John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [27]
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or, at least, gutter-oriented drunkard. Our slogan was ‘Jews but no dues,’ and we elected the steam-room attendant, Buck Buchanan, described in our charter as ‘the distinguished Afro-American,’ as our president. I tell ya, we had some fun.”
Despite Wayne’s reconciliation with Ford, the director made no effort to further Wayne’s career, and Duke continued making B
Westerns. In his hotel suite in London (where he had come to perform Clarence Darrow in 1976) Henry Fonda told me, “There’s no doubt in my mind that Ford could have helped Duke anytime he wanted. But he didn’t. He let him suffer in those B Westerns for years. I liked Ford an awful lot at the start, but our friendship went kind of sour and I knew that he could be real mean. He wanted power over the people who worked for him. That’s why he kept the same family of actors and crew on every picture, and if you broke any of his rules, you didn’t work for him again, or for a long time. Duke had broken some rule by making The Big Trail and Ford finally forgave him, but he didn’t give Duke a good part in one of his films for years.
He could have done it anytime, and I call that mean-spirited.”
Although a number of people were of the opinion that Ford treated Wayne badly, Wayne never said an unkind word about the Coach. His loyalty to Ford was extraordinary. Next to Ford, Wayne’s best friends were Ward Bond, Grant Withers, Paul Fix, and Yakima Canutt. “I was probably closer to Yak in those days because we worked daily together on those cheap Lone Star Westerns,” said Duke.
Canutt admitted that he found it difficult to distinguish one film from another. But he had good reason to remember one particular picture in 1935 called Paradise Canyon. He recalled, “I played a character called Curly, which was kind of ironic because I had, by then, developed a bald spot. Wayne and I had a fight scene, and it was really a tough scene.
“During this fight scene, I had to flip John’s character over my head, so for this I doubled him, and another stuntman doubled me. I ended up crashing through a table and sitting on the floor with my back to the camera. When they ran the picture the bald spot was very noticeable, and I got a real chewing out from John and from Paul Malvern, who was the producer. We couldn’t afford to reshoot it, so it went out as it was.
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“Well, John, who still had all his hair then, didn’t let up about my bald spot, so I decided to get my own back and I got a lady in New York to write a fan to me, and when it arrived, I got Malvern and John together, and I read them the letter which said, ‘Dear Mr.
Canutt, I saw Paradise Canyon with you and John Wayne. It was a good picture and you did some fine work. But why doesn’t the producer find you a younger man than John Wayne who must be getting old because I noticed that he is getting a bald spot.’
“John looked at the letter and at the postmark on the envelope and saw that it was authentic, but I think he guessed it was a setup, and he said to me, ‘Yak, you’re gonna have to watch that damn bald spot if you’re gonna double me.’
“He got his own back on the next picture where John is fighting me and some others in a saloon. He knocks down one of the guys, and then I swing at him, and he steps to one side and knocks me through the glass of the front window. It’s all being shot in one take, and I have to tumble onto the sidewalk, get up, and run for my horse.
Suddenly John leaps through the broken window, over the hitch rail, and makes a flying football tackle on me. I tell you, I’ve never been turned over so many times so fast. He got up and said, ‘That’s for the letter from your “fan” in New York!’ He’d paid me back.”
Working with Canutt taught Wayne a great deal about acting.
Wayne was often quoted as saying, “I learned to react, not to act.”
But he told me, “I never said that. What I may have said was—and this is what I believe about acting—is that you can’t just stand there and act when you’ve got your