John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [131]
Two weeks after finishing Donovan’s Reef in October, Wayne went to Arizona to make McLintock! And this time he made sure he had Maureen O’Hara as his leading lady.
This film was John Wayne’s very own movie, made by Batjac for release by United Artists. Batjac had become more of a family business than ever before. Duke’s son-in-law, Don LaCava, was working at the Batjac office, having taken over the management of Wayne’s business investments. Michael had taken on the basic running of the company, and Duke’s brother Bobby was kept on the payroll with various jobs on the production side.
The film lacked any solid story, with Wayne as McLintock negotiating on behalf of the Indians. But that subject took up only a small portion of the film. The rest was largely devoted to a series of episodes between Wayne and O’Hara in a thin plot that borrowed from both The Taming of the Shrew and The Quiet Man. But plot didn’t matter. The film was fun for all concerned to make, and fun for audiences to watch.
William Clothier told me, “That was a lot of fun to work on. It was like working on a Ford film only without Ford—until Ford showed up like he did on The Alamo. Andy McLaglen was directing, and doing a fine job; we had a funny script by Jimmy Grant; John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara were having a ball working with each other. Patrick [Wayne] had a good supporting role.
Michael was producing. We had Yvonne de Carlo in a part specially written for her as a favor by Duke because her husband 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 246
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was stuntman Bob Morgan who’d lost a leg on How the West Was Won; and there was Chill Wills and Bruce Cabot, and even Duke’s old friend from college, Bob Steele, had a small role—it was like a Ford-family film. Maybe that’s why he decided to turn up.
Maybe he felt left out. He pushed Andy out of the way, walked up to me, and said, ‘Okay Bill, let’s go to work.’
“This was Duke’s production, and this time he wasn’t going to let Ford take over. Besides, I think Andy had a tough enough time having to cope with Duke trying to direct the film, let alone Ford. I think Andy was happy to let Duke devise the fight scenes because he did them as well as any stuntman.”
The most memorable fight scene takes place in a mud hole.
Wayne recalled, “The stuntmen started complaining that they wanted extra hazard pay to do the scene. I stood at the top of the hill with Maureen and said to the stunt guys, ‘You white-livered chickenshits, it’s as dangerous as diving into a swimming pool. Maureen and I will show you, won’t we, Maureen?’ Maureen looked like I’d just told her to jump off Niagara Falls and she said to Chuck Roberson, ‘Why, that old bastard wants me to slide down that hill and into that mud pool. If you say it’s safe, I’ll do it, but not because that old bastard says I must.’ And Chuck told her it was safe and that all she had to do was slide down on her ass and keep her head up. So she told the stuntmen, ‘Duke’s right. You are a bunch of chickens,’ and with that I told everyone to get out of our way and down she went, and by God, she made that scene funny because the audience knew it was her. So, of course, that meant I had to do it, and down I went. It was a great scene. We had a lotta laughs, I tell ya.”
Maureen didn’t remember it being quite as much fun: “It took several days to film the mud-pool scene. We were filming it in November and the mud pool was so cold that each day they had to thaw the ice that formed over it. When I went down the slope and into that disgusting mess, the Indians were so thrilled they knelt down and bowed to me.”
The film was made for less than $2 million. Duke was unable to collect his contracted salary of $700,000 because it went straight to United Artists to pay off part of the debt Batjac owed for The Alamo.
A big success when it was