John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [5]
There we were, in John Wayne’s trailer, with Wayne looking down at the floor and saying nothing for what seemed like an eternity. Then, in an almost hushed tone, he said to me, “Once the genie’s out of the bottle, how ya gonna get it back in again?”
I didn’t understand what he meant, and told him so.
He slapped his knee, looked me in the eye, and said, “Kid, I’ve been criticized for years because I’ve made my feelings known about those pinko bastards. I said it during the fifties and I’ve said it in the sixties, and I’ve stood up and said we were right to be in Vietnam.
But those lefties, those so-called liberals, have tried to crucify me.
Well, ya know something? They can’t lay a glove on me with their mean-spirited words because I’ve faced worse than them.
“I’ll be straight with you ’cos I like you, and you already know more than anyone should. This is between you and me. The Communists have been trying to kill me since 1949. But as you can see, they didn’t do a very good job of it. I licked the Big C—and I licked those Commie bastards.”
He then related an incident that occurred in 1966 when he was visiting troops in Vietnam and a sniper opened fire. It was not quite the same story that had been reported in the press.
He also told me that there had been attempts on his life on American soil, which, with the help of the FBI and “a few good friends like Jimmy Grant and Yakima Canutt,” had been foiled. Grant was Wayne’s favorite screenwriter, and Canutt, who died in 1986, remains the most famous stuntman in movie history. He was also one of Wayne’s oldest and closest friends. “I owe my life to Yak,” he said. “The agents told me I needed special protection. I said, ‘Hell, I’m not gonna hide away for the rest of my life. This is the land of the free, and that’s the way I’m gonna stay.’ I’d say up to this point, I’ve succeeded right well.”
I asked him if he thought he was now safe. He said, “As far as I’m concerned, I’ve always been safe. I’m not going through life looking over my shoulder.”
Now it does seem that this could easily have been a great yarn Wayne had been spinning me. But, about two years after meeting 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 5
A COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY REVEALED
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Wayne, I interviewed Yakima Canutt. We sat and talked for a long time about Wayne, and how for years Wayne’s ultraconservative politics had brought him his fair share of detractors, and a good proportion of supporters. The Communist witch hunt, which had raged in Hollywood during the McCarthy era—when actors, writers, and other artists had their names blackened because they were Communists, or had leftist views, or merely took the First Amendment—still stirred emotions in the movie world, and continues to do so.
John Wayne supported Senator McCarthy, and denounced Communism to the end of his days. When he made The Alamo it was a direct statement about American freedom—and therefore an indirect attack on Communism—and when he made The Green Berets, it was an unashamed assault on Communism. Those who didn’t agree with Wayne’s right-wing politics denounced him.
But, as I pointed out to Canutt, what Wayne’s detractors probably never knew was that he had his own personal battle with the Communists who tried to have him killed.
Canutt was surprised to say the least, and asked, “How in hell did you know?”
“Because Duke told me. And he said he owed his life to you.”
And so Canutt told me how he had been instrumental in thwarting an attempt on Wayne’s life.
I had thought that would be the last I’d hear about the Communist conspiracy, but to my surprise it came up again in 1983, and from someone who hardly knew John Wayne. He was Orson Welles.
It could never be said that Welles was a great fan of John Wayne, and he had no intention of enhancing the legend any further. We had been discussing the subject of the so-called Hollywood Ten and the Communist witch hunts, and the conversation had resulted in Welles suddenly saying, “Stalin was mad, of course. Should have been