• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

George Kennedy, whom I talked to by telephone in 1979, said, “I had a good role and I wouldn’t complain about anything except that the film didn’t do well. Very often the bad guys are the best parts, and even Duke said to me, ‘You got the better role.’ He really had nothing much to do in the film. The stars were really the boys, but the writing wasn’t good enough to make anyone care too much about them.”

When I interviewed Neville Brand in London in 1980, he recalled,

“I usually only got to play heavies or the comedy roles. I never got to play heroes, and there I was being John Wayne’s sidekick—and an Indian sidekick at that. But Duke wanted to show that he wasn’t always trying to kill the Indians. He said people were always criticizing him for killing Indians, but he actually rarely ever did. He said, ‘I killed far more white men than Indians. I like to have the opportunity to show the nobility of the Red Man.’ So I was there representing the nobility of the Red Man, and I said, ‘Duke, why didn’t you get a real Indian to play the role?’ and he said,

‘I could have done that and I would have done that, but if I did, Warner Bros. would have only said, ‘We need a known name if you want any money from us.’ So, no offense, Neville, but I needed your name more than I needed a real Indian.’ I said, ‘Fine by me. I like working.’ ”

Wayne had another reason for not enjoying making Cahill. “We were shooting Cahill when I got word that the Coach was dying . . .

of the fucking cancer. I went to see him one last time at his home in Palm Springs. He looked just . . . awful. I had to get back to Durango to finish the film which I really had no stomach for anymore.”

21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 307

LAST ROUNDUP

307

Following the disaster and the disappointment of Cahill, Wayne realized he had to change with the times, whether he liked it or not.

All his career, the Western had been a staple diet of moviegoers. But it was no longer the case. Clint Eastwood had helped to revitalize the Western during the 1960s with his Italian Westerns, but now he was creating a whole new genre, one in which he would play a cop who broke all the rules because he believed more in the victim’s rights than the perpetrator’s. The first of these films was Dirty Harry, and it was a phenomenal success, spawning four sequels.

Thanks to Dirty Harry, the fight between good and bad in the modern big city replaced the fight between good and bad in the wilds of the old West.

So Wayne decided to play a cop in McQ.

21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 308

27

Dirty Duke

In McQ, Wayne played a watered-down version of Dirty Harry. As he told me, “I thought I could be Dirty Duke. After all, I chose to do it because I turned down Dirty Harry. I turned it down for what seemed to me to be three very good reasons. The first is that they offered it to Frank Sinatra first, but he’d hurt his hand and couldn’t do it. I don’t like being offered Sinatra’s rejections. Put that one down to pride. The second reason is that I thought Harry was a rogue cop. Put that down to narrow-mindedness because when I saw the picture I realized that Harry was the kind of part I’d played often enough; a guy who lives within the law but breaks the rules when he really has to in order to save others. The third reason is that I was too busy making other pictures.”

Dirty Harry was directed by Don Siegel (who would also direct Wayne’s final film, The Shootist). When I interviewed Siegel in 1979 at Pinewood Studios, where he was preparing to shoot Rough Cut, he told me, “Wayne couldn’t have played Harry. He was just too old. And he would have objected to many of the things that Clint would do, because Clint was never bothered by image. Wayne was.

He was too old to play McQ, which was a poor copy of Dirty Harry.”

308

21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 309

DIRTY DUKE

309

McQ tells of a tough detective whose friend, also a cop, kills himself. McQ wants to find out why and uncovers corruption within the police force.

John