John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [115]
‘We are three together’ and I said, ‘Always, honey.’ Well, Duke told me that Aissa used to say that to him and Pilar, and he’d say,
‘Always, honey.’ But when he and Pilar separated, he’d think of Aissa as a little girl saying that line, and he’d just break down.
“Aissa had another scene which was cut, where she had to hide in a cart from the Mexican soldiers. Duke told her, ‘This isn’t real, sweetheart. Just remember, it’s only make-believe. Men dressed as soldiers and holding guns are going to pull back the cover and find you under it.’
“Duke covered her over, and when he was ready he yelled,
‘Action!’ And the soldiers yanked back the cover and poor little Aissa found herself staring at several bayonets barely inches from her face which nobody had told her about. She gave an ear-piercing scream, and proving she had Wayne blood in her, she flew into a rage, yelling at her mother, the actors, the crew, everyone. But she knew better than to yell at her father.
“When it came to filming the battle scenes, it was amazing to see.
I was up on the battlements, and everyone was in place inside the Alamo, and we watched these thousands of extras marching toward us. We opened fire, explosions were going off. Actors and extras 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 215
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were dropping dead on cue. The coverage that Duke and Bill Clothier got was amazing. Once we had all the master shots, we spent many days covering little episodes of the battle. Cliff Lyons directed second unit and he had the Mexican cavalry charging forward, and when explosions went off, all his riders and horses were trained to fall to the side. In the old days, they used trip wires which sent the horses toppling head over heels, and a lot of horses got maimed and killed. Cliff Lyons and his stuntmen and their horses were so well trained and well rehearsed, that even though there are some spectacular horse falls, not one animal got hurt. And I don’t know of any stuntman who got seriously injured, which was a miracle because you often hear how on big pictures stuntmen get injured, and some are even killed.”
Filming wrapped on 20 December 1959. After Christmas, Wayne immersed himself in the postproduction. An important part of this process was the composing and recording of the film’s score.
“I never had any other thought than to ask Dimitri Tiomkin to compose the score,” Wayne told me.
But what really persuaded Wayne was Tiomkin’s score for Rio Bravo. I met Tiomkin at a media bash for the London premiere of his production of Tchaikovsky, where he told me, “I used a piece of music in Rio Bravo called ‘De Guello’ which is composed for the trumpet and which the Mexicans played during the siege of the Alamo as a way of trying to make the defenders of the Alamo anxious. And in Rio Bravo the men who have the town surrounded play that music. I always thought it was a most beautiful piece of music and couldn’t understand why it would upset anyone.
“John Wayne said to me, ‘We have to have that music in The Alamo.’ I said, ‘It won’t upset the defenders.’ He said, ‘I know, but can you find different ways to use it?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ and I used it as a lament for the dead and dying Mexican soldiers, I used it as a piece of military music just before the battle, and I used it to glorify Crockett’s death.
“It was the biggest picture I had worked on up till then, and it gave me the opportunity to really expand my repertoire. I already had a 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 216
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certain style, so people tell me, but The Alamo widened my horizons and gave me the reputation of being able to compose for epic films, which is just about all I went on to do after The Alamo.”
Although I’m not an admirer of Tiomkin’s music, The Alamo actually turned out to be a great, and arguably his finest, score, which proved that Wayne