John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [139]
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JOHN WAYNE
When I married Pilar I asked her if she was willing to give up any ideas about a career and be my wife, and she said she was.’ I told Duke, ‘People can’t see into the future. Pilar knew only that she loved you and that you loved her, and she wanted to be with you.
She didn’t know what life with John Wayne was going to be like.
Why do you think it’s been so hard on her?’ And we talked a lot about the problems they were having, but he couldn’t change his ways. I wouldn’t criticize him for that. But I hated to see them growing slowly apart.”
There was no letup in Wayne’s work schedule. He took an interest in an idea for a film Melville Shavelson had called Cast a Giant Shadow.
Shavelson told me, “I’d been trying to get this picture about the formation of modern-day Israel for a long time, but no studio wanted to back it. I told Duke I was having problems and he wanted to know what the problem was. So I told him the story, and he said, ‘An American army officer helps a little country fight for its independence.
That’s the most American story I ever heard,’ and he asked why I couldn’t get financing. So I told him that I’d been told by every studio that nobody wanted to see a movie about a Jewish general. I told him,
‘I just want to make the picture Gentile by association. If your name is attached to it, they can’t say it’s a Jewish movie anymore.’
“I wanted Wayne to agree to be in the picture as General Mike Randolph because it was a ploy. If this icon of Gentile culture would agree to be in the movie, I figured the studios would show interest.
So he read the first thirty pages of draft script, which I’d written myself because I couldn’t afford to pay another writer, and Duke said he would appear in the movie but only if I wrote the entire script.
And he said Batjac would coproduce, which gave me the muscle I needed to go to the Mirisch Brothers and get them to finance the picture.”
It was actually a little more complicated than that. Kirk Douglas explained how he became involved: “The reason I made Cast a Giant Shadow was because Wayne called me and said, ‘Listen, I’ve got this script which I think is perfect for you. If you play it, I’ll play the small part of the general.’ And he did. Wayne is an amazing institution. They don’t make that kind anymore.”
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LICKING THE BIG C
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John Wayne said that he had two reasons for going to Douglas: “I knew that the role of David Marcus was just perfect for Kirk. And I knew that if Kirk would star in the lead role, we’d have a bigger chance of getting the money to make it. But I also knew that Kirk had his own company, Bryna, and that if Bryna came in along with Batjac, we’d be able to convince Walter Mirisch to put up some money, and then we’d be able to get United Artists to back it and distribute it.
“It’s a goddamn shame sometimes that making something that is a creative process is also a matter of making deals. I don’t want to make deals, I want to make pictures, but you can’t do the one without the other.
“Once Kirk said he was in, we were able to get Frank Sinatra and Yul Brynner to be in it.
“I wanted to make it because there were people saying the United States was sending in our troops all over the world just to hurt little countries where we have no right to be. I wanted to remind people at home and abroad who we are and what we’ve done. I wanted to remind the world how we helped this little country of Israel get its independence . . . and how it was an American army officer who gave his life for it.”
Shavelson said, “Duke was so high on the Americanness of the picture that Kirk, who is of course a Jew, said to him, ‘Don’t forget that David Marcus was Jewish.’ And Duke said, ‘Jesus Christ was Jewish too, but he didn’t go to West Point.’ ”
While filming in Rome, news came through of riots between Negroes and the police in Los Angeles. Shavelson told me, “Duke said, ‘Those blacks got what they deserved.’ I was shocked. I was furious. It was the