The curious family connection between John Wayne and Christian Bale
On the surface, John Wayne and Christian Bale have absolutely nothing in common. One was born in Iowa, the other in Wales. One has a history of going through extreme physical transformations for his roles, and the other just sort of played himself. One’s middle names are Charles and Phillip, and the other was actually named Marion. They barely even shared the planet at the same time, given that Wayne died in June 1979, when Bale was only five years old.
You could argue that Bale played Batman, AKA Bruce Wayne, so there might be something there, but other than that, these two are chalk and cheese. Or so it would seem because there’s actually a very strong link between the man they called ‘The Duke’ and Bale’s family
Performing runs in Bale’s blood. His mother, Jenny James, worked in the circus, and one of his grandfathers was a children’s entertainer. The actor’s own career began when he was very young, with a starring appearance in an advert for fabric softener aged only eight years old. The only outlier was his father, David Bale. He was a well-known businessman and activist, focusing on issues like animal rights. After he divorced Bale’s mother, he married Gloria Steinem, a journalist and leading light in the second wave of the feminist movement.
But what about Bale’s other grandfather? The one who wasn’t a comedian. As it turns out, he also worked in show business, serving as a body double on movie sets. One movie he worked on was the 1962 adventure comedy Hatari!, which starred none other than our old friend John Wayne. According to Entertainment Weekly, Bale’s grandfather (who doesn’t get a name-check) stood in for Wayne during some of the scenes. This came after a stint in the Royal Air Force flying bombers in World War II, a conflict Wayne was exempt from on account of his age.
Hatari!, directed by the legendary Howard Hawks, stars Hardy Krüger and Elsa Martinelli opposite Wayne. The cowboy legend plays the leader of a ragtag group of game hunters in Africa, whose lives are shaken up when a glamorous photographer (Martinelli) arrives to document them. This leads to a conflict between her and the rough-and-tumble Wayne character. It was a decent hit at the time and even earned praise from Jean-Luc Godard, though its lasting impact on culture has definitely been the Henry Mancini tune ‘Baby Elephant Walk’, which was composed for the film.
Bale’s grandfather (on his father’s side, by the way) just so happened to be living in Africa when the Hatari! crew rolled into town. “He was a big guy who looked like John Wayne,” according to Bale, and this is what got him the job. IMDB asserts that Grandpa Bale worked with Wayne on two movies, although it doesn’t list the other one, so take that with a pinch of salt. Size and muscle mass clearly run in the Bale bloodline, as the actor’s great-uncle was also hench.
“He was a huge guy, like 6’6”,” he said of his relative, who was also an actor. “He was always playing the heavy.”
Though they may not have much in common beyond a chance meeting many years ago, Bale and Wayne are both icons of cinema, albeit for very different reasons. Could Wayne have lost all that weight for The Machinist? Probably not. Equally, could Christian Bale have played McLintock? Almost certainly not, but there’s an idea for a remake.
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