Hudkins was one of the stuntmen, and he remembered, “We thought Ford was gonna burn [the] place down. Oh, he did everything. We had fires; we had jumping horses; we had falling horses; we were falling off walls and everything with the Old Man just sitting there and shooting, and we knowing that they weren’t even going to use this.”

“Ford went out and shot stuff that couldn’t possibly be used,” remembered Clothier. “It didn’t have anything to do with the picture we were making. I don’t think we used three cuts that the Old Man did. It cost Duke over $250,000 to give Ford that second unit.”

Ford would amble around and occasionally announce what he was going to do. “Duke needs close shots,” he said. “He’s got a lot of long shots.” He went about shooting what he called “three-footers,” quick details of action. Occasionally, he would get involved in the long shots as well. For a master shot of the aftermath of the battle, with dead men and horses lying on the ground in front of the Alamo, Ford wandered around, kicking dirt on a hat, moving the corpses into more compositionally attractive positions.

Ford would come down for a few days, go away for a week or two, then come back. “I don’t think he directed anything in the final film,” said Bob Relyea. “Ford would go off into a corner of the compound and shoot a couple of stuntmen fighting with nothing behind them, and we were shooting scenes with thousands of people. You couldn’t cut Ford’s stuff in. At night, Ford would get together with Ken Curtis and Wayne and play poker till one or two in the morning. The next morning, he’d fly out.”

One night, Ford was watching while Wayne directed a scene where the men go outside the fortress to steal cattle, during which Dean Smith did a standing jump over a horse. “It was a terrific shot,” Smith remembered. “I was standing there afterward when this old man walks up to me. He had on white buck shoes, cream colored slacks, a blue blazer, a slouch hat and an eyepatch. He pulled up the patch and looked at me.

“ ‘Son,’ he said, ‘I’ve done lots of westerns and I never saw a man jump over a horse like that. You didn’t even use a trampoline. My name’s John Ford. You hear of me working, you come and see me. You got a job.’ ” Smith would work for Ford on
Two Rode Together, Cheyenne Autumn
, and
How the West Was Won
.

Smith believed that Ford came down to Brackettville with the thought that Wayne would throw up his hands in abject gratitude and hand him the picture. “But he found out that Duke had learned more than he thought,” said Smith.

One day, word was sent to Relyea that Ford needed an assistant director. Relyea was feeling tired and grumpy, so he sent Mike Wayne. Ford was Pat Wayne’s godfather, but he and Mike were never close.

“Duke had a very strong admiration for Mike, who was a lot like he was—bright, hardnosed and short-tempered,” said Relyea. “And Pat was an actor, with his SAG card tattooed on his chest.” It wasn’t long before Ford started mimicking what he thought Mike sounded like around his father: “Dad, can we put the horses here? Dad, how about the cannons?” Mike responded in kind: he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and began tearing at it with his teeth—Ford’s primary nervous habit when directing.

“At that point, Ford went apeshit and started screaming bloody murder,” said Bob Relyea. “ ‘You little dumbbell!’ So I had to get Ford a different assistant director. It was kind of funny.”

Ford’s presence on the picture was unnerving for Wayne, as well as everybody else. “Ford was always courteous to me,” said Relyea, “but you could cut the air with a knife whenever he was around. I’m not a psychiatrist, but it seemed to me that in a lot of ways he was getting back at Duke. It felt like it was unwritten that if
The Alamo
ever got made, that Ford would direct it. And then one day Duke must have said, ‘How about lunch? And by the way, I’m going to direct
The Alamo
.’ And I think the hurt was so deep that Ford never got over it.

“It was a strange kind of love/hate relationship. I think Ford wanted Duke to succeed with the picture, but he couldn’t quite forgive him for not wanting him to direct it. Or perhaps Ford genuinely didn’t think the picture could succeed without him.”

But
The Alamo
was more than a movie for its director; it was a personal crusade that explained Wayne to Wayne—the patriotism, the single-mindedness that could result in compromised marriages. It would also, he believed, explain America to the world.

Occasionally, Ford would sit there while Wayne was in a scene. Richard Widmark remembered that after one scene between him and Wayne, Wayne asked him if it was okay for him. Widmark said yes, then Ford growled, “Do it again!”

“
Why
, Coach?” asked Wayne.

“ ’Cause it was no damn good,” said Ford.

They did the scene again.

In his career as an assistant director, Robert Relyea would work with, among others, William Wyler, Robert Wise, Richard Brooks, and John Sturges. In his estimation, “Technically, Wayne was the best director I ever worked with. He understood cameras, he understood editing, he understood lenses. What was wanting was communication with the actors. He was so gruff and short on patience that I don’t think he even knew he was gruff. If he had a weakness as a director, it was communication with the actors. The rest of the stuff he knew. Certainly, he knew
exactly
what he wanted. Completely. More so than anybody else I ever worked with. His abruptness was part of his nature. He simply had a short temper.”

Relyea found out just how short Wayne’s temper could be during one night’s shoot. Something wasn’t working that the electricians had promised to have working. Wayne wasn’t in a great mood to begin with—the weather was cold and rainy, and now the electricians were falling short. He began picking up rocks and throwing them at the offending electricians.

“They were standing on ladders at the time,” remembered Relyea, “and he picked them off as if he was Sandy Koufax. He had a hell of an arm.” Wayne undoubtedly felt better for expressing his dissatisfaction, but the next day
The Alamo
had need of twenty new electricians, because all the old ones had quit.

He was everywhere, all the time. Instructing some Mexican extras who were supposed to come in through a hole in the wall, he ordered, “You men, pour in here. Fill it up. Hold your rifles at high port. Get back in there. Get a gun. Come through with these men. Round up those guys sleeping in Bejar.” When a costume needed fixing, he yelled “Wardrobe!” When nothing happened, he bellowed, “When I call, somebody say ‘Yo!’ ”

Wayne took special care of his twenty-seven stuntmen, each of whom was earning about $1,000 a week. One of the few accidents involved Rudy Robbins, who was on horseback for a shot in which he was herding longhorns toward the mission. Robbins’s saddle began slipping, his foot wedged in the stirrup and he got hung up. The horse tried to throw him, but Robbins was still stuck. After being dragged facedown for a hundred yards, Robbins finally worked loose, but his nose was broken, not to mention jammed full of pebbles and sticks.

Wayne and stunt coordinator Cliff Lyons dreamed up one shot that called for a group of stuntmen playing Santa Anna’s cavalry to leap a barricade in a line only to be simultaneously mowed down and roll over with their horses. It was difficult, dangerous and expensive. Each of the eight stuntmen got $100 for the jump and $250 for the rollover—stunt work is à la carte.