John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [39]
“I knew that Commies were setting up their party all right, because I heard so much leftist crap among the people I worked with, some of it from my own friends. And I often heard writers in particular talk about Russia being the hope of the world. I had nothing against the Russian people. It’s Communism I’m against. In the late 1930s and in the 1940s it was a threat to our great country and to every other country that believed in freedom. And anyone who didn’t believe that the Communists in America, and in our industry, weren’t being sponsored by Joseph Stalin was nuts. And we all know now what kind of a man Stalin was. Hitler and Stalin were the two sides of the same coin. They both exterminated masses of their own people. So did Mao [Tse-tung] after his Communist reign in China started.”
Paul Fix told me that Wayne was a firm Republican by the late 1930s. “He didn’t talk too much about his politics, but every now and again he’d say something about the ‘lousy pinkos’ in the [film]
business and that something should be done to get rid of them.”
George Sherman remembered that “Wayne found his own way to begin expounding his growing philosophy and sense of patriotism through his films. When we did Wyoming Outlaw, he wanted a 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 70
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couple of lines written so that when Ray Corrigan said, ‘You know, there used to be a time when being an American meant something,’
Wayne replied, ‘It still does. It stands for freedom and fair play.’ ”
Wayne became discouraged with the material Republic Studios was giving him after the quality of Stagecoach, although he could now afford to buy a Spanish-style house on Highland Avenue. His career received a slight lift when the studio RKO gave him the lead in Allegheny Uprising in which Wayne donned Davy Crockett–style buckskins and raccoon hat as a frontiersman opposing the British occupation just prior to the War of Independence.
As his leading lady, RKO cast Claire Trevor in the hope that they would produce the same Stagecoach kind of chemistry. It was, at least, recognition from a modest studio that Wayne might be star material, but the choice of bigger star Claire Trevor was as much a matter of insurance as the fact that Trevor was a fine actress. Claire recalled, “For six weeks we all lived— cast and crew—men and women— on location in tents, and throughout Duke was a delight.
Contrary to popular belief, he remained sober while he was actually working, having learned that particular lesson from John Ford. He drank only at night before dinner when filming was over, and he refrained from overindulging. At midday lunch and evening meals we all gathered together— except for George Sanders [who costarred as the tyrannical captain of the British soldiers against whom Wayne leads a minor rebellion]. Mr. Sanders failed to make himself popular with the rest of us, snubbing us at mealtimes and keeping to himself.
“One day he said, ‘Of course, the colonial Yankees had been a bunch of fairies.’ That was enough to make Duke furious. He lunged at him and he would have really hurt him if several men hadn’t held him back. Of course, we would all have liked to see Duke teach him a lesson, but when you’re working together, you have to be professional and get on, and after that Duke and Sanders were professional enough, but no one liked Sanders. I think he thought the film was anti-British because the script made the British out to be the bad guys.”
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Wayne insisted that the film was not anti-British. “That’s all history,” he said. “What I wanted to say in the film was that Americans