John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [159]
Hawks even blamed Wayne for some of Rio Lobo’s faults: “Wayne is getting too old to be worth a million dollars. He had a hard time making Rio Lobo just getting on and off his horse because 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 297
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he’s . . . well, he can’t move like a big cat anymore, and he has to hold his belly in. He’s not the same person. He called me and said he wanted to make a movie with me because every picture he’d been doing was lousy. I told him I didn’t have a good story. He said he had one. He said, ‘I’d play an old gunfighter, and as he walks down the street, some guy calls him out and he tries to find his glasses because he needs them to see long distances now and he can’t see the guy clearly. And then a girl runs up and gives him some glass and he shoots the guy.’ I said, ‘Duke, you’ve stood for something all your life, and now you want to throw it away for something like this? My God, Duke, it’s pitiful. You can’t play gunfighters at your age anymore.’ He said, ‘What about True Grit?’ I said, ‘That was an exaggerated thing, and it got by because the director didn’t know whether he was making a comedy or a drama.’ Nobody wants to see Wayne as an old gunfighter.”
As this conversation took place in 1974, I wasn’t able to say to Hawks that Wayne’s last two films ever would not only see him revive the role of one-eyed, fat, old Rooster Cogburn to moderately commercial acclaim, and that he would give one of his best performances as the aging gunfighter in The Shootist. We did, however, get into a serious disagreement when I said that Wayne had done fine work playing his own age in the two films that followed Rio Lobo—
Big Jake and The Cowboys.
Hawks retorted, “The Cowboys was awful and Big Jake . . . Well, it was okay but I could have done it better.”
I had one last question for Hawks: “What did you think of The Alamo?” His answer was short: “Bad!”
Rio Lobo only managed just over $4 million domestically.
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Last Roundup
When Rio Lobo was finished, Wayne returned home to shattering news: his eighty-one-year-old mother was very ill, and his brother Bobby was now dying of lung cancer. He lost both his mother and brother within a short span of time. Relations between Duke and Pilar had not improved, belying the appearance of the happy couple they had presented at the Oscar ceremony.
Wayne spent some time away from home, returning to Arizona where he had acquired a twenty-six-bar ranch which was proving to be one of his more successful business ventures. He also owned a farm near Stranfield in Arizona, growing cotton and grain.
The vision of John Wayne as a real-life rancher was appropriate.
Although, he said, “I still hate riding horses. I go by truck everywhere if I can. I wish I’d had that ranch earlier in life. I love it out there. It’s kind of a regret for me that I didn’t start having success in business outside the picture business until recently.”
His success in business had only come about since he sacked his son-in-law Don LaCava. He now owned oil wells, hotels, and apartment buildings, and he had investments in numerous other ventures. Yet still he wasn’t satisfied with the money he was making.
He told me, “I’m damn near seventy and I don’t know how long I can 298
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keep working as an actor. I don’t need much more money for myself, but I have a family of young people and children to think about.
When I’m gone, which God willing won’t be before I finish this film
[ Brannigan], I want to be sure my family have all they need. Not that I think they won’t be able to fend for themselves. But I feel I owe it to them all to give them plenty of money. You see, I’ve been broke, and I’ve been rich, and while being rich won’t give you everything in life, it sure as hell gives you an advantage. I want my kids to have that advantage.”
In October 1970,