John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [183]
“I saw him just before I came over here [to England], and he said,
‘You wanna hear something funny? Back in Boston about a week after the operation I said to Michael and Patrick, ‘I forgot to tell you, but you know what I dreamed the other day? I dreamed that Andrew was here.’
“I’d hate to think that The Shootist was his last film. But give him time to get his strength back and put on a little more weight.”
I told Andy that I desperately wanted to have the chance of seeing Duke again. “I’d hate it if anything happened to him and I was never able to accept his invitation to come and visit him.”
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I don’t know if Andy was just trying to cheer me up or himself and Mary, but he said, “Don’t worry about him. He’s really indestructible.”
Mary was closer to the mark when she said, “He has a really strong will to live.”
He needed that strong will because, while I and Andy would have liked to believe that Wayne really was indestructible, by Christmas 1978, Duke was experiencing excruciating pains in his stomach. He described the pain as feeling like jagged glass had been raked across his stomach. On 10 January 1979, he was admitted to the UCLA Medical Center and two days later underwent exploratory surgery.
He had cancer of the stomach. His entire stomach was removed in a nine-hour operation.
“It was just devastating news,” said Claire Trevor. “It was bad enough for his friends, but what must his children have been going through?”
Although Wayne had survived, he had little to look forward to in however much life he had left. He had always loved to eat, but could now only eat minute amounts of bland food which went straight from the esophagus into the intestine. He loved to drink, but he could never again drink alcohol. His final months of life were spent in torment which was manifest by constant bouts of bad temper. And yet, he wasn’t strong enough to really blow his top the way he had characteristically done so many times.
Loretta Young told me, “I thanked God with all my heart when I heard that Duke had survived the surgery. How else can you explain it? Duke told me that he had faith in God, and I believe God rewarded him.”
When I questioned why God would have allowed Duke to survive cancer only to live in painful misery until his death, Loretta Young said, “All Duke wanted to do was to be able to be at the Academy Awards show that year.”
If Loretta Young was right, then God had blessed John Wayne because on 9 April 1979, Johnny Carson introduced John Wayne on stage at the Oscars ceremony at the Los Angeles Music Center. I remember watching the show on television and, when I saw Wayne, 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 345
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I was moved, I was shaken, and I was elated. He looked unbelievably thin, and I didn’t know it then, but he was in incredible pain. That morning he had undergone his daily dose of radiation treatment, so he began the day feeling sick.
When he turned up at the Music Center for rehearsal, he was told they would do his segment immediately so he wouldn’t have to wait around. Being treated like an invalid only made him mad. But, having rehearsed his entrance and the speech he would give, he retired to a nearby hotel where he took a nap but was unable to eat anything.
His makeup man, Dave Grayson, arrived early that evening to put some realistic color into his face. His body was so emaciated, he wore a wet suit under his tuxedo to fill him out—and still he looked painfully thin.
Then it was time for him to come on stage to announce the Best Film of 1978. As he walked out, the audience gave him a truly loving standing ovation. He found it difficult to stand for any period of time but, when the applause finally died down, he said, trying to hold back the tears, “That’s just about the only medicine a fella’d ever really need. Believe me when I tell you that I’m mighty pleased that