The co-star who almost knocked out John Wayne: “I’m gonna clobber that son of a bitch”
History might remember Paul Fix as the person responsible for nudging John Wayne in the direction of adopting his signature strut, but some prefer to believe that ‘The Duke’ sauntered the way he did because he was carrying around Hollywood’s biggest and most swingingest pair of bollocks.
When an actor becomes one of the biggest stars in the industry, it’s easy for them to let it go to their head. Since stars didn’t, and haven’t, ever come much bigger than Wayne, he operated under the mindset that when he strolled onto a film set to shoot his latest picture, everybody, including the studio, deferred to him.
To be fair, he wasn’t wrong, with John Ford the only person capable of putting him in his place, which he did, frequently. The man he called ‘Pappy’ was the sole name in the business who could talk to the superstar leading man like he was either a child, an idiot, or an idiotic child, and get away with it, but everyone else was forced to accept that they called him ‘The Duke’ for a reason.
Few things have better illustrated the power Wayne wielded on set better than 1945’s Back to Bataan being unable to shoot a single frame of footage during any of its production days until he’d taken a shit, and as you might expect, walking around like he owned the place didn’t always sit too well with his co-stars, or the crew members and filmmakers who were forced to constantly play second fiddle.
When ‘The Duke’ shared a set with Kirk Douglas, it’s easy to imagine him refusing to sanction any of his opposite number’s big-leaguing. After all, he was also one of ‘Golden Age’ Tinseltown’s most headstrong leading men, but since he’d already worked with Wayne in consecutive years on In Harm’s Way and Cast a Giant Shadow, 1967’s The War Wagon meant he knew what to expect.
Unfortunately, this was Howard Keel’s first time working with the face of the classic western, and he was quickly put through a crash course on how Wayne ran a set. Sure, Burt Kennedy was the appointed director, but with ‘The Duke’ both playing the lead role and producing through his Batjac banner, nobody was under the impression that the guy wielding the megaphone was in charge.
“He felt responsible for everything, and he would get into everything,” Kennedy recalled. “He’d make it tough.” This wasn’t Douglas’ first time on the John Wayne rodeo, and he knew that the filmmaker “was having trouble” with the star and producer. “Burt was a very talented director, but gentle,” he reasoned. “Wayne was a less talented director, and far from gentle. I tried to get Burt to stand up to him. It wasn’t easy.”
Having already run roughshod over the director, he tried the same thing with his co-star, Keel. Douglas knew how to navigate the actor’s penchant for strong-arming the production, but he didn’t. “Duke started pushing him around, grabbing him, showing him how to play the scene,” William Clothier remembered. “I went over to Keel and said, ‘I saw your reactions’. Before I could finish, he said, ‘If he puts his hands on me again, I’m gonna clobber that son of a bitch.'”
Keel was eventually talked down from the ledge, and it wouldn’t have been a wise career move for him to throw a punch at ‘The Duke’, regardless of how much he was pissing him off. Kennedy admitted that he was “obdurate and obstinate and he thinks one way,” and if it hadn’t been for Clothier’s timely intervention, that way of thinking would have seen him get a punch in the face.
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