John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [101]
When I told Wayne that Huston had told me this story, Duke gave his version of events: “When I saw the riot begin, I ran down to the docks and began waving my hands and shouting for everyone to calm down. The rioters saw me and I guess they liked John Wayne enough to stop the riot. I promised all the fishermen that I would make good their losses out of my own pocket if the studio wouldn’t.
Well, when Huston saw and heard this, he just walked away and never said a word. He couldn’t bear the fact that he’d goofed badly and that I was the one who handled the situation.”
It would seem that Huston’s dislike of Wayne intensified after filming was completed. “I finished all the work on film—all the editing, the sound, the music—and I left for Africa to start work on 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 189
DUKE MEETS NIKITA
189
The Roots of Heaven,” said Huston. “Behind my back, Wayne took over because he pulled a lot more weight at Fox than I did, and he made a lot of changes, even adding new scenes and reshooting some scenes. By the time he’d finished with it, it was no longer the picture I shot. It was just a mess. Just a John Wayne film without the cowboys and the Indians.”
Wayne defended his actions, saying, “I tried to work with Huston, but he just kept saying, ‘Don’t worry. It will all come together.’ Well, it sure as hell didn’t. When I saw it, it was just what I’d thought it would be; a rich tapestry with people in the foreground. So I said, ‘To hell with this. If Huston wants to go off to Africa and leave his film a shambles, I’m going to do something about it.’ But it was unsalvageable. I hated that goddamn picture.
Huston has made a few good films, but I think he’s greatly overrated.”
Apart from his difficulties with Huston, Wayne had other more domestic problems to cope with. Pilar had arrived in Japan to spend Christmas with Duke, but she remained uneasy about leaving Aissa back home. It didn’t help that Duke was in a bad mood because of his problems with Huston, and his mood caused tension between him and Pilar. Before the film wrapped, she persuaded Duke to let her go home.
Shortly after she returned to Los Angeles, their Encino home caught fire in the night. Pilar managed to grab Aissa from her crib and escape the flames, although Pilar received slight burns to an arm.
The whole of the second floor was gutted and the downstairs badly damaged by smoke and water.
A few days later, Duke arrived home, the film finally finished, and he rented a house while renovations began on the Encino home.
“Duke was shaken by what could have happened,” said Paul Fix. “It was an experience that seemed to stir up the deepest, darkest emotions in both Duke and Pilar, and Pilar suddenly told Duke she wanted a divorce. She said she couldn’t bear Duke’s long absences from home, and she just couldn’t cope with the kind of life a wife of John Wayne was expected to lead. She had become an insomniac and was taking pills to make her sleep. That was a damn sad thing. So they lived apart for a bit, but they loved each other so much they decided they had to 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 190
190
JOHN WAYNE
try and make their marriage work. He was so damn relieved when she moved back in with him. And he’d missed Aissa. For a time there his life was so bleak. He got to drinking a lot more than usual and he seemed to lose interest in work. Then she came back and he was happy. But things were never really great between them.”
The Barbarian and the Geisha was Wayne’s only major film released in 1958 (in September), and that year turned out to be the only one between 1949 and 1969 when he was not one of America’s top ten box-office draws.
Just as Duke and Pilar were making an attempt to patch up their marriage, Wayne had to leave in May 1958, for Old Tucson in Arizona to work with Howard Hawks