John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [163]
Wayne was restless. As Ben Johnson noted, “He felt out of place in modern society. He’d not changed his ideas on life, and he didn’t like the way films were growing up. Of course, he didn’t see them as
‘growing up.’ He saw modern films as being morally repugnant. But, hell, the American public had watched the Vietnam War on their TVs and there was no going back to the kind of illusions of the old days of cinema. If people couldn’t believe a film was being realistic, they didn’t go. Even I know that. I did The Last Picture Show, and I got myself an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. I said to Wayne,
‘Duke, what do you think of that? I never ever thought I was an actor.’ He said, ‘I’m delighted for you, Ben. You’re a really fine actor and you don’t like to admit it. But what kind of movies are 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 305
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these people making?’ I said, ‘Duke, there’s nothing wrong with the movie. You just won’t stop living in the past. Life isn’t a John Ford picture.’ He said, ‘You’re right, but I can’t help feeling lost.’ I felt sorry for Duke. Very sad. It seemed to me he had become lonely.
Things were bad between him and Pilar, although they were trying to keep their marriage problems out of the public eye. But everyone who knew them also knew it was over between them. Very sad indeed.”
If Wayne was sad, he picked himself up, dusted himself off, and climbed back on his horse in early 1972 to star in Batjac’s The Train Robbers. It was Burt Kennedy’s second film with Wayne, and it would also be their last together.
“I wrote the script for The Train Robbers and I knew that Wayne would be right for the starring role,” said Kennedy. “But maybe I should have taken the script somewhere else because I had to use some actors I didn’t want, and I won’t offend them by mentioning their names. But they hurt the picture.”
The principals in the cast, apart from Wayne, were Ann-Margret, Rod Taylor, Ben Johnson, Bobby Vinton, and Christopher George.
Ann-Margret gave a fine performance as the woman who hires Wayne, Taylor, and Johnson to recover gold which she claims her husband stole and which she wants to use to educate her daughter.
The trio manage to get the gold and gallantly forgo their fee, only to discover they have been conned by Ann-Margret, who has no husband, has no daughter, but now has all the gold.
Rod Taylor was a friend of Wayne’s, but this was their first chance to work together. Christopher George, now a regular in Wayne’s films, gave his usual quality performance, as did Ben Johnson. Perhaps Kennedy was referring to Bobby Vinton, who was forgettable, and he may have also disapproved of Rod Taylor, who was also unmemorable. But the whole film is unmemorable. And it was a financial disaster, failing even to make it onto Variety’ s 1983
list of All-Time Western Champs.
This was followed by Wayne’s worst film since The Conqueror, Cahill, United States Marshal, filmed in Durango late in 1972.
Andrew McLaglen directed from a script that was different from the traditional Wayne Western, but it was not well written. It told the 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 306
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story of a marshal (Wayne, course) who neglects his sons, played by Gary Grimes, who’d just had a hit with Summer of ’42, and Clay O’Brien, who was one of The Cowboys. The two youngsters are lured into a life of crime by an outlaw played with scene-chewing relish by George Kennedy. And so Wayne, aided by his Indian friend played by Neville Brand, goes after Kennedy and his boys.
“We rushed that picture, and it shows,” Wayne told me. “We should have had a better script. I thought it had a different approach; the story of a man who