“Hated his guts”: the one director who swore they’d never make a movie with “bastard” John Wayne
The biggest stars aren’t always the most popular people in Hollywood, but John Wayne was a generally well-liked figure. However, there was one filmmaker who swore that there was nothing on this earth that could convince him to direct a movie with ‘The Duke’ in the lead.
If Wayne liked someone, then he’d let them know it, whether it was the catalogue of directors he’d return to on multiple occasions, or the repertory of actors he befriended who’d pop up and play bit parts in his pictures for years, if not decades. On the other hand, others wanted nothing to do with him.
Charlton Heston scoffed at the suggestion he’d ever consider collaborating with the ‘Golden Age’ heavyweight, the legendary Frank Capra ran away from Circus World when he wouldn’t bow to the actor’s demands, and Elvis Presley had no interest in being overshadowed in True Grit by playing second fiddle.
‘The Duke’ was never the guy who’d link arms with the elite auteurs of his era, mostly because he knew what he was good at and refused to deviate from type, but there’s something undeniably ironic about the director who swore they’d work with John Wayne making two movies for him.
Budd Boetticher had no issues taking the reins on Bullfighter and the Lady and Seven Men from Now, both of which were produced by Wayne’s Batjac banner, but only because he didn’t play an onscreen role. He regretted not taking the lead in the latter, but if he had, then Boetticher would have most likely walked away.
When asked what it was like to work alongside the legend in any capacity, the grizzled filmmaker didn’t beat around the bush. “A bastard,” Boetticher matter-of-factly declared. “You know, I never worked with him as an actor. I was supposed to direct The Comancheros, but I didn’t want to work with him. I would have quit, or he’d have fired me the first day.”
Funnily enough, ‘The Duke’ did eventually end up ghost-directing The Comancheros due to a combination of Michael Curtiz’s terminal cancer and the fact that he wasn’t performing his duties to an acceptable standard for Wayne, but his bond with Boetticher sounds an awful lot more complicated.
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“I didn’t like a lot of the things he did, and we didn’t really get along very well, but we loved each other,” he oxymoronically elaborated. “Anyone who knows me well knows how much I loved John Wayne, but if they really know me well, they also know that I many times hated his guts. So that’s what I thought of John Wayne.”
It was probably for the best that their professional relationship was strictly producer/director and not actor/director, then, because after proclaiming himself as “the only guy in the world who ever fought with John Wayne,” had Boetticher and ‘The Duke’ worked together in a closer capacity, there’s the distinct possibility that it would have been a nightmare for both.
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