John Wayne: The Life and Legend (80 page)

Amidst all the Christmas bounty, there was one consistent shortfall. There wouldn’t be any presents for Michael. “Pilar was wonderful to me, terrible to Michael,” said Gretchen Wayne. “Grandaddy would look around and ask Pilar where Michael’s present was, and she would say, ‘Oh, I forgot.’ So he would go get a bunch of cash and give it to Michael; Michael didn’t really care, but what did bother him was that his father was bothered by it.

“The problem was that Michael didn’t think his dad should have married Pilar, and she picked up on it. He didn’t want to see his father get married again; he just thought it wasn’t in his father’s best interests. Grandaddy liked to play cards with Pilar, but she wasn’t of the same intellectual background. She wasn’t up on politics; she would rather play tennis. He would talk to me about what was going on in the Republican Party, and she couldn’t have cared less. It simply wasn’t interesting to her. She had her coterie of friends—the nouveau riche who played tennis, then lunched.”

Wayne’s grandchildren were a special case, and he never stood on ceremony with them any more than he did anybody else. His grandson Matthew Munoz, a Catholic priest, remembered taking an outboard to the Newport Beach house with a friend when he was a teenager. The boys docked, got out, and walked up the pier, only to discover that there was a formal party going on, with everybody in tuxedos and gowns.

Matt was wearing only swim trunks and was prepared to be thrown out on his ear, but his grandfather was delighted to see him. “His whole face lit up,” remembered Munoz. “ ‘Hey you guys! How you doing?’ Well, he threw me up on his leg, didn’t even dust me off, he was so proud of me. And I had probably trampled sand through the house. . . . ‘But get back before [Matt’s parents] find out.’ So my cousin and I stayed for a while longer and then left. But Grandpa never told my parents about us visiting. It was a little secret between us.

“Part of his charm was his earthiness. He spoke what he believed, whether you liked it or not. And yet he saw himself as just another guy doing a job.”

People were surprised by how solicitous Wayne was of others, of how he would go out of his way to please them. “He liked to walk down Fifth Avenue in the morning, just when the stores were opening,” said Gretchen Wayne. “He’d wave and say ‘Hi,’ but he learned never to stop, otherwise he’d get mobbed. But he always had a touch with people. In social situations, if someone wanted to take his picture, he’d squat down a little, so they’d be on the same level; he was always very kind about things like that.”

Beginning in 1951, with
The Quiet Man
, and continuing for the rest of his life, he indulged in a beau geste of ordering personalized coffee mugs for the cast and crew of each of his films. These mugs would say, “To xxxx from Duke” on one side, and on the other would be a scene from the film, or a line of dialogue. Wayne would rough out the artwork himself, then give it to an artist for the final version. The cup from
The Searchers
shows two horsemen in the desert with an Indian spear alongside them and underneath, “That’ll be the day.” On the other side is “The Searchers.”

Conversely, it was hard to buy for John Wayne. One day at Bullock’s department store, Tom Kane ran across a huge wastebasket, about three feet tall, emblazoned with red, white, blue, and gold American eagles. Kane knew Wayne would love it, so he had Bullock’s ship it to his house.

A few days later, Wayne stuck his head in Kane’s office. “You’re off the hook” he said. “You’re off the hook for Christmas, you’re off the hook for my birthday, you’re off the hook.” Wayne kept the wastebasket on
The Wild Goose
for years.

“He really didn’t give you a lot of rules, do’s and don’t’s,” said Patrick Wayne, his second-eldest son.

He knew the difference between right and wrong. He valued honesty, reliability, trustworthiness, and friendship—character things more than anything else.

Most of what I gleaned about acting was by watching him, seeing how he prepared and went about his business. The standards and goals I set were self-imposed by his presence.

In hindsight, it wasn’t that hard being his son. He didn’t put that many demands on you. He could accept very little and be a dear friend forever, with few requirements. But if you crossed the line, it was hard to get back into the fold. The big things were honesty and loyalty. Consistency was a big thing with him. He didn’t really make demands of anybody else that he didn’t make of himself. He had a temper, and if he blew up, he would apologize just as loudly and in front of just as many people.

Usually, the competitive edge was stifled when Wayne was with his family, but not always. “I used to play chess with my dad a lot, and I never fared very well,” said Pat Wayne. “But there was this one particular time when I won three games in a row. He started to set the pieces up again and I said, ‘I’m tired, I don’t want to play again.’ And he followed me around with the board for hours, trying to get me to play with him again. And finally I agreed and we sat down and he slaughtered me.”

His relationship with his mother remained unrewarding. Every year he sent his mother and her second husband on a vacation. One year, it was an around-the-world, all-expenses-paid trip. When they got back, Wayne greeted them and wanted to hear all about it. Sidney Preen, Wayne’s stepfather, raved about the trip and thanked him profusely. Molly just complained—the flights were tiring, the service was bad, etc. Wayne’s response was a visible deflation. After he left the room, Mary St. John asked Molly, “Don’t you think you could be a little nicer to him sometimes?”

To which Molly Morrison Preen replied, “I don’t give a damn about him.”

As sentimental as he was about family and friends, some things left him cold. One day a man came to the Batjac office with two copies of the 1925 Glendale High School yearbook. His wife had been in the class that year, they had two copies and they thought Wayne might like one. No charge.

When Wayne came in, he was handed the yearbook. He leafed through it casually, as if it were an old issue of
The Hollywood Reporter
. “God, there sure were a lot of ugly broads in our class,” was all he said as he put the book down. At the end of the day, one of the Batjac people handed it to him to take home.

“Nah, I don’t want it,” he said. “You want it? Take it.”

“He couldn’t have cared less about that kind of thing,” said Gretchen Wayne. “He never saved anything from his own career. Michael saved posters, Michael saved wardrobe pieces. If the house had burned down, Granddaddy would have said, ‘Is everybody OK? Then let’s move forward and build another house.’ One time Michael had a fire in the garage. He lost some pictures, and tools for woodworking and electrical work. He mourned it for 20 years. His father wouldn’t have cared about that at all.”

Working or at ease, he was a creature of routine. If he was at home he would spend the morning writing letters and business correspondence, the early afternoon talking business or scripts. Later in the afternoon, he and Pilar might go to Laguna Beach and trawl through antique shops—he could spot a Georgian table or Tiffany lamp at twenty yards. Or he might go to the Big Canyon Country Club, looking for a game of chess or bridge. Dinner would be with the family, with perhaps a screening of a movie.

He exuded much of the self-confidence of his screen character. If he walked into Tom Kane’s office and found a script on Kane’s desk that he didn’t want anything to do with, he would simply flick it on the floor without saying anything. He’d do the same thing with a hat on a desk if he didn’t like the person it belonged to. In the 1960s, bumper stickers started appearing saying “John Wayne for President.” His brother, Bob, shook his head and said, “No. Emperor. He wouldn’t go for that four-year re-election stuff. It would have to be for life.”

Although Wayne felt he was a true liberal in the sense of being in the liberal arts, as well as being open to listening to other ideas and opinions, political parameters were enforced. “None of his kids were Democrats, not that I can think of,” said Gretchen Wayne. “If you didn’t vote the way he did, you had better know why. After Grandaddy died, one of my kids voted for Clinton and another one voted for Ross Perot. Michael couldn’t believe it, but they had their reasons so he couldn’t argue with them.”

Even his children found the relationship with John Ford curious. “His relationship with Ford was a much different relationship than father-son,” said Patrick Wayne. “It was a mentor relationship. He forever held Ford up and gave him total credit for his success and for giving him the opportunity to be where he was in the business, which may have been less than true. I think my father would have been a success at whatever he chose. He was driven and focused and ambitious. But the opportunity was presented by Ford and continued to be, although it would become awkward at times. He wasn’t that submissive with anyone else.”

With the crafts people, the filmmaking rank and file, Wayne’s status was always high. “He holds no malice,” said George Coleman, a jack-of-all-trades who also worked as Wayne’s driver. “He knows I’m a Democrat. With some people you’d either have to switch or you wouldn’t be working for them, but not Duke. He never turns to anybody and says, ‘You’re just a laborer, what do you know?’ He’ll say, ‘This man has something to say, let’s listen. Maybe he has an idea we can use to make this job better and faster.’ He never belittles anybody.”

“If you had an opinion about something, he wanted you to state it,” said the character actor Ed Faulkner, who made six pictures with him. “He did not like yes-men. Even if he disagreed with you, he’d want to hear your argument. And he might say ‘I don’t agree with you,’ but he would always let you say your piece. Which was not always the case with the people around him. With Bruce Cabot, for instance, things were either black or white. And if Bruce disagreed with you, he’d turn and walk away, just snub you. Duke would always let someone say their piece.”

The shy and uncertain boy, the young actor who wanted to play every kind of part, now implicitly demanded that his parts be modeled on the man he had become. “The only difference between Grandaddy on the screen and Grandaddy in the room was in his wardrobe,” said Gretchen Wayne. “What he projected was the man. His basis for his career after a certain point was that he would not trick or cheat the public in any way. ‘Those are the people that put the food on my table,’ he would say, and he had the utmost respect for them. Early on, he played light comedies, but as his role grew, as he played a military man in World War II, he began to understand what the public expected of him—a man who was heroic in the way he dealt with life. That was the consistent element in all of his films. Even
True Grit
.”

More than anything else, he believed in loyalty. If Wayne came to believe someone could be trusted he would take them aside for a heart to heart: “If you ever want anything, anything at all, call me. Don’t call Mike. Don’t call Mickey [Rudin, his lawyer]. Don’t call Jack [Gordean, his agent at the Feldman office]. Call me. I mean money too. Any amount you want. I’ll give it to you. It’s important you know you have me behind you.”

John Wayne.

Rod Taylor was up for the co-starring part in a Wayne picture called
The War Wagon
at Universal, but Kirk Douglas read the script and liked it. Since Douglas was under contract with Universal,
The War Wagon
would use up one of his commitments. Wayne went to Lew Wasserman about Taylor, but the studio prevailed and Douglas played the part for $300,000 plus 15 percent of the gross after break-even until he got a total of $675,000, after which he got 10 percent of the worldwide gross in perpetuity.

The War Wagon
was directed by Burt Kennedy. “The only reason
The War Wagon
was a hard time,” said Kennedy, “was that Duke started me—picked me up off the street. Kirk Douglas said in his book that I was afraid of Duke. Hell, everybody was afraid of him.”

Art director Alfred Sweeney built a western town in Durango, Mexico, in six short weeks. When it was finished, there were twenty new, beautifully aged buildings of wood and brick supplementing some pre-existing structures. The saloon and a mining company office featured detailed interiors that could be used for cover sets in bad weather.

The picture got off to a rocky start when Douglas showed up with a costume that included a flamboyant ring worn over a black leather glove—an expert attempt at scene stealing, as well as a test for the young director. Wayne’s response was instantaneous: “If you don’t get that faggot ring off that sonofabitch, I’m walking off the picture right now!”

Kennedy obediently walked over to Douglas and said, “Don’t you think the ring is a little much, Kirk?”

“No, I think it’s just fine,” Douglas replied. “What do you think?”

“It’s great, just great,” said Wayne. (Reaming out a director was one thing, reaming out another actor on the same level as him was quite another.) Later, Wayne sidled up to Douglas and asked, “You’re going to play it in that effete fashion?”

“John, I’m trying not to let my effeminacy show.” (The nature of the relationship can be gauged by the fact that Douglas always refused to call Wayne “Duke.”)

Durango would become Wayne’s favorite place to shoot movies and hang out. There wasn’t really much to do other than drink, play golf—there was a good nine-hole course—and drink some more. The airstrip had no lights, so planes had to land and take off during daylight hours. “Duke loved it,” said Harry Carey Jr. “People didn’t bother him there. They weren’t movie-conscious. You could go shopping without being bothered.”

But other people weren’t so thrilled. You couldn’t drink the water, and there was a sign that appeared in all the bathrooms of the very modest hotel where the production personnel were lodged: “Please Shake Out Your Boots Before Putting Them On.” The sign referred to the preference scorpions have for hiding in warm places. For Wayne and the stuntmen, this was the Real Thing; for a lot of other people, it paled next to locations in the south of France.