John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [96]
The Searchers remains Ford’s finest film, and it is certainly one of the greatest Westerns of all time. As for Wayne’s performance, he was never better, before or since.
Pilar had been on location with Duke, and by her own account, she seems to have enjoyed the experience. By the time the film wrapped in August 1955, she was pregnant. The Waynes returned to their Encino home and, for a change, Duke had time to spend with Pilar before rushing into another picture. But all too frequently they were not often alone. Duke’s male friends were forever visiting, and it was the same old crowd as usual, and the same amount of drinking went on. Paul Fix recalled, “Pilar is a wonderful woman, but she really felt outside it all when people like Ward Bond and John Ford came by to talk and drink. I’d like to think I didn’t make myself a nuisance, and kept my visits to a minimum. One day I noticed he seemed . . . less than enthusiastic about Pilar’s pregnancy. I said to Duke, ‘Aren’t you looking forward to the birth of your new child?’
“He replied, ‘I’m thinking I’m too old to start a new family.’
“I said, ‘Duke, you wait till you see your new baby. You’ll change your tune.’
“And he did. When Aissa was born, he told me, ‘You were right.
Having a baby around the house has made me feel young again. And this time I’m going to make sure I’m a good father.’ He said that because he was convinced that Michael and some of his other children had never forgiven him for leaving their mother.
21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 180
180
JOHN WAYNE
“Aissa was born on 31 March 1956.
“He just went gaga over her, but he told me his other children resented his new family. I said to him, ‘Duke, look, why don’t you talk to them about it? Make them understand how you feel.’ But he just couldn’t stand to face any kind of confrontation with them. I think there was always a certain distance between Duke’s first and second family. He tried his best to bring them together. But he was afraid of upsetting them in any way. When his eldest daughter, Toni, found out Pilar was pregnant, she said to her father, ‘How could you?’ Duke said, ‘Don’t blame me. She’s the one who’s having the baby.’
“When I heard this, I told Duke, ‘How can you say that?’ He said,
‘It was the first thing that came into my head. Oh Jesus, I shouldn’t have said it.’ ”
Claire Trevor recalled, “Duke adored all his children. He took them everywhere with him. He loved them all with a passion. I never saw him show favoritism. He was always hugging and kissing them.
But when Aissa was a baby, I sensed there was some jealousy there among the older four.”
Trying to be a good father to all his children, including those yet to be born, became an obsession with Wayne.
Blood Alley had turned out to be the disappointment Duke had expected when it was released in October 1955. The critics, especially the left-wing press, slated it, but it still managed to make a profit. “All I ever cared about,” said Wayne, “was that the public liked my pictures.”
He liked to pretend that what the critics said didn’t matter to him, but it did. He read every review of every one of his films, and when they were lacking in praise, he would swear under his breath, and then say, “Oh, who the hell cares what they think?”
Just before Aissa was born, The Conqueror finally made it to the screens. The critics panned it, or as Duke would put it, “They crucified it—and me. And in that instance, they were right.”
None of the reviews made any difference to the success of the film. It earned a whopping $12 million worldwide, out-grossing both Blood Alley and The Sea Chase, much to Wayne’s amazement. “The 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 181
SEARCHING FOR THE DARKNESS
181
Conqueror is one of the worst films I ever made, and it was a massive success. I think it was only because epic films were in vogue at the time, and although I thought the film was a sort of Mongolian Western, it was a historical epic, and I guess people liked those films.
I began to