John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [56]
Probably, the fee of $68,000 being offered to Wayne also helped change his mind. He said, “I liked that picture. I always felt I had a good sense of comedy timing, and that film gave me the chance to prove it. Claudette was a joy to work with, and we had a lot of laughs, although some said she was getting a little too old at forty-five to be playing those kind of parts. But she still looked good, and she knew how to get the most from the script.
“Mervyn LeRoy was a good director. Claudette knew the script wasn’t the best ever, and she tried to make some suggestions to Mervyn, but he wasn’t having any of that and told her, ‘I’ll make the decisions about what to change in the script.’ Now people say I’m a chauvinist, but Mervyn said, ‘I’m not letting any woman tell me what to do.’ That makes him sound a bit cold and unpleasant, which he really wasn’t. He was trying to get on and shoot the film within 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 103
COLD WAR IN HOLLYWOOD
103
the tight schedule he had. RKO wasn’t the biggest company, not like Metro or Paramount, so there was no time for any of that film-star stuff. And the more she made suggestions, the more irritable he got.
“He’d get mad when she bumped into props and lights, but I think her eyesight was not so good and she wasn’t going to wear glasses while filming. And she kept insisting that Mervyn should film only her left profile because she said her left profile was better than her right. LeRoy wasn’t having any of that and said, ‘Goddamn it, you look good on both sides.’ It turned out to be RKO’s biggest picture of 1946.”
Wayne had to accept second billing to Colbert, an indication that he still had not become a major movie star.
21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 104
10
A New Bad Marriage
On 17 January 1946, Wayne married Chata at the Unity Presbyterian Church in Long Beach. There was just a small gathering of family and friends present, including Ward Bond who was best man, Olive Carey who was matron of honor, Herbert Yates who gave the bride away, and Duke’s mother, Molly, who hosted the reception at the California Country Club.
Hollywood’s two most influential columnists, Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, made their reports on the nuptials, both having agreed to sanitize some of the details for public consumption. Hopper wrote that Wayne had met “the comely Mexican actress” just a few months before the wedding and they had enjoyed a whirlwind romance.
Parsons wrote something similar, and added, “It is doubtful if she will continue her movie career after becoming Mrs. Wayne.”
Of course, there was no movie career either to continue or retire from.
In the early summer of 1946, Duke got an unusual offer from director Howard Hawks, who had set up his own company and had made a deal with United Artists to make a film based on the Borden Chase story “The Chisholm Trail.” It was going to be an epic Western by the name of Red River with a budget of $2 million.
104
21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 105
A NEW BAD MARRIAGE
105
Hawks had wanted Gary Cooper to take the starring role, that of Thomas Dunson, an aging cattle baron. Set against the first cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail, the story would be a complex psychological account of the enmity that comes between Dunson and his surrogate son, Matthew Garth, culminating in a ferocious fight between the two.
Howard Hawks told me in 1974 over the phone how he came to cast Wayne as Dunson. “Cooper didn’t want to do it. He thought that Dunson’s ruthless nature didn’t suit his screen image. It was Charles Feldman, Duke’s agent, who convinced me that Duke would be ideal for the part.
“I never showed Wayne the screenplay. I just told him the story and he thought it was one of the best he’d ever heard, but he said, ‘I don’t want to play an old man.’
“I said, ‘Duke, you’re going to be one pretty soon, so why not get some practice?’
“He said, ‘How the hell am I gonna play one?’
“I was about fifty then, so I said, ‘Just