John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [48]
He also faced another problem, as Paul Fix explained. “Duke was getting really desperate to enlist and so he wrote to John Ford who was working with his own field photographic unit for the navy. He wanted to know if he could work in Ford’s outfit, or if Ford could get him into the marines. Wayne hated asking favors, but he was desperate. Ford was mad at him over the thing with Chata, and he didn’t even bother replying himself. I was sure Ford could have got Duke into his outfit if he’d wanted, but he was punishing Duke.
Instead, Duke got a letter from a naval official saying that Ford’s unit in the navy was full but he could enlist in the army’s photographic unit. Duke received the forms and began filling them out. That really put the wind up old Yates.”
Herbert Yates was not about to lose his most valuable asset. His solution to quell the potential scandal of Wayne’s affair with Chata, and to prevent him from sending in his enlistment forms, was to wave his contract in front of him and send him off to Utah to film a Western, War of the Wildcats (or In Old Oklahoma). Paul Fix, who was also in the film, said, “Yates kept Duke happy by giving Chata a screen test and putting her under contract. But he never gave her any work. Meanwhile, he kept Duke away from her by making a Western in Utah. Chata stayed in Hollywood making screen tests for films she’d never make.”
War of the Wildcats was so successful that it was the only Republic picture to break into the golden list of top-grossing films of 1943. It also got good reviews, with the New York Times saying that Wayne “is as convincing as a knockout punch.” It should have been enough to have the bigger studios making him offers, but that didn’t happen.
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His next picture for Republic was the flag-waving war picture, The Fighting Seabees. He played a construction engineer who becomes an officer in the navy whose mission is to lead the newly formed Seabees in their construction work on a Pacific island under attack by the Japanese.
Paul Fix reminisced, “We shot much of the film at a camp near San Diego. Duke often spent evenings away from Chata, drinking with off-duty marines. There was a song he liked which the marines sang in North Africa—‘Dirty Gertie from Bizerte.’ At times Duke drank a little too much, and a marine would occasionally pick a fight with him.
He didn’t always win, and the [film’s] director [Edward Ludwig]
ended up banning Duke from going there for the duration of filming.”
When filming was completed in October 1943, Wayne began pressing Josephine for a divorce again, and this time she relented, knowing her marriage was well and truly beyond saving. She filed for divorce on 30 October 1943. Paul Fix recalled, “He was relieved but also full of guilt. He never did get over that feeling.”
In December, accepting that he would never be able to enlist, Wayne set out on a tour of the South Pacific and Australia, meeting and entertaining the troops. But his job was not just as an entertainer.
Paul Fix remembered, “Duke was over the moon when he got a secret commission from John Ford’s own commander [William J.
‘Wild Bill’] Donovan in the OSS to use the tour to collect information about the officers and men serving in the South Pacific. In particular, he had to make a personal assessment of General MacArthur who apparently seemed to be interfering or disrupting Donovan’s work in the Pacific. Duke tried to get to meet MacArthur, but it seems he got wise to Duke’s mission and avoided meeting him under any circumstances. Duke made his report as best he could, and Donovan sent him a certificate of commendation, although it was sent to Ford’s house. Duke got pretty mad when he received a plaque saying he had served in the OSS because John Ford had it made out of copper—his way of putting Duke down. So Duke never even bothered to pick up the certificate. He felt he had done his duty, and Ford