John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [68]
“In 1949 there was a great deal of brouhaha in Moscow when Gerasimov returned to Moscow and brought to Stalin’s ears the news that John Wayne was leading the war to crush Communism in America, and in the American motion picture industry. Wayne had been elected president of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, and its main objective was to fight all that was anti-American, and that meant Communism.
Despite all the efforts of Soviet infiltrators, the Communists had failed to fully penetrate the American film industry, and people who had become sympathetic to the cause and those who had fully joined in the cause had been blacklisted by Hollywood. Some had even gone to jail.
“It is doubtful that Gerasimov intended that his report should 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 127
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produce the result it did, but Stalin decided on the spot that John Wayne had become one of the greatest of enemies to the Soviet Union.
“Many within the Soviet film industry, though they may not have seen a John Wayne film, or may not have even heard his name before, whispered that Stalin, the man who thought little of murdering his own people, had plotted to kill a major American movie star. Even in prison, word reached Kapler’s ears that Stalin was going to send Wayne a warning that if he continued to urge the American people to wage war on Soviet Russia, he would die.
“There were ways and means of getting messages in and out of prison, and there were ways and means of filtering information to American agents working in the Soviet Union. Kapler was able to urge some of his Jewish friends in the Soviet film industry to warn American intelligence that Stalin was going to have a movie star called John Wayne assassinated.
“I do not know if the name John Wayne was already known to Joseph Stalin before 1949, but in 1949 he certainly came to know of the name. He came to hate it. He feared it. He felt that the name had become a major threat to him and his ideals. It was as though, in Stalin’s warped mind, the Americans had invented some new secret weapon, more subtle than a nuclear bomb, but just as destructive to Stalin’s ideals and his dreams of world domination.
“Stalin urged Mao Tse-tung to join him in his conspiracy, impressing upon him that John Wayne had become the greatest enemy of Communism. Mao had previously asked Stalin for help in establishing his regime in China, and Stalin had refused him. So Mao, who had his own agenda which was to bring destruction to the United States without taking his own country to war, told Stalin that he would only support the assassination of John Wayne if Stalin would make every effort to push America into a war. For all of Stalin’s ranting about the corrupt West and his threats of nuclear war, Stalin had no wish to fight a war he did not believe he could win, but he gave Mao his promise, and the conspiracy was established. In doing so, both Stalin and Mao, the two most powerful Communist leaders in the world, were engaged in what we corrupt Americans would call ‘the double-cross.’
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“Soon after Stalin died [on Monday, 2 March 1953], those he had imprisoned were released, and among the many to be freed was Alexei Kapler. He told Sergei Bondarchuk all this, but Bondarchuk had already heard the rumor and did not believe it. So Kapler told Bondarchuk to ask Gerasimov, under whom Bondarchuk had studied filmmaking, to verify it. And Gerasimov told Bondarchuk how Stalin tried kill John Wayne, Bondarchuk told it to me, and now I tell it to you.”
Wayne got on with his life and, in May 1949, he signed a nonexclusive contract to make seven pictures over seven years for Warner Bros. As part of the agreement, Wayne would be allowed to produce his own films at the studio.
But first he returned to Republic to produce The Fighting Kentuckian. Set in