John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [92]
“I liked Duke Wayne a lot,” Lauren Bacall told me. “I somehow expected him to be rather cold and intimidating. I also thought we would clash because he was very right wing and had supported the House Un-American Activities Committee. Bogie and I and John Huston had led a group we called the Committee for the First 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 172
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Amendment which opposed the investigations—or rather, we opposed the way the investigations were being carried out. So I was very surprised when I found Duke to be a very warm person, very friendly and amiable. After Bogie was diagnosed with cancer, Duke, who really didn’t know Bogie at all, was among the first people to send his best wishes.”
In March the unit moved to the Warner Bros. Burbank studio for interior scenes. John Ford was already having discussions with Warners about The Searchers with Wayne in the starring role. Duke recalled, “Jack Warner was enthusiastic about a John Ford–John Wayne Western, but when Ford told him it would cost nearly $4
million to make, Warner nearly burst a blood vessel and wanted to back out. Pappy was not in the best of health back then. He’d had something of a breakdown while making Mister Roberts and really wasn’t up to bartering with Jack Warner. So I wrote to Warner and said that if he didn’t agree to Ford’s terms, I’d terminate my relationship with Warner Bros. So Jack Warner agreed. Anyway, I was pretty damn mad with the way Warner had treated Pappy, so I decided I’d end my relationship with Warner Bros. anyway. After The Searchers, it was a long time before I went to work at that studio again.”
After filming on Blood Alley finally wound up in June 1955, Duke received disturbing news. Yakima Canutt told me, “I called Duke and told him that one of my guys, Cliff Lyons, who was one of the best stuntmen in the business, had been very successful at infiltrating the most hard-core group of Communists in Los Angeles. It had taken a lot of time for Cliff to win their trust. They thought he was just a cowboy on the rodeo circuit who was disenchanted with the American government and wanted to do something about it. I only chose those I could really trust because we were not doing this in cahoots with the FBI or any official government agency. We didn’t know who we could trust, and we didn’t want anything to jeopardize our plan and put Duke’s life at risk.
“Most of the Communist groups around Hollywood were just people in the picture business who believed they were doing the right thing. They didn’t know about the Stalinists who had nothing to do with our industry. But the people Cliff had infiltrated were the truly dangerous people, not the Hollywood Ten. These guys were 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 173
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Stalinists who were brainwashed to believe they were the true government of America in waiting. I didn’t know it then, but Khrushchev had rescinded the decision to kill Duke, but these people were part of a schism that still believed that true Communism was Stalinism.
“Cliff had spent months meeting with these people—just a small group of about ten or so—in a large room at the back of what I think was a printing company. It was in Burbank, not far from the Warner studios. They didn’t know his real occupation. Cliff said to me, ‘You know, Yak, I’ve never considered myself an actor, but I gave an award-winning performance.’
“They’d heard that Duke had made another anti-Communist film
[ Blood Alley] and they’d decided they were going to finish what Stalin had started. They’d tried before when Duke was in Mexico making Hondo, so this time they were going to get him in his own home. As soon as I learned this, I got really frightened for Duke and Pilar, especially when Cliff told me this was going to happen that night.
“I called John and told him to be armed and ready, just in case.
He said, ‘They so much as show their little pinkies, I’ll blow them all to kingdom come.’ I said, ‘Look, John, I think