John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [157]
William Wolf in Cue wrote, “When the John Wayne retro-spectives are in full swing, this will loom as one of his finest movie triumphs.”
Variety said, “[Wayne] towers over everything in the film—
actors, script, even the magnificent Colorado mountains. He rides tall in the saddle as the ‘fat old man.’ ”
Never daring to mention this to Wayne, I thought his performance was over the top and hammy. Wayne gave superb performances in Red River and The Searchers, and would give at least two more great performances. Acting is a craft that is at its best when it cannot be noticed. But as Rooster Cogburn, John Wayne was seen to be acting his heart out.
Of Cogburn, he said, “That was me letting myself have fun. For the first time, I felt like an actor.”
But the problem was that he was trying too hard—and it showed.
Screen acting is a craft that requires a realistic approach, unlike stage acting which requires a more grand technique. Suddenly, Wayne was being theatrical, and it seemed false from a man who claimed, “I just try to be sincere. I’ve been selling sincerity all my life.”
To my surprise, Henry Hathaway agreed with me. He said, “I knew Duke was going over the top, but I let him do it because it was a whole different color to any other part he’d played. I thought that he was a pure caricature and not even one of himself, even though some critics said he was a caricature of himself. I thought, Critics are so goddamn arrogant and think they know it all, they’re gonna say, 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 294
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‘Good God, Wayne can act.’ It was all performance and no realism.
But that’s okay. That makes the film unique. I wasn’t surprised Wayne got nominated for an Oscar for True Grit.”
I was surprised that Wayne was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor of 1969 for his role in True Grit, especially as he had given superior performances in Red River and The Searchers, and had not been nominated for either of them. Also in competition for the Best Actor Award of 1969 was Peter O’Toole as Henry II in The Lion in Winter (my choice of best performance of 1969), Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy, Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, and Richard Burton in Anne of the Thousand Days.
Wayne was elated to discover he was nominated while making his next Andy McLaglen Western, Chisum, back up in Durango in 1969. True Grit was, by then, still doing well, earning just over $14
million domestically, making it Wayne’s biggest-grossing film at tenth position, where it would stay for many years. An inflation-adjusted account in 1983, which gave a more realistic indication of success, still put True Grit high in the list, at number fourteen, not far below The Alamo at number ten and Red River at number eleven, which were to remain Wayne’s most successful films (unless you count How the West Was Won which came in at number five).
Chisum was supposedly based on the bloody Lincoln County cattle war circa 1878. Wayne was John Chisum, apparently a real character, but the film seemed to have little to do with him and more to do with Billy the Kid, played by Geoffrey Deuel, and Pat Garrett, played by Glenn Corbett. A number of regulars were in the film, including Ben Johnson, John Agar, and, from El Dorado, Christopher George.
Ben Johnson and John Agar had been working with Wayne since the John Ford heydays. Johnson was quick to admit, “By the time we were doing those films with Andy [McLaglen], it was all pretty much the same film. The only thing that changed was Duke’s weight, which went up and down. I was just happy to be working, but by the time the film was released [in 1970] it was competing with Westerns from Italy and the pictures Clint Eastwood was making in Hollywood. I think if there’d been no True Grit, there might not have 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 295
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