John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [75]
And I was able to have all four of my children with me for a while, and Pappy used them all in one little scene.”
Maureen recalled, “Duke had such a great relationship with his children. He was wonderful with his boys. Michael, being the oldest, had to keep the other three in line. The youngest of the four was Melinda, who would hide from Michael when he came looking for them to send them to bed, and she’d run up to me and say, ‘Hide me,’
and I’d hide her.”
Chata had also arrived in Ireland, and it fell to Maureen to try to keep her happy while Wayne was working. “When I had a day off,”
she said, “I’d take Chata to see the sights. There were monuments, old monasteries, castles—we got on well together. But I could see that she and Duke weren’t happy.”
Victor McLaglen’s son, Andrew, was assistant director on the picture. I interviewed him at Pinewood Studios while he was working on North Sea Hijack in 1978 and he recalled, “Duke had an afternoon off and went to a local pub. It was the only time he drank while making that picture, and he drank too much. That evening I went with Jack Ford to look for Duke, and we walked into that pub, and Duke was as drunk as I’ve ever seen him. I mean, he was falling-down drunk. Jack told him, ‘We were just checking that you’re okay,’ and we left him to it. That night around twelve, I took some milk and a sandwich up to Duke, and he had just the worst-ever hangover. But by the morning he was perfectly okay.”
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Maureen had her memories of the idyllic location. “I used to lie out in the long grass along with my makeup man and hairdresser.”
Most people’s memories seemed to indicate that making The Quiet Man was easy and always fun. But, according to Wayne, that was not the case. “It was all wonderful stuff Pappy was getting on film, but when Herbert Yates saw it, he complained that the countryside looked too green and that the humor was too Irish, and he was so afraid that the film was not going to be commercial. He began ordering Pappy to cut costs. He got on a plane and came over to Ireland to see what Pappy was spending his money on.
“Actually, Pappy wouldn’t admit it, but he didn’t know if he had a good picture or not, and he had quarreled with his son Pat who was directing second unit, and he was so worried he developed a stomach problem. He asked me to take over, which I loved doing because I was definitely of the mind that I wanted to become a director. I was already in discussions with Herbert Yates about The Alamo, which I was going to direct come hell or high water. I got to direct a scene where Maureen walked up from the beach, and when Yates saw it, I said, ‘You see, I know how to direct.’ The son of a bitch said,
‘Maureen O’Hara walking up from the beach is not the same as filming the battle of the Alamo.’
“I always said he had no taste, and I was right. I knew where to put the camera and I knew how to work with the lighting cameraman, and all there was to know. It doesn’t matter if you’re directing a small scene or a big scene, you still have to know where to put the goddamn camera. But Yates knew nothing about filmmaking. He got me so damn mad, I got Ward Bond to climb up a tall tower with me with a piece of slate with the words ‘Fuck Herb Yates’ scratched on it.
“Anyway, Pappy got well and came back and took over again, and I was just an actor again. But I was still able to have some input.
Pappy didn’t usually like his actors giving him ideas about how to do scenes, but there was one scene which I felt was not right as written.
Sean and Mary Kate have just got married, but on the wedding night, Mary Kate locks Sean out of the bedroom. In the script, Sean picked up his boxing gloves and just felt sorry for himself. I said to Pappy,
‘Look, Coach, Sean wouldn’t do that. He’d stand up to Mary Kate.
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She’s his wife. He’d kick the door down. He’d say, “There’ll be no locked doors between us, Mary Kate