John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [4]
and then came the sound which the two Russians expected to be the last they would ever hear.
After both guns fired, it took several seconds for the two kneeling men, now shaking uncontrollably, to realize they were still alive.
Wayne turned to the federal agents. “You can have them now.”
The G-men came forward, grabbed each Russian by an arm, and hauled them to their feet. The Russians looked quizzically at Wayne who held up his gun and said, “Blanks!”
“What do you want us to do with them?” asked one of the agents.
“Send them back to Russia.”
Suddenly, in perfect English with a Midwestern American accent, one of the Russians cried out, “No! Please! Don’t send us back to Stalin. We will both die.”
“Don’t worry,” said the federal agent. “You won’t be going back . . . yet. We’ve a few questions we want answered. And then—
maybe—we’ll let Stalin have you back.”
“But you don’t need to interrogate us. We can help you. We can work for you.”
“Seems they’re more afraid of their beloved Stalin than they are of you,” Wayne said to the agents. To the Russians, he said,
“Welcome to the land of the free.”
The two federal agents led the Russians to the car and shoved them into the backseat.
“You won’t forget our deal, will ya?” Wayne called out to the agents. “I don’t care what you have to tell Hoover, but you’ll keep my name out of this.”
“If that’s what you really want, Mr. Wayne. But these Commies came here to kill you. They failed this time, but those fucking Russkies may try again.”
“Like I told you, I got a wife, an ex-wife, and four kids, and I don’t want any of them knowing and having to worry for the rest of their lives. These Commies fucked it up this time. Maybe they’ll think twice before trying again.”
“Maybe, Mr. Wayne.”
“The name’s Duke.”
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A COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY REVEALED
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Wayne shook hands with the agents. Then they got in their car and backed up onto the highway.
Jimmy Grant handed his gun to Wayne. “I’m not used to handling these things. If they hadn’t been loaded with blanks, I’m sure I’d have missed.”
Wayne just grinned. Then they made their way up to the highway where Duke’s car was parked.
As they drove off, Grant asked, “But suppose they do try again?”
“You better hope they don’t,” Wayne replied with a lopsided grin,
“otherwise you might never work again.”
As Yakima Canutt pointed out, “Duke was just a little too confident about that.”
An old friend of mine, British actor Peter Cushing, had returned from Hong Kong where he had made a couple of lousy films in 1973. The quality of the films hardly mattered to him, but he was full of inspirational tales of courageous people who had escaped from the Republic of China to find a new life in Hong Kong. Among those people were some skilled technicians from the Chinese film industry which, during the 1960s, had been suffering from a period of decline under Communist control.
Peter, a gentle man in the truest sense, was moved as he told me, “I heard a great deal about the oppression of the Chinese people.” And he asked, “Will the evil of Communism ever come to an end?” He spoke a great deal about the conditions the people of China lived under, and of the constraints that were put upon the artists of Chinese cinema. Out of this conversation came stories Peter had heard from a number of the Chinese immigrants of a plot hatched between Chairman Mao and Joseph Stalin to have a “big American film star” killed.
This was the first time I ever heard about it, and all Peter knew—
“assuming the story is true,” he added—was that the big American film star was renowned for two things: “He is known to hate Communists, and he’s famous for being a screen cowboy. The first name that comes to mind is John Wayne. But surely that can’t be true. Yet that’s what these wonderful Chinese people told me. I wonder if it was John Wayne they meant.”
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JOHN WAYNE
There was only one way to find out. I told John Wayne Peter’s story. I didn’t