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The director John Wayne couldn’t stand working with in 1970: “He’s doing shit!”

Thu 28 May 2026 19:45, UK

While there were certain exemptions, mostly because he either trusted them implicitly or didn’t have the stones to tell them how to do their jobs, if John Wayne was working with a director and came to the conclusion that they weren’t up to the task, he had no issues assuming the position himself.

The Alamo may have been the one and only time that ‘The Duke’ was credited as the director of a feature film, but it was an open secret that he’d strong-armed his way into helming several more. A combination of ill health and bad blood saw him effectively usurp Michael Curtiz on 1961’s The Comancheros, but that wasn’t the first or last time by any means.

Ray Kellogg may have been the only name listed in the credits as the director of The Green Berets, but it was an open secret that only one man was calling the shots on set, and it wasn’t him. Obviously, he wouldn’t even try it with John Ford, and Henry Hathaway was embedded deep enough into Wayne’s inner circle to steer a production the way he wanted, but poor George Sherman didn’t stand a chance.

Less than a year apart in age, Sherman and ‘The Duke’ were both in their 60s by the time they made their ninth and final picture together as actor and director, 1971’s Big Jake. It had been a long time since their eighth, though, with the former helming eight of the Three Mesquiteers films that the latter grew to despise between 1938 and 1939, and they were in very different places when they reunited three decades later.

Of course, Wayne was one of the biggest and most powerful stars in Hollywood, and he had been for a long time. Sherman, meanwhile, had continued working prolifically behind the camera, but he never really managed to escape the low-budget and B-tier arena that he’d called home since first breaking into the business in the late 1930s.

“We’d both come a long way since those early days,” Sherman reflected. “I hadn’t directed a major film for a long time when Duke asked me if I’d like to do Big Jake. I have to admit, I was grateful.” It would be the last feature of the veteran director’s career, and from the sound of things, he didn’t even direct it at all.

Harry Carey Jr, the son of Wayne’s close friend who’d followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a frequent collaborator of Wayne’s, was already on set and shooting under Sherman’s direction when the leading man arrived. He asked how things were going, and the response was a sheepish, “OK.”

Naturally, ‘The Duke’ wasn’t sold on Carey’s assessment of the first few days, so he went to check the rushes. When he did, he discovered that the person who’d been hired to helm Big Jake wasn’t exactly doing a bang-up job. “I thought you said he was doing OK?” Wayne pressed Carey. “He’s doing shit!”

That was enough to convince him to step into the breach, and Patrick Wayne, who played a supporting role in his father’s surprisingly violent western, had a more telling memory of the shoot, which ran from October to December 1970 in the Mexican state of Durango: “My dad directed Big Jake.”