John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [53]
Just the year before, in 1944, a number of conservative-thinking people in Hollywood, led by director Sam Wood, got together and organized the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals which was intent on running the Communists out of the business. Many prominent people signed up for it, including Walt Disney, some of the most important executives at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Hedda Hopper, and a good many actors, including Wayne’s friend Ward Bond.
Critics of Wayne and the part he would play in the alliance are quick to point out that he was not a member of the alliance before 1947, and that he had distanced himself from the cold war in Hollywood as much as he had supposedly done from the Second World War.
Wayne told me, “I didn’t sign up to the alliance at first because I’m a man who generally likes to beat his own drum. I was speaking out against Communism in my own way. At Ward Bond’s urging, I did some unofficial work for the alliance, working sort of undercover, you might say.”
This is borne out by an incident in 1945 when director Frank Capra was about to start filming It’s a Wonderful Life. When I interviewed Capra in 1980, he said, “I was approached by a member of my cast, Ward Bond, who asked me if I’d checked with John Wayne about the suitability of an actress, Anne Revere, whom I was thinking about casting. I didn’t see that it was any of Wayne’s business and I called him, reminded him that he’d stayed home getting rich during World War Two, and telling him that he could go to hell. I didn’t care. I didn’t give a shit who was a Communist or who wasn’t. I heard that Wayne was so mad, he said, ‘I’d like to take 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 98
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that little dago son of a bitch and tear him into a million pieces and throw him into the ocean and watch him float back to Italy.’ It was an ugly time in Hollywood. Years later we nearly worked together, but it didn’t work out.”
Although Duke had not signed up with the alliance, he was urged by Ward Bond to attend a few meetings, and at one of them he was treated as a guest speaker. But there was a problem.
Wayne told me, “[Screenwriter and producer] James McGuinness, who was a personal friend and a dedicated conservative, wanted me to give a speech, but he had written the whole speech for me. Well, I don’t do other people’s speeches, and I told him that if he wanted me to get up and talk, I’d give my own speech. Besides, I told him that I’d not come to the meeting as an actor but as an American because I believed in what they were doing. So the speech I was supposed to give was given to Ward Bond.”
Although Wayne was not an official member of the alliance, it had become well-known around Hollywood that he was speaking out against Communism and calling it “a crime, not a means of government.” He backed up his claim by citing the atrocities that were being committed by Stalin.
Yakima Canutt remembered, “The Communists in Hollywood that were being given full support by the Stalinists were really gunning for Wayne. Why they singled him out, I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that they thought him an easier target than anyone who was a part of a great body like the Motion Picture Alliance. Duke kind of stood alone.
“Sometime after he got that threatening letter, he got a phone call at his office at Republic and was told to keep his ‘big fat mouth shut, or it would be shut for good.’ When he told me this, I said,
‘Look, Duke, I’ve got the best undercover men in Hollywood.
Nobody but the actors and the directors know the stuntmen in the business, and I’m damn sure these threats don’t come from actors or directors. Let me put some of my best stuntmen about to see if we can ferret out who these people really are, before something happens to you.’
“He was very reluctant, but he said, ‘It won’t do any harm, I guess.
But, Christ, let’s keep this thing quiet.’
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