American Titan: Searching for John Wayne Page 20

  A slew of directors then made impassioned speeches, many pointing out DeMille’s alleged anti-Semitism, the great unspoken by-product of the blacklist. DeMille, like so many non-Jews in Hollywood at the time, believed that all union Jews in Hollywood were Communists, if for no other reason than they were so antifascist (not everyone in Hollywood had opposed Hitler prior to World War II).

  Finally, it was Ford’s turn to have his say. He served on the SDG’s Veterans Committee, along with Frank Capra, Wyler, and George Stevens, and was adamantly against the proposal. He stood up, and all eyes went to him. After taking a deep breath, the room went silent as he stared directly at DeMille and after a long pause said, “My name is John Ford. I’m a director of westerns . . . we organized this guild to protect ourselves against producers . . . now somebody wants to throw ourselves . . . in a position of putting out derogatory information about a director, whether he is a Communist, beats his mother-in-law, or beats dogs . . . I admire [C. B. DeMille] but I don’t like him . . . I think Joe [Mankiewicz] needs an apology.” The board then resigned in unison. Manciewicz was elected the new president, and Ford vice president.

  The next day Ford privately apologized to DeMille, but the taint was already on Ford. For whatever reason, his films never again reached the popularity they had enjoyed for nearly two decades.

  Ford’s standing up to DeMille at whatever professional cost had a deep personal effect on Wayne. Now he began to question DeMille’s real motivations and the fact that he was a big supporter of the first-term senator from Wisconsin (Republican, 1947), Joseph McCarthy, whose rising star would soon provide the rocket fuel for the ’50s witch hunts and whose name would come to define an era in America of hate, paranoia, and self-aggrandizement.

  Unlike the doctrinaire DeMille, Wayne knew Ford was a humanist, in his films and in his life, and he had no use for DeMille’s or McCarthy’s tactics. At a party given by Ward Bond, one of the more doctrinaire anti-Communists in Hollywood, to honor the senator, in front of Wayne Ford told the actor, “You can take your party and shove it. I wouldn’t meet that guy in a whorehouse. He’s a disgrace and a danger to our country.” Thereafter, Ford, who continued to use Bond in movies, routinely and lovingly referred to Bond as “a shit, but he’s our favorite shit.” And when not long after, Ford was casting a new movie, he was told by an executive at Republic that he couldn’t use a certain actor because of the blacklist, Ford reportedly told him, “Send the Commie bastard to me, I’ll hire him right now . . .” and then threw the studio rep out of his office.

  Ford’s and Wayne’s next picture was 1950’s Rio Grande, produced by Argosy and distributed by Yates’s Republic (a.k.a. Rio Grande Command, the Mexican name for the river marking its border with the United States). Ford had to work with a $1.2 million budget, half as much as Fort Apache and barely enough to get the film made within the thirty-two-day shooting schedule. Because of the pressure from it and the continuing negative fallout from his confrontation with DeMille, he nearly had a nervous breakdown, having increasingly contentious battles with Yates over production costs. He had to forgo shooting in his beloved Monument Valley and filmed instead in Moab, Utah. Moreover, Yates rejected Frank Nugent, Ford’s chosen writer, because Yates considered him too liberal to make the film. His place was taken by archconservative screenwriter James Kevin McGuiness, who turned the focus of the film away from its central relationship between Colonel Yorke (Wayne) and his estranged wife (Maureen O’Hara) and into to an allegory about Korea, with angry Apaches substituting for the Asian enemy.

  It was the least impressive of the three films in Ford’s cavalry trilogy and after all of Yates’s interference, he lost interest in it. Instead, he’d wanted to make The Quiet Man, but Yates hated the project and insisted that Ford make Rio Grande first, and if the picture was a hit, Yates promised he would green-light The Quiet Man.

  Rio Grande, as were the first two films in the trilogy, was based on a short story by James Wayne Bellah, this one “Mission With No Record,” which had appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. Although it was directed by Ford, it was dominated by Yates. Ford agreed on condition that Yates would then green-light The Quiet Man.

  Ford had taken a ten-dollar option on a Maurice Walsh short story, “The Quiet Man,” which had first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post as part of a collection of related short stories released together in book form as Green Rushes, which became a bestseller. The stories were about the adventures of Paddy Brawn Enright, who was born in Kerry, spent his life in the United States, and returned to Ireland to live in retirement.98

  In Rio Grande, O’Hara plays Kathleen Yorke, Lieutenant Yorke’s estranged wife, who shows up after fifteen years to retrieve her son Jeff from what she sees as a certain early death at the hands of his father, Yorke, who had caused their breakup when, in anger, he burned their plantation down. As O’Hara later remembered, “For me, the most special part about making Rio Grande was that it was the first time that Duke and I worked together. We were very friendly, but not the closest of friends. The seeds of that deep friendship were planted on Rio Grande and grew naturally over time . . . we loved working with each other. From our very first scenes together, working with John Wayne was comfortable for me. We looked like a couple who belonged together. We both had an inner core of strength, and were both gutsy! Did I know we had that special erotic chemistry together that would be so magical on-screen while filming? No, I did not; neither of us did. There were no kinetic sparks from which to duck. But when we saw ourselves together on-screen for the first time—oh yes, we knew.”

  But what struck O’Hara the most was the darkened mood that had overtaken Ford during production of the film. At least part of his frustration was vented on Wayne, in front of O’Hara, which embarrassed both of them. “Mr. Ford’s vicious treatment of John Wayne . . . was extremely severe and cruel. It was horrible treatment, unlike anything I had ever seen. He repeatedly belittled and insulted him in front of the entire cast and crew. Duke would just stand there with his head lowered, hat in hand, while Mr. Ford tried to reduce Duke to a miniature version of the man he was. I kept silent . . . and had to excuse myself from the set so I could go to the bathroom and vomit . . . to me there was something noticeably different on this set, as compared to when I had made How Green Was My Valley ten years earlier. I could see that Mr. Ford himself had changed. While we were shooting Rio Grande, I clearly saw the darker side of John Ford, the mean and abusive side.”

  Ford’s anger with Wayne may have been less about politics, Yates, and his acting than Ford’s own attraction to O’Hara, for whom Ford also had sexual feelings. As Wayne’s son, Patrick, who had a small part in the film, later told Ron Davis, in his biography of the director, “Ford saw himself as my father. He saw himself as a Western character and identified strongly with that. Maureen O’Hara was the perfect mate for John Wayne and so was the perfect mate for John Ford.” Wayne, meanwhile, continued to have financial problems due to Chata’s uncontrollable spending and under Bö Roos’s guidance he had suffered a series of losing investments, including “John Wayne” comic books, a line of outdoor outfits for children, and oil wells in Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska.

  Rio Grande was the only film Wayne made in 1951. And he had done it only as a favor to Ford, even though Wayne didn’t want to work for Yates again. To get the film made, Wayne gave up his guaranteed $150,000 fee and 10 percent of the gross for a flat $100,000, and his costar, Maureen O’Hara, agreed to a $75,000 salary. It was the only way Yates would green-light the film and Wayne wanted to help out Ford by getting it made.

  Even though Rio Grande was a hit, Yates stalled on going ahead with The Quiet Man. The reason may have been that soon after Rio Grande opened, Ford’s name and loyalty came under a deeper cloud of suspicion when the House Un-American Activities Committee members held a public debate about whether or not it had been the right thing for John Ford to have made such a leftist film as The Grapes of Wrath. Among those who most vocifer
ously questioned the filmmaker’s “loyalty” was a young congressman from California and HUAC member named Richard Milhous Nixon. Afterward, the imperious chairman of the HUAC, Parnell Thomas, said, “We’ll take care of [all of] them when their turn comes.”

  Ford took that as a threat aimed directly at him. In response, the SDG’s Veterans Committee wasted no time sending a stinging letter to Thomas and everyone on the committee, which said, in part,

  EVERY SIGNATORY OF THIS TELEGRAM IS AN AMERICAN CITIZEN, OPPOSED TO COMMUNISM. MAKING MOTION PICTURES IS OUR BUSINESS . . . WE DO NOT BELIEVE THE CONSTITUTION INTENDED TO GIVE ANY EXECUTIVE, LEGISLATIVE OR JUDICIAL BODY OF OUR GOVERNMENT THE RIGHT TO SUBJECT THE GOOD NAME OF ANY CITIZEN TO ATTACK WITHOUT PERMITTING HIM FULLY AND FREELY TO DEFEND HIMSELF . . . IF THERE ARE TRAITORS IN HOLLYWOOD OR ANYWHERE ELSE, LET THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION POINT THEM OUT. LET THE ATTORNEY GENERAL BRING THEM BEFORE THE COURTS. BUT AS CITIZENS, LET THEM HAVE A FAIR TRIAL, PROTECTED BY THE GUARANTEES OF THE CONSTITUTION. SUCH IS THE BILL OF RIGHTS.

  It was the strongest statement any organization in Hollywood had dared to make against HUAC, and it challenged the very authority of the committee and the Waldorf Statement.

  At the same time, the FBI began what would become its phone-book-sized secret file on Ford, noting his participation in “Communist Party front groups,” including the Motion Picture Artists Committee and the John Steinbeck Committee for Agricultural Workers, and Ford’s support of the Lincoln Brigade, all of which took place prior to America’s involvement in World War II. Notes in his file also questioned the motives of his wartime documentaries, which some in the bureau thought made America look less than fully prepared, and several pages were dedicated to the making of The Grapes of Wrath. Even Fort Apache came under scrutiny for its unflattering portrayal of a U.S. military officer. It was Ford’s membership in the MPA that likely saved him from having to come before the wrath of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

  On March 21, 1951, HUAC did call actor Larry Parks as an “unfriendly witness.” Parks had shot to stardom in the ’40s with his charming and immensely popular portraits of singer and Broadway and movie star Al Jolson in Columbia Pictures’ 1946 musical (and fanciful) biopic, Alfred E. Green’s The Jolson Story, and its sequel, Henry Levin’s 1949 Jolson Sings Again, both films released in that brief postwar window when Jews could be portrayed as popular American folk heroes. Curiously, despite the large number of studio heads who were Jewish, Jews were rarely portrayed on-screen. Parks’s performances were considered breakthroughs. (Both James Cagney and Danny Thomas, two non-Jews, had turned down the role before it went to Parks.)

  Parks was riding high until he was subpoenaed in 1951 (some speculated he was called because he had popularized a Jew on-screen). The committee loved going after big fish, because they were the names that brought the most attention and publicity to HUAC and fueled its self-importance. During his hearing, Parks tearfully pleaded with committee members not to make him testify, but when he was asked that most feared question, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” through his tears he answered yes, and then once again begged not to have to name the names of others who were fellow members. The committee forced him to, and he went into detail, naming names of other members who were there during his four-year membership.

  His testimony took away his livelihood. He didn’t work in film again for a decade, even though he was commended by HUAC for having been “very cooperative.” Columbia Pictures canceled his contract and, except for a very few one-offs in TV series, he didn’t make another movie until 1962, after the blacklist ended, when he played Dr. Breuer in John Huston’s Freud.99

  Wayne knew all about Parks and had every right to celebrate the actor’s unfortunate fate; Jolson Sings Again had edged out Sands of Iwo Jima at the box office, and Jolson was the second-highest-grossing film of 1949, Iwo Jima third. However, he had been uneasy about what was happening in Hollywood after what Ford had gone through post-DeMille, and did not like what had taken place with Parks. At a SAG meeting shortly afterward, when Parks begged the membership to let him keep working, Wayne said that it was “too bad that Larry had been a Communist, but damn courageous of him to admit it,” and urged the thousand-plus members assembled at the Hollywood American Legion Hall to forgive the actor and let him go on earning his living: “Young Parks needs our moral support. He should be commended for being a good patriotic American,” for doing his duty and ratting out his associates. “When any member of the Party breaks with them, we must welcome him back into American society. We should give him friendship and help him find work again in our industry.”

  And then Hedda Hopper spoke and crucified Parks, and Wayne too, indirectly, for having asked for forgiveness for the broken actor, by attacking Wayne’s nonservice in the military. “I have read the papers,” she told the assembly. “I have listened to the radio. And then I was shocked as I read the statement of our president, John Wayne . . . Parks read the best script of his career [before HUAC . . . Wayne] says he felt he’d done nothing wrong. I feel sorry for [the both of them]. And I’m wondering if the mothers and families of those who’ve died and the wounded who are still living will be happy to know their money at the box office has supported and may continue to support those who have been so late in the defense of their country.” The audience leapt to its feet and enthusiastically applauded the columnist’s speech.

  Not long after Hopper’s denouncement, Wayne issued a written statement that included the following: “It gives me a genuine feeling of satisfaction to have played a part in the tremendous job this industry does in creating entertainment on a scale no other medium can attempt. I like my job. I like the people I work with, and I have the highest respect for what the screen accomplishes, and what it stands for . . . We should express that pride in giving our best in the way of acting and technical performances, and in conducting ourselves as self-respecting members of a highly-respected industry. And if I sound like I’m on a soapbox, that’s the way I feel about the movies.”

  Nonetheless, after Hopper’s diatribe, Wayne’s position as a leader of the conservative right was diminished. He was, thereafter, more of a figurehead than a player and as an act of self-preservation, every film he made now had a purposeful undertow that pulled the film’s themes into the deep waters of patriotism and allegiance.

  RIO GRANDE RETURNED WAYNE TO the role of a romantic hero, something he hadn’t played for several pictures, by pairing him with the woman who would become the most familiar female costar of his career, the beautiful red-haired Irish beauty Maureen O’Hara. She had been a member of the Ford acting company since her moving performance in Ford’s towering How Green Was My Valley (1941), her eighth film and her first for Ford, for which he won an Oscar for Best Director, the film Best Picture (for Darryl Zanuck). It was during the making of that film that she first met Wayne at a dinner party at Ford’s home. As O’Hara later remembered, “It was to be the beginning of a deep and enduring friendship. We had such respect and love for one another and that continued to build throughout the years.”100

  WAYNE REFUSED TO FACE THE fact that his marriage was all over but the very loud shouting that was still to come. Not long after Rio Grande’s release, when Louella O. Parsons interviewed him for her syndicated column he commented on Chata and her constant visits with her mother to Mexico, something Parsons and everyone else in Hollywood knew about, since Chata was never with Wayne when he appeared at a function, and his excuse was always the same: she was in Mexico. “Esperanza is like every other person—man or woman. She thinks the doctors in her hometown are better,” he told Parsons when she asked where Mrs. Wayne was. “She is highly nervous, and she needs medical attention, so she goes home to Mexico . . . she knows that John Ford and I enjoy discussing our pictures and that I love to hunt and fish . . . you know, that’s a great woman. She understands me better than I understand myself. She knows that I am miserable when I am not working, and she n
ever complains when I spend most of my time at the studio.”

  Chata, meanwhile, had a few gems of her own she wanted to share with the world. To Time magazine, she complained about her husband’s single-mindedness, that he was “[o]ne of the few persons who is always interested in his business. He talks of it constantly. When he reads, it’s scripts. Our dinner guests always talk business. And he spends all his time working, discussing work, or planning work.” That much was true. Wayne got up at seven every day, had breakfast by himself, and left for the studio where he was working. Chata never arose before eleven.

  The fact they didn’t have children was something else that troubled her greatly. With a film career that never materialized, not being a mother left her without any real purpose in her life. Because of it whenever they did spend any significant time together, the tension between them was always high and aggravated her chronic case of hives and psoriasis.

  They were on a collision course that would prove impossible for either of them to escape.

  Chapter 16

  In 1950, Wayne made a hard right turn in his career and began work on Howard Hughes’s Jet Pilot, a combination of a (very) loose adaptation of Ninotchka—the West seduces the East—and a continuation of sorts of Hughes’s far superior 1930 Hell’s Angels. Josef von Sternberg, who had not made a film in over a decade, directed Jet Pilot.