John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [65]
He should have been nominated for an Oscar, but he wasn’t.”
Johnson was right. Wayne had given a superb performance as Dunson—one of the best performances of his career—and his peers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just would not admit it. But that would change.
Inspired by Wayne’s performance as an older man in Red River, Ford cast him as Captain Brittles, a cavalry officer on the verge of retiring in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
Much of it was shot in Ford’s beloved Monument Valley, and the cast was full of Ford regulars, including John Agar, Harry Carey Jr., and Victor McLaglen as the Irish sergeant, a role virtually reprised from Fort Apache (and one he would reprise again in Rio Grande).
The new boy, this time, was Ben Johnson, a real cowboy and a rodeo champion. Although he’d appeared in Three Godfathers, he 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 121
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had a more prominent role in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Johnson said, “I think Ford chose me because I rode a horse better than just about anyone else, and that’s pretty much what my role required me to do. I had no aspirations to be a great actor and I think Ford knew that because Wayne told me, ‘Watch out, you’ll be the new whipping boy,’ but Ford treated me so well, it was a bit unnerving.
“I didn’t really want to be a part of the Ford family, and when he invited me to play cards at night, which was a tradition on his films, I made sure I played so lousy that he never asked me again. But there was Duke Wayne playing cards every night—and Duke was a great cardplayer—but he had to lose so as not to upset the old man. Duke just did anything to keep Ford happy.
“What really impressed me about Duke was that he could stay up late at night, playing cards—and losing every hand—and drinking, but still he was up early every morning and knew not only all his lines, but everyone else’s too.”
Wayne enjoyed the challenge of playing a man of sixty, and told me, “For the first time, Pappy was treating me like an actor, and he showed me greater respect, which I appreciated. I felt like I’d worked hard and long to reach that stage of my career, having been thinking of giving it up. Really, Hawks and Ford saved my career.
The only problem was, because I’d suddenly become so successful, a lot of those awful old B Westerns, including those Three Mesquiteers pictures, were being reissued, and people were getting a look at how awful I’d been in those early days.
“Ford had many methods of getting a performance out of an actor.
He decided that in the scene where the men give me an engraved silver watch, I should take out a pair of spectacles and make quite a thing out of reading the inscription. He knew that my reaction would be simplistic and moving, that I’d give an emotional reaction rather than a studied response to the lines. It made me feel that I couldn’t cope emotionally with that moment any more than Brittles could and would try to hide it, and when tears came to my eyes, it was for real.
“But there was one thing that disappointed me about the ending of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and it still disappoints me today. The picture should have ended just after the scene in which I’d run off with all the Indians’ horses which prevented the war from happening.
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The scene I’m talking about is where I take out my watch and I say,
‘Well, what time is it by my brand-new silver-dollar watch and chain? Three minutes after twelve. I’ve been a civilian for three minutes. Hard to believe.’ And then I should have just rode away, and that should have been the end. That was the end in the script, but Pappy decided that at the last minute I’d get the job of Indian scout.
I said, ‘Oh, come on, Coach, that’s a bullshit ending.’ That didn’t please him none, and he had to have it his way.”
When released in July 1949, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon earned a domestic box office of $2.7 million, less than Red River but still a more-than-respectable amount. In