John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [62]
“When we began filming [in early summer 1947], John Ford gave me such a hard time. He said I was a lousy actor, and he just lay into me. I felt like the one who should give up, not Duke. Duke said to me,
‘Don’t worry. At the moment you’re the whipping boy. Give him time, he’ll get around to the rest of us.’ Now Duke was Ford’s old friend, and he rode Duke hard too, but I had the worst of it to start with.
“I was petrified of Ford who complained about my delivery, the way I rode my horse, everything I did. Wayne told me how badly Ford had treated him when they made Stagecoach, and he said, ‘He’s just trying to get a performance out of you.’ I wasn’t convinced.”
By this time, Wayne had found that the best way for him to spend time with his children was to start bringing them to work with him.
Michael, then still a teenager, was on the location in Monument Valley, assisting in any way he could. Michael said, “My father took a lot of heat from John Ford. But so did Henry Fonda who’d made a lot of films with Ford. One day Ford turned on Fonda and said some outrageous things, and when Ford had finished telling him what he thought, I saw Fonda turn and walk away with tears in his eyes.
“I think Ford resented me because I was a lot more aggressive than 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 116
116
JOHN WAYNE
his own son, Pat, who was more laid back. So Ford was not too kind to me, but my father said to me, ‘Your Uncle Jack loves you. I mean, look at the way he treats Ward Bond, and he loves Ward.’
“But there were some fun times too. In Monument Valley at night, you’d hear someone singing or an accordion floating on the night air.
My father would play cards with Ford, and Dad thought I brought him luck at cards, so Ford said, ‘Get that goddamn kid out of here.’
So there are a lot of pleasant memories. But no matter how hard Ford was on my father, Dad just took it and didn’t complain.”
Agar recalled, “Ward Bond arrived in the valley by airplane, buzzing the set and wrecking a take. Ford just exploded, and Duke said to me, ‘You can relax now. Pappy’s got his new whipping boy.’”
Wayne thought the world of Ward Bond: “Ward just had such an enormous ego, he thought he was irresistible to women and complained that he should have my role. He just had all the gall in the world and always spoke before he thought. But he was so thick-skinned that all the ridicule we threw at him just bounced off. His ego just left him wide open to practical jokes, so making fun of him was a favorite sport between Pappy and me. But we loved Ward, and he enjoyed being picked on because it made him the center of attention.
Ward and I would purposely hurl sarcastic abuse at each other, just to make newcomers think we were on the verge of tearing each other apart. But it was all an act. We had great times; yes, sir.”
Anna Lee had a part in the film and recalled: “I don’t know if Ford did it on purpose, but he made Shirley Temple, Irene Rich, and me stand for ages in the hot sun on a balcony. We were wearing these tight, uncomfortable corsets and we could hardly breathe. Finally I fainted and woke up in John Wayne’s arms, and he carried me down from the balcony. When Ford started teasing me about having a poor head for the sun, Duke told me, ‘It’s okay! That means he likes you!’ ”
Filming finished in August, and after Ford had finished postproduction in October, Wayne, Bond, and Fonda joined him for a cruise on the Araner to Mexico where they fished, got drunk, and visited the hot spots along the coast. All of this simply added fuel to the fire in Duke’s marriage.
21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 117
STARDOM AT LAST
117
*
*
*
When Howard Hawks decided to