John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [166]
“Oh Jesus, I know I’m on borrowed time.” I could see his eyes welling up, and it was impossible not to feel his tremendous grief—
his grief for his lost years, and for the loss of his beloved Coach.
21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 311
DIRTY DUKE
311
He saw my tears, and it was enough to force him to suddenly perk up and say, “Tell me again why you liked The Alamo.” So I did, and he seemed happy again. (I know there will be some hard-nosed cynics who will read Wayne’s response to my admiration of his film as someone enjoying sycophantic praise, but Wayne never liked or approved of sycophancy. As Linda Cristal told me, “He loved The Alamo like a man loves a woman, and so your admiration for The Alamo was like a respected admiration for a woman he loved. It pleased him in a sincere way. He didn’t wallow in praise. But it delighted him that his work—his labor of love—touched you in the way he wanted it to touch everybody.”)
In January 1974, John Wayne rode into Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on a tank. He had received a letter from the president of the Harvard Lampoon calling him “the biggest fraud in history” and challenging him to face sixteen hundred students from Harvard University, a campus which was “the most traditionally radical, in short, the most hostile territory on earth.”
“It was too irresistible to turn down,” Wayne remembered. “I knew they were prepared to give me a hard time, so I rode into town on a tank hoping none of the eggs being thrown by some two thousand people would actually hit me in the kisser. Then I took the stage at the Harvard Square Theatre and they were really ready to let me have it.”
It’s an event much written about by now, but it’s worth highlighting just some of the moments because, as Duke told me, none of his answers were scripted. “There was no way to prepare for it because I had no idea what questions those students would try and knock me down with.” Not only were his answers quick-witted, but his ability to laugh at himself won the admiration of sixteen hundred students who had thought John Wayne was just a Hollywood relic with no brains and a political belief that had nothing in common with students of 1974.
“Where did you get that phony hair?” he was asked.
He replied, “It’s not phony. It’s real hair. Of course, it’s not mine, but it’s real.”
“Is it true that your horse filed for separation papers?”
21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 312
312
JOHN WAYNE
“He was a little upset when we didn’t use him in the last picture.”
“What did you use?”
“Three good-looking women.”
“Can you do an Ed Sullivan imitation?”
“I’m having a hard enough time imitating people who are imitating me.”
“Has President Nixon ever given you any suggestions for your movies?”
“No, they’ve all been successful.”
“What have you done with the Watergate tapes?”
“If anybody is taping this show, I hope it’s a Democrat, because the Republicans sure will lose it.”
“Do you look at yourself as the fulfillment of the American dream?”
“I don’t look at myself more than I have to, friend.”
At the end of the debate, sixteen hundred students wildly applauded Wayne, and they awarded him with the Brass Balls Award in recognition of “outstanding machismo and a penchant for punching people in the mouth.”
“I got a great kick out of it,” Wayne told me. “It was good for all those kids to have the chance to let off steam. When I was a kid we used to tear things apart on Halloween and blow ourselves up on the Fourth of July. I thought those students should have the same kind of opportunity, but maybe they didn’t expect me to explode in their faces. They loved it, though. So did I.”
Wayne stayed over in Boston for a few days and then flew to London. My hometown. The Duke was coming to town.
When I heard that John Wayne was coming to London,