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put him to some kind of test. However, John Carradine, best known for his horror films but who also starred with Wayne in Ford’s Stagecoach, believed the director was punishing Duke with his silence. On the creepy set of House of Long Shadows in London in 1982, Carradine stated, “Ford at his best was like a father, and at his worst he was a monster. He felt his actors and crew were his family—or rather that they belonged to him. He didn’t take it at all well when Duke Morrison was reinvented as John Wayne by a director other than himself. I think that Ford had intended to gently ease Wayne into a career, to guide him, and when Wayne accepted Walsh’s offer to star in The Big Trail, that was almost unpardonable to Ford. He didn’t like it, and he showed it by refusing to talk to Duke for some years.

This may sound disrespectful to Ford’s memory, and believe me, I could respect him as a great filmmaker, but I suffered the same fate as Duke Wayne. Before Stagecoach I’d made a few films with Ford, but after that, for some reason, he ignored me for twenty years. So I can see that Ford would have shunned John Wayne just because he let another director turn him into a star.”

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JOHN WAYNE

Even before filming on The Big Trail began, the film was generating publicity, but not the kind that was wanted. The press and trade papers heralded their doubts about Wayne’s ability based on his previous screen experiences. A reporter for Hollywood Filmograph wrote, “If he [Walsh] brings in a winner with Mr.

Wayne, he will be entitled to a Carnegie Medal.”

But Walsh had great faith in Duke and liked him enough to agree to Duke’s request that his friend Ward Bond be given a part; he played just a small role as wagon driver.

Walsh recalled, “While I was out looking for locations, Sheehan and Sol Wurtzel, another Fox executive, had figured this boy should have some help. They sent for five prominent character actors from New York and surprised me with these fellows. Well they certainly did surprise me, because when I got a look at them I realized they had never seen the sunrise or the sunset, and knew I was going to have a hell of a time with them on location.”

Screenwriters had not yet come to grips with creating intelligent dialogue for sound movies, and even though three names were credited with writing the dialogue—Jack Peabody, Marie Boyle, and Florence Postal—the script, Walsh said, “was lousy” when filming began in April 1930 outside Yuma, Arizona, where a frontier settlement had been built.

Said Walsh, “I told Duke to improvise much of his dialogue. In one of the opening scenes, Ian Keith was told to simply fire questions at Duke, who answered with whatever came to mind. His acting was instinctive, so that he became whatever and whoever he played. There is a lot of pride in the knowledge that I discovered a winner.”

From the outset, Walsh had big problems to deal with. Walsh said,

“When we got out on location, got started, and I called John, and I said, ‘John, sit beside me when I’m directing these character actors from New York and you’ll learn something from them.’ Well, these prominent actors from the New York stage turned out to be heavy drinkers. The night before, a bootlegger got to them and in the morning they were pretty well oiled up for the scene. Not only did they scare the Indians that were sitting around, they scared the hawks and the crows that were in the trees, and I said, ‘John, go over there 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 27

CALL HIM WAYNE

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and mingle with the Indians. Pay no attention to them so-called actors.’

“I thought of renaming the film The Big Drunk. Duke and Ward Bond joined in with their drinking bouts and some mornings Wayne turned up in poor shape. He came down with a bad case of diarrhea and had to spend a week in bed.”

Wayne recalled, “I was puking and crapping blood for a week, and lost eighteen pounds. I had to spend another two weeks recuperating.”

Finally Walsh ran out of patience and threatened to replace him if he didn’t pull himself together.