John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [173]
Loretta Young had her own rather blunt opinion but one which has some substance to it. She told me, “You can’t be a Christian Scientist and be married to John Wayne.”
Duke believed in God. He told me, “I have faith in a supreme being. I don’t believe in organized religion because there are too many of them and I just don’t think God could be so disorganized as to have that many churches all claiming his authority. My wives have all been Catholic, but while I don’t feel any inclination to be a Catholic myself, I can respect those traditions and beliefs.
“I respect the Mormons because they were the great pioneers, and I know John Ford respected them which is why he made Wagonmaster. The Mormons are fundamentally American, except they don’t drink coffee or alcohol, which is a bad thing in my book, and they don’t smoke, which is a good thing.
“It beats me why there are so many movements, especially in America. Our Constitution grants Americans freedom to worship how they like. But like the Communists in the fifties, there have been people who have taken advantage of our Constitution. Something like Christian Science, I just don’t understand. They won’t even drink wine and I find nothing about them that is fundamentally American. And they don’t like to be treated by doctors. I can never understand that. If one of my kids gets ill, I’m sending for the doctor and I don’t care what anyone else says.”
By “anyone else” he was obviously referring to Pilar, but I have no evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that Pilar ever refused her children medical treatment. And it can’t be ignored that Pilar still looks amazingly beautiful and healthy which is probably because of her way of life, and that Wayne’s health problems were largely a consequence of his way of life. Alcohol, especially alcohol, eating well, and smoking, at least up until he had lung cancer, were the true attributes of a man in Duke’s eyes. As Paul Fix told me, “If you didn’t drink or smoke or eat heartily, you weren’t a real man by Duke’s standards. The funny thing is, although he said he didn’t trust a man who didn’t drink, he really had a sneaking regard for some 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 326
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who were teetotal because secretly he figured that a man who didn’t need alcohol—unless he was clearly a weakling—had to be a very strong-willed character. And Duke admired that. He showed it very briefly in The Alamo, when he offers Laurence Harvey as Travis a drink, and Travis says, ‘I don’t drink.’ Wayne as Crockett looks surprised and says, ‘I’ve heard of such,’ and he goes on to show that while Crockett didn’t agree with all of Travis’s methods, he had respect for him. Travis was, after all, a very brave man. So Duke was just being bombastic when he’d say, ‘I don’t trust a man who doesn’t drink alcohol because they’re not real men.’ He was merely boosting his own image because he liked to drink. But he was not an alcoholic.
He could go for weeks without drinking. But when he did drink, he drank.”
Michael Wayne said, “He likes to drink. I’ve seen him drink a bottle of tequila before dinner, then a bottle of brandy after dinner. But he didn’t drink most of the time. If he had a weekend clear, he might drink the whole weekend. But he didn’t have to drink.”
I think the hardest thing for Wayne during his marriage breakup was trying to sustain his relationship with all his children. Claire Trevor, who was able to view the whole situation objectively, told me, “When Duke and Pilar separated, it was only really hard on Aissa, Ethan, and Marisa because Duke and Pilar were their mom and dad. For Michael and Pat and Toni and Melinda it was different. Josephine was their mother, and although they respected Pilar, I don’t think they were especially . . . fond of her. And that created a great gap between Josephine’s children and Pilar’s children, which Duke was always trying to bridge. He’d bring them all together for an occasional official photograph which made