The co-star John Wayne couldn’t stand working with: “Jesus, I got along better with Kirk Douglas”
Even though they made up before it was too late, there was plenty of tension between John Wayne and Kirk Douglas for a long time, most of which stemmed from their opposing political views.
The former was one of the most prominent anti-communist figures in Hollywood and wanted nothing to do with anyone who was even tangentially linked to the party, whereas the latter was pivotal to ending the blacklist when he went against the grain and ensured Dalton Trumbo was credited for the first time in years without having to use a pseudonym on Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus.
Any time Wayne and Douglas would speak politics, the chances were high that it would end in a heated argument. However, as two of the biggest stars of Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’, there was always a sense of mutual respect and admiration between them, regardless of which way they leaned politically.
That uneasy balance between respect and disagreement was not uncommon in Hollywood at the time. The industry was filled with strong personalities who often found themselves on opposite sides of ideological divides, yet were still bound together by the demands of their profession. In many cases, that friction added a certain edge to their collaborations, forcing actors to engage with one another in ways that went beyond surface-level performance.
For Wayne and Douglas, it seemed to reinforce a kind of begrudging understanding. They may not have seen eye to eye off-screen, but there was an acknowledgment of each other’s stature and ability that could not be ignored. That recognition allowed them to coexist within the same projects, even if the underlying tension never fully dissipated.
They appeared in the same movie for three years in a row when they lent their names to the romantic war epic In Harm’s Way, action thriller Cast a Giant Shadow, and western The War Wagon between 1965 and 1967, even if they weren’t always on the best of terms.
Still, any animosity between ‘The Duke’ and Douglas paled in comparison to what he experienced two years later when he was shooting his Oscar-winning performance as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit.
Based on the circumstances, there was little chance Wayne was going to have much time or patience with the relatively untested Kim Darby, who played Mattie Ross. For one thing, when the part was proving to be the most difficult to cast, ‘The Duke’ promised his daughter Aissa that it was as good as hers, only for Hathaway to hire Darby without consulting him beforehand.
He did praise her, though, even if it was entirely back-handed. Describing her as “strong-willed, independent, and determined” sounds like a thumbs-up, but that wasn’t quite the case. “That’s great for the character, but not so great for an actor,” he added. The tension was there from the start, but there were other mitigating factors that Darby couldn’t control.
She’d recently given birth to a daughter and the majority of her free time was spent caring for her newborn child, while an impending divorce from husband Jack Stacy added another tumultuous element to her personal life. For Wayne, that simply wasn’t good enough, leaving him increasingly frustrated at what he perceived to be an unprofessional attitude.
“I like me and my screen partners to get along,” he raged. “Jesus, I got along better with Kirk Douglas.” Growing frustrated with a new mother who was facing a divorce comes off as fairly callous, but Wayne was hardly famed for being the progressive type. Then again, considering he once accused Douglas of betraying him for having the temerity to play a non-macho character like Vincent Van Gogh, it wasn’t out of the ordinary.
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