John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [93]
“Cliff helped me round up our most trusted stunt guys who were all cowboys, and we went to the Communist meeting place. Cliff went inside because he had to. We were armed with handguns, just in case, but we hoped we wouldn’t have to use them as gunfire would certainly bring the police. We had to arm ourselves because Cliff said they would have guns, but we hoped to surprise them and jump them before any shots were fired.
“Cliff had made sure the door was open for us, and we crept in, and when they saw us, they all sort of froze. They just didn’t know what was happening. But we went straight into action and we just lay into them. There was an almighty fight. Unfortunately for the Communists, my guys knew how to fight for real. Chairs and tables 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 174
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went everywhere. The Communists were just no match for us. One Communist picked up a chair, and tried to hit me with it, but I just stepped aside, took the chair and hit him with it. Our main concern was to disarm those men as quickly as possible, and one or two of them were able to draw their guns. But they were too slow for my guys who were on to them quickly and just beating the hell out of them. Not a shot was fired.
“After giving them a good beating, we drew our guns. When they realized Cliff wasn’t one of them after all, some of them called him all kinds of a bastard, so we gave those guys the biggest beating.
There was a lot of blood spilled, and I reckon it was lucky nobody got killed. I always think of it as the Bloody Battle of Burbank. Then I said, ‘Okay, fellers, you like your precious Stalin so much, you can join him.’ They took that to mean we were going to kill them, and a couple of them began pleading for their lives, saying they had families and so on. So I said, ‘No one’s gonna die if you do as we say.’
“Then I told them what we had planned for them. We’d bought them all tickets on the next flight to Russia. I told the couple of guys who said they had families that they could call them when they got to Russia and arrange for them to join them there.
“We bundled them into several of our own cars and drove them to the airport, and we made sure they boarded their plane and watched them fly off into the night. Then I called Duke and told him what had happened, but I told him I’d keep my boys on the lookout in case there were any more Communist cells thinking of trying the same thing. Fortunately, as time passed, it all went very quiet. I think we must have driven out the most dangerous Communists in Hollywood. As far as I know, the cops never knew what we’d done, nor the intelligence guys. We kept it a secret. What we didn’t know was that Mao Tse-tung was gonna later try the same thing, so for a long time Duke thought it was all over. He’s lucky he’s still alive.”
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17
Searching for the Darkness
Wayne had barely finished work on Blood Alley in June when he began making The Searchers. He was glad to be back with John Ford in Monument Valley.
“I really looked forward to that picture. I was back with the Coach and I was playing a role that I felt could be the best I’d had since She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, or even Red River. It was also something new for me in the story’s format. It was a saga that took place over a number of years.”
The Searchers saw Wayne in the darkest role of his entire career.
As Ethan Edwards, he sets out with Martin, who is half Indian, played superbly by Jeffrey Hunter, to look for his two nieces, Lucy and Debbie, who have been taken by Apaches. The Indians had also killed Ethan’s brother and his wife, and so the film was not only about the search for the two girls, but was also a mission of vengeance.
The film featured several scenes that gave Wayne a depth and a dimension he’d never shown before. As the film winds