John Wayne, Lest We Forget

[MissGoddess]

That was so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes, Jackie.

Wayne has been on my mind a lot lately. Thinking about him, about his grace under pressure, has
really helped me through some rough spots (as you were wise to point out, Moira).

I always liked him, but it wasn't until recently that I noticed a quality in him since his younger
days that I never would have thought of in connection with him before: sweetness. There's
a lot of the small town Iowa boy in him, the one who was taught to say "Yes, sir" and "Yes, Ma'am",
to behave courtly with women, to smile and laugh and enjoy being with people. Sometimes, he's like
a big, sweet kid that never entirely grew up. Just look at him in Peter Bogdanovich's interview
in Directed by John Ford, the way he can't sit still and has "act out" what he's describing...just so
charming and boyish. You can see it here:
[youtube][/youtube]


Moira, that still photo you posted is gorgeous. Is it from Rio Grande? I love what Ebert
said about the French audience standing up and cheering at that great moment in The Searchers.
It made me teary eyed.

[mrsl]

.
Wow. I just re-read this entire thread and all the posts in it. Being 65 years old and having 4 grown kids, and 6 more grand kids who are more than half grown, I always feel kind of funny talking about how much I revere John Wayne, kind of like a teeny bopper and a new singer. But that's the nice thing about this site, I now know others feel the same way I do. In the last 6 months I have purchased 10 to 12 JW movies, and already I've watched some of them 3 times. The latest was The Alamo, and I'm saving that for this Saturday afternoon.

Watching the Duke and John Wayne is as much fun and evokes the same kind of warm memories as Randolph Scott films. Waynes are better, but both men have that tenderness you were talking about. I recall someone saying JW's nickname of 'Duke' came from his horse, but that was before I got the collection of pre-1940 movies and learned his horse was named Duke. I'm hoping that when I go, my kids will sit down and watch my John Wayne movies, so they realize their mom was not goofy by buying them. If they don't watch, they will just miss some extraordinary entertainment.
.

[movieman1957]

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (I still don't get it),

How so? (I hope Lynn gets in on this.)

Otherwise, except I have always admired his work, I am in complete agreement. He transcended being a movie star. Probably in a way that almost no one else has. Bogart may have come close but he was a different manner if icon.

A nice group of comments.

[JackFavell]

I don't know. I just don't get that movie. I feel the same way Frank Grimes does. But I am going to keep trying! One of these days it will hit me, what it really is all about. It took me forever to figure out The Searchers.

That is, if one can ever really grasp that entire movie.

MissG-


John and Ethan Wayne go for a ride

[movieman1957]

Then, I hope, there is a "ramble" in our future.

[pvitari]

I love John Wayne.

The first time I saw Stagecoach, it was on the giant screen at our Fox Theatre, and that first shot of Wayne in the desert took my breath away. A movie god indeed!

He didn't have the widest range -- I wouldn't want him to play Hamlet -- but within his space, he mined every nuance with the utmost of subtlety and yes, gentility. He was every bit as much an actor as a movie star and the only reason some folks don't realize that is because he was so very very natural and so very good at what he did.

One of my favorite Wayne moments: the farewell scene in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, especially the moment when he draws out his glasses to read the inscription on the watch, the farewell gift from his men. Tears my heart out each time.

[mrsl]

.
One quick question to someone who may have the answer to something that stood out for me.

What are they priming when they are cranking that roller on the PT boats? Is it some sort of an ejector for the torpedo? All through the movie I hoped they would show a different angle, but they never did and I'm just curious.

Thanks, if you know
.

[moira finnie]

Original caption--Youth seizes the reins: Dick Cavett and John Wayne in 1976; that’s Cavett on the left.

Having seen part of The Shootist on AMC over the weekend, I was so touched by it, (complete with commercials, which gave me a chance to find my kleenex and blow my nose), I thought I'd post the following blog from the New York Times about Dick Cavett's "Brief Encounter" with John Wayne. Topics range from knowing your lines (well, most of them), the Duke's appreciation of Noel Coward, and, oh, yes, that beautiful beaded rifle cover Ethan Edwards carried in The Searchers (1956) . Enjoy:

January 22, 2010, 9:30 pm
Awesome, and Then Some
By DICK CAVETT

(Warning: Good friends have refused to believe a word of what I’m about to relate. Your credulity is about to be strained.)

The setting was the Universal lot in Hollywood, and I was preparing a prime-time special to be called “Dick Cavett’s Backlot U.S.A.” We’d somehow lured Mae West out of her most recent retirement. We had Mickey Rooney and Gene Kelly. We needed another big-name guest.
Someone came in with a message and casually dropped the words, “The Duke is shooting over on the Western street.”

I was fairly sure that by “Duke” he didn’t mean Edward VIII. Before there was time to even think, “Feets, do yo’ stuff,” I was all but out the door. My producer, the splendid Gary Smith, didn’t need to ask where I was going. He just said, “Get him for the show.”

“Sure thing,” I said, laughing.

I hit the ground running. A man carrying a fake tree pointed the way. It felt like that heavy slogging one experiences in dreams. I knew I’d be too late. I got through a section of London, the New York street, the New England village . . . and there it was up ahead. The square of an old Western town. “The Shootist,” which proved to be John Wayne’s final movie, was being filmed.

Somehow — although it seemed I had met all my heroes and non-heroes in the biz — I had always been certain, deep down, that I was not destined to meet John Wayne. It was just not in the scheme of things.

If the word “icon” — used daily now for just about everybody, even me — ever applied in its fullest force to anyone it was to the man embarrassed as a kid by his real name, Marion Mitchell Morrison.

How could I ever hope to find myself standing beside the star of “Sands of Iwo Jima,” seen five times by Jimmy McConnell and me in our Nebraska youth? (Later, we’d “play” the movie, taking turns being The Duke, our bikes standing in for horses.)

How could I expect to meet “The Ringo Kid” from “Stagecoach”? Or the man in another one of those great Monument Valley John Ford classics (“She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”?), riding toward the camera, the cavalry column behind him, the storm overhead. Surely this mythic figure could not occupy the space right next to you.

And yet there he was.

John Wayne during a scene from the 1976 movie “The Shootist.”

The gods had smiled and arranged for my first glimpse of him to be the ideal one. Mounted and in full cowboy drag: the chaps, the boots and spurs, the neckerchief and the well-worn Stetson atop the handsome head. He was waiting for the scene to begin.

I moved, or rather, was moved toward him. He saw me gazing upward.

“Well,” he said — in John Wayne’s voice! — “It sure is good ta meet ya.”

I reached up to shake the mounted man’s proffered hand. It enveloped mine like a baseball glove.

He was instantly likable and, although it seems almost the wrong word for such a fellow, charming. We chatted for several minutes until shooting resumed. I watched him ride off for the next shot. I figured that was it. I was satisfied.

Meanwhile, I had forgotten about the special, and I started to leave. I couldn’t wait to phone Jimmy McConnell.

Suddenly, the Duke — preceded by his shadow — came up behind me, on foot now. As with the Great Pyramid at Giza, nothing prepared you for his size. (And there was a rumor that he wore lifts in his boots. I was not about to ask.)

“I’d enjoy talking to ya but I’ve got a scene to shoot with Betty Bacall,” he said. “Do you want to watch?”

The answer came easily. And my new friend led me inside to the set.

It was the old West, and the scene was in the kitchen of the house belonging to Lauren Bacall’s character. She was about to serve him a meal.

“Ya wanna run your lines, Duke?” asked an assistant.

“No thanks, I know ‘em. Most of ‘em, anyway.” (Crew laughs.)

I was a few feet from him, in the shadows. They were still setting up and Duke was humming to himself, and — I guess unconsciously recognizing the tune — I began to hum along. He spotted me and chuckled. And the following dialogue took place. On my solemn word. (I went straight home and wrote it all down before it faded.)

Wayne: Wasn’t he great?

Me: Who?

Wayne: Coward.

Me [startled, realizing now that the tune was Noel Coward’s “Someday I'll Find You”]: Yes.

Wayne: I’ve always loved his stuff. Remember the scene in “Private Lives” when they realize they still love each other?

Me: Yes, and did you know there’s a recording of Coward and Gertrude Lawrence doing that scene?

Wayne: Gee, I gotta get that. I guess I’ve read most of his plays.

Me [still not convinced there isn't a ventriloquist in the room]: I’ll send you the record.

Wayne: Well, thank ya. I like the line [he switched to quite passable upper-class British], “You’re looking very lovely you know, in this damned moonlight.”

Me: I did a show with Coward and, as he introduced them, “My dearest friends, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.”

Wayne: I sure would love to have seen them in “Design for Living.” [Mentally I reach again for the smelling salts.] And, damn, I’d love to see that show of yours.

Me: I’ll see that you do. [Jesus! Did I? Oh, I hope so.]

Wayne: That’d be awful nice of ya.

Me: Did you ever think of doing one of his plays?

Wayne: Yeah, but it never got past the thought stage. I guess they figured that maybe spurs and “Blithe Spirit” wouldn’t go together. Can’t you see the critics? “Wayne should go back to killing Indians, not Noel Coward.”

As I looked around for someone to pinch me, the mood was shattered by a sharp, barking voice: “O.K., people. Places for 43.”

(There is a good bit more to this encounter, including a life-and-limb incident. Interested? Or would you rather have a piece on “Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Man and Boy”?)

It required the common sense of Woody Allen to put the whole thing into perspective. When I burbled the story to him, he seemed disappointingly un-astonished.

“It reminds you that he’s an actor,” he said. “Not a cowboy.”

PART II

I’ve been reminded that, in my earlier column on what to me were three glorious days spent in the company of John Wayne, I said that there is more to the story. Here’s what I meant:

I hurried through all my duties in shooting my special to hang with my new friend as much as possible. Just at this moment of typing I’ve identified the feeling I was having then. It was as if a 7th grader (me) had been befriended by the popular, big, tall, jock upperclassman. And wished everyone could see us together, maybe with his hand on my shoulder.

(Did anyone just reach for an airsick bag?)

The picture, “The Shootist,” was his last. There is debate still about whether Wayne knew at the time that he — like the legendary gunfighter he was playing — was dying of cancer. Most agree that he did.

Here was a greatly talented, highly intelligent, college-educated, well-read man of immense personal charm and humor. I think we can agree that he knew.

There’s a rough-going scene in which he asks Jimmy Stewart, playing his doctor, not to spare him the details of what will happen as the disease progresses. It’s fascinating, if true as some say that he had not been able to do this in life, but — by requesting that the script be sharpened in detail on this point — chose this route to the information.

If I had to pick 10 highlights of my life, one would be my arrival on the set at almost the instant this scene was shot in the doctor’s office. The crew knew their long-time friend was not well. There seemed to be more people than usual standing around watching. When Stewart delivered the line with the dread word in it — the one even doctors will euphemise, as in “ca. of the breast” — a burly stage-hand-type near me had to quickly cover his mouth, apparently fearing that the sort of tearful, involuntary snort he emitted might have been picked up by a mike, spoiling the take. Similar moments on the part of crew members could be seen all around.

A second consequence of my time on the set with John Wayne: It’s early afternoon on the Western town square set. Costumed extras relaxing, smoking, gossiping, strolling, reading trade papers, Wayne off somewhere resting, napping or playing chess during a long break. (I can eye-witness report this: during breaks he shed his boots and slipped into a chartreuse pair of those fluffy marabou slippers more associated with women. Ludicrosity rampant. Probably a custom-made joke gift from a colleague. Or taken off a very large lady.)

A lone horse was at the hitching post. A huge horse. I had a sudden semi-rational urge. “Is that Dollar?” I asked. And I got onto John Wayne’s horse. To my surprise I find that I’ve recounted this sorry tale before, in this very paper in 1998. Reading it again scares the chaps off me, so suffice it to say that by the time Dollar’s spine-punishing trot had escalated into something more hazardous, then de-accelerated from there, and I was returned, trembling, to terra firma, there’d been a great deal of yelling from the crew and scattering of sun-bonneted extras (one clarion voice sounded above the rest: “Who the —— is that on Duke’s horse?”) and I was in a position to state for the record that an eternity lasts about 45 seconds.

I had one more glorious day with Wayne. He had agreed to appear on my special, and as I sat beside him — he in full costume — on a buckboard, with me holding the reins, in one hand, he said, “Are we rollin’?” At “Yes,” he took my hand mike and said into it, “Hi, this is John Wayne interviewing Dick Cavett.” (Don’t let me awaken, I thought.) We had a good time, and I might be able to retrieve this one for a future column.

The sun was up and the sky still bright but it had gotten to the time in the afternoon when the light changes undesirably for color film. I asked if they had finished shooting for the day.

“Yeah, it’s gettin’ a little yella.” (I won’t force the symbolic poignancy of those words.)

When we parted, I told him as best I could what a good time we had had together and what it meant to me. I said I felt kind of foolish, asking for an autographed photo.

“That shouldn’t be any trouble.”

He called for one, wrote on it, and without showing it to me, put it in an envelope.

We talked for a while more, mostly about the current prices of Indian artifacts, which I had seen swoop suddenly upwards. I asked him if he owned the beautiful beaded and long-fringed plains rifle case — probably Sioux or Cheyenne — he carried in John Ford’s “The Searchers.”

A reproduction of that rifle sheath

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” he said, grinning. “I bet I’ve thought about it a hundred times. I can’t watch the picture because of it. I tried later to find it, but somebody smarter than I am must’ve gotten it.”

“Didn’t it occur to you, maybe on the last day, to just slip it into your duffle bag?”

“It does now.” (Laughter.)

Having said goodbye and still aglow, while driving on the freeway, I remembered the picture. Pulling over like a responsible citizen, I slipped it out of the envelope, hoping there might be more than just the traditional “Best wishes” and a signature.

It read: “To Dick Cavett from John Wayne.”

This, of course, was enough. But below it there was another line.

“We should have started sooner.”

You bet I cried.

[pvitari]

That is a fantastic story. What a wonderful tribute to one of the greatest actors of American film. Thanks so much for posting.

By chance, I also had a John Wayne day yesterday. I watched The Searchers Blu-ray in the evening and earlier in the day I had made these two screencaps from 3 Godfathers.

[MissGoddess]

Oh, moira, that has me in tears. What a lovely article. I cannot watch The Shootist too often, it's much too poignant and sad.
But it's a grand performance to go out on.

[Lzcutter]

Rats Moira,

It's not even 11 in the morning and I have tears streaming down my face. Thank you for reprinting that wonderful article by Dick Cavett!

Thank ya, kindly!

[movieman1957]

It's nice to know that Cavett didn't have to out one-line everyone. It sounds like he didn't try.

It's always lovely to hear that someone as big as Wayne was as nice as they come. Although many of us already knew it is always grand seeing one more confirmation.

"We should have started sooner." What a profound and lovely sentiment.

[knitwit45]

Geez, Moira, you could have issued a hanky alert before posting that....

What a lovely article, and what a lovely man he must have been. Thanks for sharing.

Nancy

[klondike]

Just randomly grabbing one sizzling, distant little white dwarf from out his spiraling constellation, who else, I query, who else could have played Captain Nathan Brittles, as was envisioned by John Ford?
Others might have tried, and mightily, and a film might have have been released 'neath the name of SWAYR, but Pappy would never have been satisfied with it, and we would not now still be discussing how much we love it, and why.
We've not forgot, Cap'n, nor likely shall those who'll follow.
Ever.

[JackFavell]

Damn.

That is a one in a million article.... Just like the man. Thanks, Moira.