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lead as Marshal Matt Dillon in the Western series Gunsmoke. He turned them down: “The men who ran the theatres relied on the big movie stars to keep them in business, and I wasn’t going to let them down because they’d given me a pretty good life. Batjac had an actor under contract, James Arness. A good actor, but I felt he was never going to become a star in films. But I figured he could do well on television, so I told CBS they could offer him the part, and if he accepted, I’d release him from his contract. So they cast him, and he not only made that show something special, it also turned him into a major TV star.”

The first film to be made under the Batjac banner was called Blood Alley, another swipe at Communism, this time aimed directly at the Chinese. The story centered on the attempts by 180 villagers to flee from Red China into Hong Kong on an old steamer, captained by an American merchant seaman. Wild Bill Wellman was directing, and the screenplay was by A. S. Fleischman from his own novel. Wayne told me, “I’d really wanted Humphrey Bogart to play the part [of the captain], and for Betty [Lauren Bacall] to play the leading lady. I figured that was a surefire way to help make the picture a commercial success, and Jack Warner, who was putting up much of the money, thought so too. Well, Betty said okay, but Bogie wanted more than we could afford to pay him. So I asked Bob Mitchum to play the role and he agreed. It seemed a good idea because Wellman had given Mitchum his big break in the lead role in The Story of G.I.

Joe [in 1945].

“We’d already spent a fortune constructing a Chinese village near San Rafael in California. When Wellman started shooting at the beginning of the year [1955], I took Pilar to New York for a holiday.

But on the third day into production Wellman called me and said he couldn’t work with Bob. Bill said Bob was drinking a lot and causing all kinds of hell. I said, ‘Give Bob a chance. Try to work things out.

We can’t afford any holdups.’ A week or so later I got another call from Bill who said he’d had enough and told me to fire Mitchum.

That was a goddamn situation to be put in because every day 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 171

THE BLOODY BATTLE OF BURBANK

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Wellman didn’t get anything on film was losing us money, so I had to let Bob go and, rather than waste more valuable time looking for another actor to take his place, I played the part myself. But I wasn’t happy about it.”

Wellman gave me his version of events: “Mitchum was drinking and raising hell and continually sleeping through his wake-up calls, upsetting everyone in cast and crew. I phoned Duke and told him that I couldn’t work with Mitchum. Duke said there was a lot of money riding on the film, which I understood, and he wanted me to try and work with Mitchum, so I tried, but it was hopeless. I called Duke again and said, ‘It’s either Mitchum or me. Either you take the part, or I’m off the picture.’ So Duke fired Mitchum and took over the role.”

But Mitchum had a very different story to tell when I interviewed him, sitting outside of a London pub while he was taking a liquid lunch break on The Big Sleep in 1977: “I wasn’t fired from Blood Alley because I was drinking. Wellman didn’t want me on the picture in the first place because I had politely refused to appear on This Is Your Life when they did Wellman. I simply didn’t have the time to come on the show, and when Wellman found out he was determined, after Duke cast me in Blood Alley, to find a way to get rid of me. He rode me so much I finally said, ‘I’ve had it’ and left.

Wellman gave his story to Duke, and then I told Duke the real reason why I was off the picture, and we remained friends. When we later made El Dorado [in 1967] we had the time of our lives working together.”

It was mid-January when Wayne took over Mitchum’s part, and filming went relatively smoothly until, as Duke put it, “I hurt my back doing my own stunts and had to lie in a fucking hospital bed for a few days while Bill filmed around me. I’ve always hated hospitals, and more than that