John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [11]
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JOHN WAYNE
he’d had a good education. He had to learn to drawl like a cowboy.”
He developed his first political affiliations at USC. “When I was a sophomore at USC, I was a socialist, pretty much to the left,” he said.
“But not when I left the university. I quickly got wise. I’d read about what had happened to Russia in 1917 when the Communists took over. The average kid in college would like everybody to be able to have ice cream and cake with every meal as their God-given right.
But as he gets older and gives more thought to his own and his fellow man’s responsibility, he finds it just can’t work the way he wanted it to because there are always some people who just won’t carry their load. And the ones who whine about how hard they’ve got it are often the ones who won’t carry their load. Communism just doesn’t work.”
Two of Duke’s best friends at Glendale were Bob and Bill Bradbury, whose father, Robert N. Bradbury, was making short films featuring his sons. In 1926 Robert N. Bradbury made Davy Crockett at the Fall of the Alamo, with a featured part for his son Bob (who later took on the screen name of Bob Steele).
Wayne said, “I’d read up on the history of our country and I’d become fascinated with the story of the Alamo. To me it represented the fight for freedom, not just in America, but in all countries. Seeing Robert Bradbury’s film was a real inspiration to me, and I guess it stuck with me until it became a passion of mine to make The Alamo.
It’s a story of freedom, and courage, and doing right in the face of adversity.”
Legend has it that Duke Morrison was a star football player with the Trojans at USC and on his way to becoming an all-American football star. He certainly trained for a year under legendary football coach Howard Jones. It was through Jones that Duke met cowboy star Tom Mix who was under contract to the William Fox Studios in nearby Hollywood.
“When Tom Mix wanted the best seats to see the USC’s Trojan football games, Jones arranged it,” said Wayne. “In return, Mix promised Jones that he would find work for any of his players who needed summer jobs. So in the summer of 1926 me and my buddy Don Williams were sent to Fox.”
There, legend has it, they drank and talked football with Mix, who 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 17
FROM MARION TO DUKE
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decided to put Duke on the payroll as a personal trainer to help keep him in peak condition; their plan was that Duke would make Mix run two or three miles every day.
Henry Hathaway disputed that account, saying, “I’m not sure that Tom Mix actually took Duke on as a trainer. I think it’s one of those stories that the studio put into his biographies because it made for a good story. And once it was in print, Wayne couldn’t actually ever turn around and say that it wasn’t true, so he went along with it.”
It seems that, by 1974, Wayne was no longer sticking to the
“official” version. He said, “I arrived at the studio and they put me straight to work carrying props. I got to meet Tom Mix at Fox. That was a real thrill for me. He used to like talking about football more than movies.”
Duke Morrison was a tall, rather skinny young man, and it was probably doing all that work shifting props that helped him build up some of his muscles. His good looks inspired someone in the casting department to give him a job as an extra and even as a stuntman in a number of films.
“I do know that Tom Mix got him one of his first jobs as an extra in a Western at Fox called The Great K & A Train Robbery which starred Mix,” said George Sherman.
There are unsubstantiated reports that Wayne was also an extra over at MGM in Brown of Harvard and Bardelys the Magnificent, and also at Warner Bros. in Michael Curtiz’s biblical epic Noah’s Ark. But since he was at work at Fox, these reports are unreliable. “I can’t remember all the pictures I appeared in as an extra,” he said.
“That was a helluva long time ago.”
When the summer was over, Duke went back to college