John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [116]
There was not a single detail of The Alamo that Wayne bypassed.
He said, “I put my heart and soul into that picture. It said everything I felt about my country, about freedom, and about dictatorships. It was seen by those to the left as a piece of propaganda, and hell it was, but it was also first and foremost a great story and a grand piece of entertainment.”
But was it another way for him to express his views about Communism? He told me, “It was, in part. But it was more than that.
I hoped it would convey to people all over the free world that they owed a debt to all men who gave their lives fighting for freedom. I hope that the battle of the Alamo will remind people everywhere that the price of freedom and liberty doesn’t come cheap.
“I was always inspired by the story because I don’t know of any other moment in American history which portrays the courage of men any better. It’s the courage of those men that always moved me. Since then men—and women—have shown many great acts of courage in the face of adversity. But what for me was the defining moment when men put their lives before all else, was when Travis tells all the volunteers who are on their horses and ready to withdraw from a battle they know they can’t win, that they can leave the Alamo without fear of criticism or shame. And every one of those volunteers got off their horses and stood behind Travis. It’s a story for all the world, but it is a special story for the patriots of America.”
In all his blazing patriotic glory, in May 1960, Wayne publicly criticized Sinatra for hiring screenwriter Albert Maltz, one of the Hollywood Ten, to write The Execution of Private Slovik. Based on a book by William Bradford Huie, it told the true story of the only American to be executed as a deserter during the Second World War.
Wayne commented, “I disliked the book because it portrayed our 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 217
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military as the heavies. I never thought Sinatra was a Commie, but he hired a Commie to write a screenplay the Communists would have just loved.
“When I heard about it, I was so goddamn mad, I told a reporter,
‘I wonder how Sinatra’s crony, Senator John Kennedy, feels about Sinatra hiring such a man.’ The whole thing became a minefield, especially when Hedda Hopper attacked him in her column—so did the Hearst Press. I heard that Kennedy put pressure on Frank, and he had to back down. And he sure as hell didn’t like it. He ended up paying Maltz seventy-five thousand dollars not to write the goddamn thing.
“The next time I saw Frank was at a charity benefit, and he’d been drinking heavily. He walked up to me—and he’s not exactly tall enough to see eye to eye with me—and he said, ‘You seem to disagree with me.’ I told him, ‘Just take it easy, Frank. We can talk about this later.’ And he said, ‘I want to talk about it right now!’ It’s a good thing some of his friends pulled him away because I’d sure hate to have flattened him.”
Sammy Davis Jr. recalled the incident: “There was a benefit for retarded children at the Moulin Rouge nightclub. Everyone who came had to pay a hundred dollars, and they had to come dressed in costume. Duke turned up as a cowboy, which didn’t surprise anybody, and Frank came as a Red Indian, so that kind of put them at odds to begin with. It all started okay. Duke got up and sang
‘Red River Valley.’ Frank did his ‘The Lady Is a Tramp,’ but later, after Frank had had a few drinks, he started annoying Duke and trying to pick a fight with him. And there are all these poor retarded kids watching, and they must’ve been thinking, ‘Man, we’re gonna see a cowboy and Injun fighting.’ I thought Duke was going to deck Frank, but Frank got dragged away before he got hurt. Frank and Duke had a long-running feud.”
Wayne explained, “For a long time, Frank and I never got along, not just because he’s such a goddamn liberal, but because he always thought he was a gangster. I mean, he was a gangster. Who the hell doesn’t know he’s in with the Mafia?”