John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [123]
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JOHN WAYNE
Stuart Whitman costarred as a gambler who reluctantly helps Wayne. When I interviewed him at Elstree Studios where he was making The Monster Club in 1980, he told me, “Duke Wayne was a pure delight to work with. With The Alamo behind him, he was free to enjoy himself playing a role that came to him as easy as falling off a log. And when Michael Curtiz became too ill to direct, Duke kind of unofficially took over, and I think he enjoyed doing it because he knew he didn’t have the whole film on his shoulders as he had with The Alamo.
“He had his family with him and he managed to get his son Pat an important part, and his little daughter Aissa was also in it, playing his granddaughter. In fact, a lot of the people who worked with him on The Alamo had roles.
“I liked the comic touches Duke put into his part. I played a gambler from Louisiana and had a French name. In the script, he was supposed to call me ‘monsieur.’ He pronounced it ‘mon-sewer’ each time, and that was typical of Duke’s self-effacing approach to himself. He played the tough Texas ranger who was uncultured, and that allowed him to laugh at his own image.”
Capturing the stark but beautiful backdrop of Moab on film was William H. Clothier, who said, “By now I had become Duke’s regular director of photography, and that suited me just fine because he was making wonderful outdoors productions, and I enjoyed location work. Duke had followed John Ford’s example of having about him an extended family who he knew he could work with, from actors to technicians. He carried a lot of power and while he was able to let the producer, George Sherman, do the worrying, Duke was able to enjoy himself.
“Michael Curtiz was unwell much of the time. He had cancer, and so Duke very gently began taking on some of the director’s responsibilities without Curtiz really being aware of it. Duke didn’t want to offend Curtiz. Before the picture was finished, Curtiz was too ill to work and Duke took over as director. He was glad he had me with him because we knew how to work together because we had a routine we’d established during The Alamo.”
Providing some glamour among the dusty backdrops and the violence was Ina Balin. “John Wayne seemed very much at ease, 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 231
WORKING TWENTY YEARS FOR NOTHING
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although most of my scenes were with Stuart Whitman,” she said when I talked to her about Duke on the telephone in 1979. “When I was offered the part in a John Wayne film, I thought at first I would be Duke’s romantic interest. But when I read the script, I saw that he was playing the older man while the younger man [Whitman] was the one I fall for. He said, ‘Thank God I don’t have to do any love scenes in this. It’s so much easier to knock a guy down than it is to play love scenes.’
“He told me I reminded him of his wife because I have dark looks and he said we looked alike. I took that as a compliment because his wife Pilar was a tremendously beautiful woman. In fact, the name of my character was Pilar, which I think was Jimmy Grant’s way of paying tribute to Duke’s wife.”
In the small but significant part of a gunrunner was Lee Marvin.
“That was my first picture with Duke,” he told me. “I only had a few scenes, but it was fun because mainly we had to drink and get drunk together, and that we could both do really well. Duke said to me, ‘I think there’s a great part for you in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.’ I said, ‘Which part would that be?’ He said, ‘Liberty Valance.’ I said, ‘Who’s the man who shot him?’ He said,