John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [86]
During the 1950s television was developing quickly into a popular form of entertainment, giving cause for concern in the film industry 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 161
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as people began staying at home more. The industry was trying to find ways of enticing people back to the cinema by coming up with gimmicks that television couldn’t hope to compete with. The only gimmick that turned into a cinematic format that remains to this day was the wide screen. Despite the failure of The Big Trail in 1930 and its use of wide-screen process, in 1953 Twentieth Century Fox introduced CinemaScope, and other studios began following suit. The High and the Mighty became Wayne’s first CinemaScope film.
The CinemaScope format was especially effective in the aerial scenes of The High and the Mighty which were photographed by William H. Clothier. I was privileged to speak to Clothier twice—in 1974 and 1979. He told me, “It was Bill Wellman’s idea to hire me.
He loved anything and anyone to do with aviation. He’d been a pilot during the First World War with Layfayette Escadrille and only came out of the service because his plane was shot down and he broke his back. He got all sorts of awards—the Croix de Guerre and several other citations. When he was well again he became a stunt flier doing barnstorming and wing walking—that sort of thing. And I had served in the Army Air Corps in the Second World War, but before that I had done what he thought was pretty good work on the silent picture Wings, but I hadn’t done a lot of work as a director of photography in Hollywood before the war. I’d worked a lot in Spain and Mexico, and then after the war I returned to Hollywood and was lucky to get work. Bill Wellman, or ‘Wild Bill,’ as he’s known, thought I could do a good job for him shooting the aerial photography.”
Clothier, in time, would become Wayne’s favorite director of photography, working on many of his films. Said Clothier, “I had an immediate rapport with Duke. There was something about the guy I liked. He carried his authority well, and he used it, but he was never cruel or harsh. And if he liked you, and the work you did, well, you were likely to be with him for the rest of his or your life.”
Although Wayne and Fellows were the producers of The High and the Mighty, Duke was not able to wield the kind of authority and control over the production that he had exercised over Hondo.
Said William Wellman, “I only had one row with Duke on The 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 162
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High and the Mighty. He suddenly wanted to become a director and began giving orders. I told him, in front of the entire cast, ‘Look, if you come back here behind the camera and do my job, you’re going to be just as ridiculous as I would be if I were in your place in front of the camera with that screwy voice of yours and that fairy walk and trying to be Duke Wayne.’ He never tried to direct my film again.”
When The High and the Mighty wrapped toward the end of 1953, the film at RKO still wasn’t ready. There was also another matter to deal with. In January 1954, Robert Fellows and John Wayne agreed to dissolve their partnership. William Wellman said, “Robert Fellows got involved with one of his secretaries and he told his wife Eleanor that he wanted to leave her. So Eleanor went to Duke and asked him to talk some sense into her husband.
He was very uncomfortable about that and told her it was none of his business, but she kept up the pressure until he agreed to mediate in a meeting between Robert and Eleanor. Well, it all went downhill and turned into a shouting match until Duke stood up and said, ‘This is something you’ve got to settle yourselves,’
and he walked out.
“Fellows decided he needed to liquidate his assets because of the impending divorce, and he asked Duke to buy him out, and Duke obliged.”
All Wayne would say was, “Robert was a good friend of mine but he didn’t quite do the job. Anyway, I wanted the company to have a proper name, and this was a good chance to have something