John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [38]
Henry Fonda, who did consider himself a liberal, recalled,
“John Ford and I would often talk politics, but Duke didn’t express his convictions. I know that he called himself a liberal but I think he was already drifting to the right, and as he loved Ford, I think he didn’t want to cross swords with him. I understand that because Jimmy [Stewart] and I fell out over a difference of politics. Jimmy was to the right and I was to the left, and when we realized our friendship was being destroyed by politics, we made up and decided never to discuss politics again. I don’t know if Duke was beginning to shift to the right at that time, but back in the 1930s, John Ford was a dedicated liberal Democrat, and that was far too left for the John Wayne of later years. I always wondered about that.”
Wayne must have known about Ford’s interest in the Spanish 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 68
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Civil War of 1936, when Ford donated a great deal of money to the Loyalists, who were largely made up of Republicans, Socialists, and Communists, in their war against the Francisco Franco regime. The Loyalists had a great deal of support outside Spain from American and European liberals and from the Soviet Union. Supporting Franco were the Germans and Italians who wanted to turn Spain into a Fascist state.
To most, it was a war between Communism and Fascism. Ford’s grandson, Dan, wrote in his biography of John Ford that his grandfather declared, “Politically I am a definite socialist Democrat—
always left. I have watched the Russian experiment with great interest. Like the French Commune, I am afraid it might lead to another Bonaparte.” That, in essence, took Ford off the hook of Communism, but it was still a far cry from the conservative that John Wayne would eventually become.
But during the 1930s, Wayne had not properly formulated his political beliefs. He, like Ford, saw himself as a liberal: “I was young and willing to listen to all sides of the argument. I just kept most of my thoughts to myself. I was just someone—an American—who worked hard for a living: I just happened to be an actor. I was still too busy trying to make a real name for myself to worry about being any kind of influence for any particular party. At some point [in 1938] I did join a number of Hollywood liberals in supporting a Democratic state senator, [Culbert L.] Olsen, and I guess that’s when I really started to think about politics. I realized within a short time that the Democrats didn’t stand for the same things I did, so I began to drift to the right. When it comes down to it, my family came from Winterset which was in a largely Republican state, and I guess I may have sprouted upward with Republican blood coursing through me, and as a grown man I found I was more comfortable with Republicanism.”
Wayne’s views grew partly from his membership of the only organization he belonged to, the Screen Actors Guild which, essentially, maintained conservative views and concerned itself chiefly with salaries, contractual rights, and general working conditions. His political leanings to the right were further strengthened by his friendship with Ward Bond who was a true ultraconservative, 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 69
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and who also avoided political confrontation with John Ford. As Fonda realized, Wayne loved Ford too much to get into political arguments with him, especially as he knew that Ford was a patriotic American.
Wayne was certainly not as blind to the political activities in Hollywood as some of his critics have suggested, citing his failure to support Dies. He told me, “It was back in 1937 when I realized something was happening in this business I love so much, and I knew it was not good. Communists were moving in on the business; they hid in the guise of anti-Fascism, but I saw that they were hoaxing a lot of decent men and women on basic humanitarian