John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [129]
There was, of course, another security risk which Duke always kept to himself. The risk of assassination. Yakima Canutt told me,
“Since Duke didn’t get any help from Khrushchev, he managed to maintain a high level of security and yet also maintain a degree of normality—at least, it was normality by Hollywood’s standards. No movie star’s kids played in the street. But I think Duke was just that bit more security conscious and so his home became his own fortress—his own Alamo. Glad to say, he never suffered the same fate as those at the Alamo.
“But he was right not to become too complacent because the Communists didn’t give up on him. There were still the Chinese and the North Vietnamese only too happy to see him dead.”
The year 1962 was a fine one for Wayne. There hardly seemed to be a month that went by when he wasn’t appearing somewhere in some film. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance opened in April to reviews that were mixed, and business that was poor. Over the years the film has gained critical favor, but it hasn’t improved with age. It looks like a B Western with its black-and-white photography and phony studio sets. It also had very long interior scenes and it seems more like a filmed play at times. It was certainly not a film for Wayne fans, and it did not appear on Variety’s 1983 list of All-Time Western Champs.
Hatari hit the screens in May, and despite lukewarm reviews, the public ate it up. It had Wayne, it had color, it had excitement, it had comedy, it had wild animals, it had everything but a plot, and the public didn’t care about that. Today the film seems too long at 157
minutes but is still worth watching for its tremendously exciting action scenes, and for its Waynesque humor. It’s also fun watching for the occasional ad-lib that makes you realize everyone involved was having fun. The film also produced an enduring little piece of music called “The Baby Elephant Walk” by the film’s composer, Henry Mancini.
In October 1962, The Longest Day opened and saved Fox from 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 242
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bankruptcy after it lost millions making Cleopatra. Although only one of many stars—others included Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Sean Connery, Kenneth More, Jeffrey Hunter, and Robert Wagner—
Wayne still managed to stand out. He had become, in the public’s perception, the epitome of the American fighting man, carrying his authority as easily as a general carries his gold stars. Despite the later success and brutal reality of Saving Private Ryan, The Longest Day remains an enthralling experience and arguably the greatest Second World War picture ever made.
How the West Was Won was also a huge success, despite the generally poor critical response when it opened in November 1962.
It was a long-running hit in every city in the world where a theatre was equipped to show Cinerama. If the film is uneven, it’s because the three directors had different styles, but it was a fabulous piece of entertainment which stands up even today as one of the most rousing horse operas filmed on an epic scale. It was such an eagerly anticipated cinematic event that in London, it broke all records for prebooked seats. In Variety’s 1983 All-Time Western Champs, How the West Was Won was placed thirteenth, and in an inflation-adjusted list, it became the fifth-most-successful Western. Although Wayne did not have a major role to play in it, his box-office popularity helped to play a part in the film’s huge success—and the film was enhanced by his brief but effective performance. The short Civil War episode was, as Peppard noted, “a trailer for what would have been the best Civil War film John Ford could have ever made, and possibly the best character performance Wayne could ever give.”
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Life Is a Circus
By 1962 Wayne’s finances were already growing steadily healthier.
Sadly, his physical state was not. He was coughing far more than was normal.