John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [25]
“There was a scene in that film where I make a getaway on one of those little motored handcars that railroads used when making repairs to the tracks. But I was also supposed to double John when his character makes a flying mount on his horse and races over the hill to intercept me. The script called for his character, which I would be playing as the stunt double, to gallop alongside the handcar and leap from the horse onto the car and then we’d fight while it was tearing along. For me it was pretty routine, but for anyone who wasn’t a stuntman it was dangerous.
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“When we were setting the scene up, the producer Paul Malvern realized they didn’t have another stuntman to double me in my part while I doubled John, and the director Harry Fraser was trying to figure out how we were going to do it. We had some cowboys on the set but none of them were big enough to double either John or me.
Suddenly I noticed John giving me a cheeky look and I knew what he was thinking. I said, ‘Which one are you gonna do?’ and he said,
‘Give me your wardrobe.’
“So I doubled John and John doubled me, and we did the fight on the car, and then we changed costumes so Fraser could get the close-ups of us. We stayed in our own costumes as John knocked me off the car and then he leaped onto me and we carried on the fight until he won, which he always did! So he was a great stuntman, but often the producer didn’t want his star getting hurt, so often I doubled John and another stuntman doubled me.
“In another film, which I forget the title of—they were all alike—I was going to double John as he rode fast down a hill and toward the camera and out of shot in close-up. But the cameraman said that if I rode into close-up they would see it wasn’t John, so John said he’d do it, and they let him. I told him to bring the horse over the top of the hill at speed, but to be sure he checked the horse just before hitting the bottom of the hill where the ground leveled off.
“John came over that hill really fast and raced down the steep slope, but he didn’t check the horse—that is, he didn’t pull the horse back up as he hit the level ground. I just held my breath as he hit the level ground because I knew that horse couldn’t collect himself. He fell and sent John flying and turning through the air and it was a really spectacular fall. He must have hurt himself, but I just hollered,
‘Get on the horse and ride out,’ and he rolled to his feet as the horse got up, and he jumped back on and rode out past the camera. It was a sensational shot and they used it in the picture. As John got off the horse, he said, ‘I heard you holler “get on him and ride out,” and that I did.’
“I said, ‘You sure did, and you’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself.’ ”
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was relax with a few drinks and put his feet up. Josephine, however, had always enjoyed a good social life and she often told Duke as he walked in through the door that they were expected at Loretta Young’s for dinner that evening, or at some church function she was involved with. Many times she had to attend those functions on her own as Wayne was often away on location.
“I have to admit,” said Wayne, “that my marriage to Josephine, who was a really fine woman, and still is, just didn’t have a solid foundation from the start. By the time we married, I felt that the romance had gone out of our lives and we saw each other more out of habit. She was very strong in her Catholic faith, but I grew more opposed to the idea of any kind of organized religion. And while I worked hard to strive for something better in my profession, Josephine just became more impatient.”
Nevertheless, in 1934, their first child, Michael, was born. His arrival did little