John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [40]
The material was not up to the standard of Stagecoach, but the film did well enough when released in the autumn of 1939 to make a healthy profit. Herbert Yates might have had the foresight to realize that John Wayne was on his way up, but he put Wayne straight into Three Faces West, a rather gloomy tale of a group of dust bowl farmers during the Great Depression who migrate to Oregon. Once more Wayne was able to expound his philosophy in the script, saying, “America was the land of the free for the Austrian refugees fleeing from Nazi persecution. In America they found salvation.” Unfortunately, the message in the film was largely lost among its scenes of dull melodrama.
This time Wayne had a new leading lady, Norwegian actress Sigrid Gurie. A rather feisty woman, she proved an attractive proposition for Wayne, who had a brief affair with her during filming.
Ford, by now, should have been casting Wayne in star parts, but once more it was up to Raoul Walsh to step in. Walsh said, “I had a good story, Dark Command, based on a book by W. R. Burnett, which had been fashioned into a good screenplay by Grover Jones and F. Hugh Herbert. It was a fictionalized story of Quantrill’s Raiders, telling how a cowboy opposes the murderous and guerrilla tactics of politician Will Cantrell. The story had political overtones that both Duke and I believed in—that America had to sacrifice whatever it took to maintain its freedom.”
Herb Yates, known for his thrifty ways of filmmaking, was persuaded by Walsh to make Dark Command a big-scale historical Western which, with a budget of $700,000, was Republic’s most expensive film to date. Yates insisted that Claire Trevor be cast as Wayne’s romantic interest once again, and even paid the going rate for the loan of Walter Pidgeon, to play Cantrell, from MGM.
Wayne enjoyed making Dark Command and when it was released it made a good profit— enough to persuade Republic to reissue it just four years later when it again did well.
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But Wayne was still just a B-picture player at a B-picture studio, in nothing like the same league as Clark Gable, James Cagney, or Errol Flynn. He was, nonetheless, the biggest star at Republic, and that was enough to inspire Herbert Yates to attempt bigger-budget films with their biggest star.
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Dietrich and DeMille
At last Ford cast Wayne in one of his films, The Long Voyage Home, produced by Walter Wanger in 1940 and based on a one-act play by Eugene O’Neill. Wayne played an innocent and naïve Swedish member of a gang of merchant seamen whose ship, the Glencairn, leaves Baltimore for London carrying a cargo of dynamite.
Ford hired Danish actress Osa Massen, under contract to Wanger, to coach Wayne with his Swedish accent. Wayne recalled, “The night before I went to work for the first day on The Long Voyage Home, I had worked until midnight finishing Dark Command at Republic. That was quite a switch, playing a gentle Swede when the night before I’d been knocking the hell out of someone and jumping on a horse.”
Why Ford chose a Dane to coach Wayne only Ford knows, but they spent weeks going over lines. Wayne lists the role as being among his favorite and yet when you watch the film closely you realize that, although his performance is outstanding, he somehow gives the illusion of being better than he was, probably because he managed a moderately good accent.
Robert Parish, who often edited for Ford, asked Ford how he got such a good performance from Wayne. Ford answered, “Count the 73
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times Wayne talks. That’s the answer. Don’t let him talk unless you have something that needs to be said.”
Wanger feared the film would prove to be too highbrow for audiences, but to his surprise and delight the preview in October 1940 went very well. The film opened in New York to good business, and