John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [61]
Wayne and O’Hara liked each other instantly. “Maureen is not like most other women,” said Wayne. “She didn’t mind you using four-letter words around her, which I tend to do— often—and she didn’t get all girly and dainty, and yet she is still totally feminine.
She’s like a guy almost.”
O’Hara told me, “Duke said I was the greatest guy he’d ever met.”
Wayne and O’Hara were to be teamed for the first time in RKO’s Technicolor adventure about rail construction in the Andes, Tycoon.
Wayne recalled, “Some bright spark at RKO decided we were mismatched or something, and so they decided to put another actress
[Laraine Day] in the part. Obviously someone at RKO didn’t know dick.”
Anthony Quinn, also in the cast, remembered, “We were going to shoot the film in Mexico, at Churubusco. Duke and I thought, hey, 113
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RKO are giving this special treatment, because the Mexican location would add some authenticity. But a week before we started shooting, they changed their minds and we made the film at Lone Pine. That was typical RKO.”
Filming began in February 1947, beginning well but running into trouble when Day’s new husband, Leo Durocher, manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, began turning up on the set. “He didn’t like to see his wife being held and kissed by John Wayne,” said Quinn. “Every day, Durocher sat and watched, and when it got to a love scene, he glared at Duke, and I think Duke just thought, what the hell, I’m not going to get him all upset by being all over his wife, and so the love scenes lacked a certain passion. I said, ‘Duke, don’t worry about him. You’re a pro. Do your job.’ He said, ‘Tony, I got enough problems in my own marriage without getting Laraine into any rift in hers. Let’s just get this piece of shit over with.’ Because that’s what the film was—total shit.
“Duke told me, ‘I think I may be getting past it to keep playing the romantic lead. I’m losing my goddamn hair, and I’m the wrong side of forty now.’ I said, ‘Duke, I’ve been in this business a long time now and I’m still playing the friend of the lead star, or the villain.
What are you complaining about?’
“He said, ‘Tony, I just don’t think I’m ever going to last as a leading man for too much longer, and I’m never going to get another part like Ringo. That’s why I want to produce, and I think I’m going to try directing when I get the chance. It won’t be too long before my acting days are over.’ Jesus, was he wrong.”
But he wasn’t wrong about Tycoon. It made a considerable loss.
Wayne had good reason to be concerned about his status as a leading man. When John Ford cast him in Fort Apache, he was given the secondary role of Captain Kirby York, while Henry Fonda was given the lead role of Lieutenant Colonel Thursday. However, Wayne received $100,000 for his part, which was the same amount that both Henry Fonda and Shirley Temple, now a beautiful teenager, received.
Of course, Wayne was delighted to be working with Ford again, but he knew that Ford still didn’t consider him good enough to play a complex character like Thursday, an ambitious, glory-seeking hero from the Civil War who was based on General Custer.
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Wayne told me, “I could see the writing on the wall when Ford cast John Agar in the romantic role of Lieutenant O’Rourke, Hank Fonda in the lead role, and me just trying to make peace with the Indians.”
Ford discouraged his actors from bringing their spouses on location, and Chata was furious that she could not join Duke in Monument Valley. John Agar, who played a major supporting role, said in 1979, “Duke told me that before he left for Monument Valley, Chata got very drunk and hurled all the verbal abuse she could think of, in both English and Spanish.
“With his troubles at home and his feeling that his career was still