The director who threatened to cave John Wayne’s skull in: “I will make a character actor out of you”
There weren’t many directors who’d stand up to John Wayne, and there were even fewer who’d threaten to inflict such physical violence upon him that his face would be forever ruined. Just one, in fact.
Of course, John Ford had no issues putting his protégé in their place, and he could get away with it. The cycloptic four-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker constantly belittled, bullied, and shamed ‘The Duke’, but when his father figure did it, it was treated as tough love and nothing more.
Mark Rydell thought he was going to be fired when he berated Wayne in front of the cast and crew of The Cowboys in the early 1970s, but the leading man admired the terrified filmmaker’s gumption, with the brass bollocks he displayed in chewing out a Hollywood legend, winning him the actor’s respect.
Most directors who’d worked with the star before knew what to expect, but making two movies in consecutive years with ‘The Duke’ evidently pushed William Wellman to the brink. Their first collaboration, 1953’s Island in the Sky, went off without a hitch, but the same couldn’t be said of their reunion.
The following year, Wayne and Wellman shot The High and the Mighty, where things fractured. Much like their previous film, the face of the ‘Golden Age’ western was co-producing through his Batjac banner, but on this occasion, and much to the latter’s chagrin, the former started getting too big for his boots.
Maybe it had something to do with the story unfolding largely in the confines of an airliner, so perhaps working in such limited quarters gave ‘The Duke’ the idea that he knew how to shoot it better than the guy who was directing. Naturally, that didn’t sit too well with Wellman, who completely lost it.
After growing increasingly frustrated by the backseat auteurism, he snapped. “If I try to do your job, I would look just as silly as you do trying to do mine,” he told Wayne. “You’re bigger and stronger, but if you continue with this, I will take your face, and I will make a character actor out of you.”
The implication was clear: either the actor cut the bullshit and stop suggesting that he knew how to do Wellman’s job better than he did, or he’d get his skull caved in to such an extent that he’d no longer be recognisable as John Wayne and would have to find himself a new niche as a distinctive-looking character man.
According to Wellman’s son, it wasn’t an empty threat. “My dad had a darker side than Wayne had,” William Wellman Jr insisted. “Wayne liked to get along with people. My father? Not so much.” He must have gotten over it pretty quickly, though, seeing as the duo were back together again the very next year, making 1955’s Blood Alley.
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