John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [181]
Such was the praise heaped upon it that Paramount may have thought they had a blockbuster on their hands. It’s a shame that nobody thought to put forward Wayne or Siegel or even the film itself for Oscar nominations as it might have made all the difference to its performance at the box office which was, to say the least, surprisingly disappointing. Its domestic earnings of a mere $5.9 million were, in 1976, so low that it failed to make it into the 1983 inflation-adjusted list of Variety’s All-Time Western Champs.
My feeling, as a film journalist at the time (I never considered myself a true critic), was that there was a distinct lack of publicity surrounding the film, due, perhaps, to a perception by Paramount that the Western was an unpopular genre by 1976, or simply due to the failure by the distributors to realize that they had a potential classic on their hands. There was certainly no adverse publicity about Wayne’s ill health during filming, which some could have said was the cause of the film’s commercial failure. Some have suggested 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 340
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that the film failed because nobody wanted to see John Wayne die on screen, especially from cancer.
Time, fortunately, has rectified some of the damage, and The Shootist is now rightly considered a magnificent film, and one of Wayne’s finest. Only his performance in The Searchers is superior, but, nevertheless, Wayne should have been nominated as Best Actor, and because somebody goofed by not putting his name forward, he was robbed of a second and more deserving Oscar. His last film should have been recognized in 1976 as his crowning achievement.
The same is also true for Don Siegel.
It was in 1976 that I met Yakima Canutt and heard how the Hollywood Communists and Russian agents had tried to kill Wayne in the 1950s. And from Duke himself, I heard how the Chinese and Vietcong had tried to kill him in 1966. I asked Canutt if he felt the danger had now passed for Wayne.
He said, “I certainly don’t think the Communists are a threat to John anymore.” Then he added ominously, “I do reckon John’s got other battles to fight though.” Only later did I realize that Canutt was talking about Wayne’s health.
I finally asked Canutt why he always referred to Wayne as “John”
and not “Duke.” He said, “When I’m with him I call him ‘Duke,’ but when I talk about him, I never use the name ‘Duke.’ I always say
‘John’ because people know him as John Wayne.”
I said, “He told me to call him ‘Duke.’ ”
Canutt replied, “In that case, he considers you his friend. Isn’t that something—to be a friend of Duke Wayne?”
I had to admit, it was.
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The Absolute All-Time
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John Wayne took a long rest and Claire Trevor said that he seemed better than he had for a long time. She said, “Late in 1976 there was a television show called An All-Star Tribute to John Wayne which at first he was reluctant to do. But when he found out that this was the Variety Club’s way of raising funds for a new cancer wing on a children’s hospital in Miami, he agreed to do it, and he turned up with his children and he enjoyed the whole show. Frank Sinatra, who had not always been his best friend, hosted the event and sang
‘You Are the Sunshine of My Life’ to him. Maureen O’Hara sang
‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to His Face.’ I said my piece about him being my dearest friend. Jimmy Stewart read a poem. Rowan and Martin were there—it was a great show and he had a great time, and he looked better than he had in years.”
Ava Gardner told me, “Frank and Duke had only become friends in recent years, and when Frank was asked if he would host the tribute to Duke, he said, ‘Just try asking someone else to do it.’
That’s how much Francis had come to think of Duke.”
Claire Trevor said she felt Wayne was looking healthier because
“he wasn’t rushing headlong into another