John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [20]
Having been chastised, Wayne was put to better use in the 1931
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Western The Range Feud, second-billed to star Buck Jones. But in his next picture, Maker of Men, Wayne was way down in the cast list as a college football player.
Wayne made two more films at Columbia in 1932, both of them Tim McCoy Westerns, Texas Cyclone and Two-Fisted Law. By the time the latter film was on release, Wayne was out of work again.
“Cohn dropped me as soon as he could, and he began putting the word about Hollywood that I was a rebel and a drunkard. Well, maybe I was a bit of both from time to time. But I never got drunk when I was working. For a whole year nobody in Hollywood would touch me because of that bastard Cohn, and that’s why I’ve never worked at Columbia. Never have, never will.
“For a while I thought about giving up acting altogether and take up prizefighting, which I was really too old for by then. I also considered going back to the University of Southern California to finish my law degree.” He knew that going back to college would have put his plan to marry Josephine on hold for even longer.
At last he was offered a small part at Paramount in Lady and Gent in 1932, a film about prizefighting in which Wayne had a major supporting role as a fighter. Then Warner Bros., one of Hollywood’s biggest studios, gave him a contract to star in six Westerns, with the freedom to work elsewhere, and a fee of $1,500 a picture.
In quick succession he made the first three, Ride Him, Cowboy; The Big Stampede; and Haunted Gold, and in every one John Wayne was top-billed. But they were all B pictures which ran for less than an hour, which meant that Wayne was merely a B actor. Of them, he says, “Those films offered me regular work and an opportunity to learn my craft.” He played different characters but they were all called John—only the surname altered from film to film—and he rode “Duke, the Miracle Horse.”
All the Warner Bros. Westerns were produced by Leon Schlesinger who later became better known as the producer of the early “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies” cartoons made by Warner Bros. “I later thought Leon’s cartoons were better than the horse operas he put me in,” said Wayne. “Those Westerns I made at Warner Bros.
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HAPPY TRAILS, UNHAPPY WEDLOCK
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Maynard films. So I had to dress up to look like Ken Maynard because a lot of the old footage they inserted had shots of Maynard in the distance. I really hated that.”
In just two years since The Big Trail, Duke had improved considerably as an actor and was making efforts to develop his own style. In its review of The Big Stampede, the Motion Picture Herald said, “John Wayne’s drawl and deliberate style of movement are fitted to effect a likable picture, made-to-order for theatres that draw upon folk from and near the so-called open spaces.”
By now Wayne had an agent, Al Kingston, who was approached by Nat Levine, head of Mascot Pictures, one of Hollywood’s so-called “Poverty Row” studios which churned out cheap action pictures, to offer Wayne the starring role in three serials, Shadow of the Eagle, The Hurricane Express, and The Three Musketeers. As Warner Bros. were not yet ready to shoot the remaining three John Wayne Westerns, Kingston made a deal with Levine, with Wayne earning $100 a week, half of what he had been paid at Columbia and Warners.
One of the greatest assets Mascot had was Yakima Canutt. He was not only one of the best stuntmen in the business, but he was an adequate actor when it came to playing heavies.