John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [162]
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had deplored the violence of Straw Dogs, wrote, “The violence is not lingered on or exploited the way the despicable Straw Dogs did. It remains an initiation rite, not an evisceration ceremony.”
I was working for Cinerama at the time, and the reason for the film’s initial failure was obvious to me. Warner Bros. had gone overboard in its publicity campaign by promoting Wayne’s death scene, with pictures of him dying all over the newspapers. It removed all the shock and emotional value the film had.
The film also suffered in the West End because it had been given an AA censor’s certificate which meant nobody under the age of fourteen could see it. The managing director of Cinerama asked the censor what could be done to make the film available to all ages, and to everyone’s surprise, the censor said that if the scene with the wagon full of prostitutes was cut, they would make the film an A certificate, which meant children could see the film if accompanied by an adult. The violence of the final fifteen minutes when the cowboys kill off Bruce Dern’s entire gang was left intact. So Warner Bros. agreed to cut the scene, and it went on general release throughout the U.K. in its censored version which meant Colleen Dewhurst’s wonderful but brief performance was not seen.
Fortunately, the cut version no longer exists, and the film remains one of Wayne’s best, featuring a strong performance superior to his Oscar-winning role in True Grit. And it didn’t do too badly at the box office after all, taking almost $8 million in America and at least that much in the rest of the world, putting it alongside Big Jake as joint number twenty-six in Variety’s 1983 list of All-Time Western Champs. But, with age catching up on him, and with little quality material on offer, The Cowboys looked like it might be Duke’s last roundup.
“You don’t often find material of the quality of The Cowboys which is also suitable for a man of my years,” Wayne said. “It did good enough business for Warner Bros. to commission a TV series.
The only problem was, there was nowhere for the story to go with this bunch of boys running a ranch. Someone at Warner Bros. said to me, ‘Couldn’t we find a way of bringing you back, maybe as your own twin brother.’ I said, ‘Have you thought about looking for a new line of work because you sure as hell don’t know anything about this 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 304
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business.’ I was so mad at the really lousy idea I’d just heard, I forgot to say, ‘I don’t do television.’ ”
Perhaps Wayne should have considered television. James Stewart found it gave him a new lease on life when he did a series called Hawkins in 1973. He said, “It was kind of based on the lawyer I played in Anatomy of a Murder. We did a pilot and then when that turned out well, we did a season. But I wasn’t happy with the way the network [CBS] treated it by postponing episodes for weeks on end so I decided not to do any more. But I told Duke he ought to consider it. Henry [Fonda] had also done well—better than I did—with a series called The Deputy.”
Fonda recalled urging Wayne to try TV: “I said, ‘Duke, I wish I’d waited until I was a little older before I did The Deputy, because my movie career wasn’t floundering back then [in 1960], but I think it would be good for you now because you could become the biggest star on television.’ And he said, ‘I don’t want to be the biggest star on television. I’d rather be the biggest star in the movies.’ And I said,
‘Duke, you are the biggest star in movies. But give yourself a break and enjoy the luxury of throwing your weight