John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [121]
Wayne did have a word or two to say about his fellow actors from North to Alaska. “Granger had a great sense of humor and we had a good time—once he overcame his fear of Henry Hathaway.
Capucine was . . . well, she was Charlie Feldman’s girlfriend and he was trying to make her into an international star. But she was all wrong for the part. Our writers had to make the leading lady French because that’s what Charlie wanted. It was a fun film to make and to watch, but—damn it, I hate bad-mouthing a lady—Capucine was not very good, and we’ll leave it at that.”
Filming ended in August, and Hathaway was set the Herculean task of editing it in time for its opening, set for early November. It was met with lukewarm reviews but excellent business. While the media and even some people in the film industry were trying to tell the public that The Alamo was a failure, North to Alaska suddenly confirmed Duke Wayne as a big box-office star.
Then came the broadcast of the episode of Wagon Train that Wayne appeared in. Wayne, Bond, and Ford had planned to watch it together and have a good laugh. But Ford was deep in his own depression, Bond was in his grave, and Wayne was struggling with his own demons. Besides losing Ward Bond, he found himself facing financial ruin due to his own personal losses over The Alamo. He desperately needed to work to try and rebuild his fortune, and that meant he was going to have to make as many films as he could in as short a time as possible.
Some in Hollywood blamed Wayne for his own misfortunes.
Darryl F. Zanuck stated, “I have great affection for Duke Wayne, but what right has he to write, direct, and produce a motion picture?”
Wayne was incensed by Zanuck’s comments. He said, “I couldn’t believe that there was such a backlash even in the industry I loved. I don’t know—maybe I was being blamed for the writers who went to jail for being in contempt.
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“It seemed there were some who didn’t agree with Zanuck when it was announced that we were nominated for Academy Awards in six categories. We got six nominations, including Best Picture, Best Score, Best Supporting Actor [for Chill Wills], Best Song, Best Photography. But the people who thought like Zanuck got the last word because we won only for Best Sound.
“There’s been a lot said about the publicity campaign for the Academy Awards. A full-page ad was taken out by Chill Wills in the Hollywood Reporter on his own cognisance, with a picture of the men who played the defenders of the Alamo standing behind a superimposed picture of Wills. It was bad taste.”
The caption on Wills’s ad read, “We of The Alamo cast are praying harder than the real Texans prayed for their lives in the real Alamo for Chill Wills to win the Oscar. Cousin Chills’s acting was great!” It was signed “Your Alamo cousins.”
“He’d been given no authority to do that,” said Duke. “And it caused a storm. I called him up and told him if I saw him soon, he’d better start running fast.
“There was a lot of jostling for the Oscars. There always has been, and there always will be. But the only film that gets criticized for its Oscar campaign is The Alamo. Why is that? And which film won Best Picture that year? The Apartment. A comedy about how funny it is to let your boss use your apartment to commit adultery. The Alamo was about courage, justice, and freedom. Sour grapes? You bet.”
Wayne’s financial problems turned out to be worse than he’d realized when, in 1960, while trying to salvage what he could to pay off his Alamo debts, he discovered that Bo Roos had made many bad investments which had lost Duke a fortune. “I’d been hearing people saying that Bo Roos had screwed them, but I thought they were joking. Then I started wondering about it, so I asked my secretary Mary to take a look at my file at Roos’s office. It should have been packed with papers about my investments. But all Mary found were mortgage papers on property in Culver City and the Flamingo Hotel in Acapulco.
“So I met