John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [24]
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HAPPY TRAILS, UNHAPPY WEDLOCK
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“There was quite a gathering of spectators, and Wayne called to them, saying, ‘Folks, when you see this picture, remember that it’s not John Wayne whipping that horse!’
“I said, ‘Yes, folks, and when you see the picture, remember that it’s not John Wayne doing the dangerous stunt either.’ ”
There was a formula for all the Monogram Lone Star Westerns which was summed up in a review in the Motion Picture Herald for the 1934 Blue Steel: “The active and athletic John Wayne, star of Monogram’s Lone Star Westerns, disports himself with his accus-tomed knock-down-and-drag-out ease, on and off his handsome white horse, as once again he does battle with the villains of the western mountains. A fast, active Western motion picture. Of Wayne’s popularity there can be little question, and a certain quota of Western fans can be relied upon to respond to the call of the Wayne name on the theatre marquee.”
The same trade journal noted in its review of 1935 for The Lawless Frontier, “A formula Western, this appears acceptable material in the regular-run theatre for the weekend action position. In the lead is John Wayne, screen cowboy with considerable popularity among the Western action fans.”
That popularity was making good money for the studio and gave Wayne the muscle to ask—and get—a new contract and a bigger salary. The work was exhausting and Wayne felt he deserved as much money as he could get. He said, “I became more and more interested in learning the whole business of making pictures. I wanted to really learn my profession, but it wasn’t easy making those cheap Westerns. I went in and out of each one so quickly that I didn’t even know their titles. To play a cowboy you needed a good hat, a good pair of boots, and you had to be able to ride a horse. But I wanted to learn more than that.
“One of the most satisfying things about that time was the camaraderie of the cowboys who worked on those films. They were real cowboys, not actors. They’d been forced off the range by the depression and had migrated to Hollywood looking for work in pictures. The last of the big cattle drives were over. These cowboys were the last. Working in pictures together, they found some kind of solace in just being with each other. I liked being with them, and 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 42
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JOHN WAYNE
really respected them. I listened to their stories and kind of absorbed their culture.
“In the evenings, I spent my time with them playing poker. There was always somebody who’d bring along a guitar or a banjo, and we’d all sit around the fire singing with the stars shining bright above us. Great times.”
Canutt also remembered those times. He said, “Wayne really thrived on working with the cowboys. He never pretended he was a real cowboy, just a screen cowboy, but he picked up on what those men were like, and he’d find ways of bringing those things out in his pictures. That’s partly why Wayne was so realistic as a cowboy.
“I felt that John identified with the cowboys because they just weren’t comfortable with the idea of home life, and John was feeling that way too. He hadn’t been married long, but he had trouble relating to women. He was inclined to put them on a pedestal. The cowboy needed to be free to roam and be with his own kind. Josephine was a wonderful woman who was kind and gentle, but from what I could see, she didn’t respect John’s profession and she gave him hell over it sometimes. John wanted to work, and work well, and he buried himself in his work. He found the emotional support he needed among the cowboys.
“He liked the stuntmen too. We did a film called ’Neath the Arizona Skies. I was the villain as usual. You know, Wayne could do a better fight scene in those days than many of the stuntmen, so we worked together