The four-time Oscar winner who refused to work with John Wayne: “I’m not walking, I’m running”
Unless their name was John Ford, any actor or director who agreed to work on a John Wayne movie accepted they were making a John Wayne movie, meaning the star wielded the most power on set.
It didn’t matter who was behind the camera or standing opposite him onscreen, ‘The Duke’ was the big man on campus. He’d earned that right by being one of Hollywood’s most popular and bankable stars, but it didn’t endear him to everyone he collaborated with. Or, in this case, nearly collaborated with.
On paper, pairing an A-lister who’s guaranteed to put butts in seats with a filmmaker who was inarguably one of their era’s most gifted auteurs was a nailed-on recipe for success. Instead, Wayne’s meddling became too much, causing Frank Capra to run from the hills and get as far away from the actor as possible.
Few directors epitomised the ‘Golden Age’ better than Capra. Not only was he responsible for some of the period’s finest and most timeless features, but his journey from poverty-stricken immigrant to the toast of Tinseltown made him about as close to the personification of the ‘American Dream’ as anyone could hope to be.
By the time he briefly crossed paths with ‘The Duke’ during the development of 1964’s Circus World, he was already a legend. Capra had three Academy Awards for ‘Best Director’ after helming It Happened One Night, Mr Deeds Goes to Town, and You Can’t Take It with You before claiming a ‘Best Documentary’ gong for Prelude to War.
That doesn’t even take into account the likes of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life, Lady for a Day, or any of his other classics. Few filmmakers, if any, had as much pedigree, but even Capra wasn’t a big enough personality to bend to Wayne’s whims.
‘The Duke’ had already enlisted the services of his favourite screenwriter, James Edward Grant, but Capra wanted to give it a once-over. “I said I’d write my own script, and Grant said, ‘Duke won’t like it,’ and he went off to play golf,” Capra recalled to Michael Munn. “When Duke turned up, he looked at my script, and Grant was right, he hated it.”
Capra admitted he was already “hesitant about working with Wayne because we’d had a few cross words back in the late 1940s,” which were naturally tied to communism, and after realising they’d never be able to get along long enough to make Circus World, he quickly tried to line up a replacement director.
From Capra’s perspective, the easiest way to rid himself of ‘The Duke’ was to find someone he knew the actor wouldn’t have any problems with. “I met Henry Hathaway, who said, ‘Why are you walking out on Duke Wayne?,'” he reflected. “I said, ‘Henry, I’m not walking. I’m running.'”
Capra suggested Hathaway for the role, knowing he was a friend of Wayne’s and they’d seamlessly slip back into a routine that wouldn’t cause any delays for Circus World. That also cost the production a cast member, with David Niven dropping out after a quick word from the now-unemployed director.
“When Capra told me what was happening, I realised this was going to be a typical John Wayne movie,” he grumbled. “Which was wonderful for his fans, but I would simply be superfluous.” Capra and Niven were out, Hathaway was in, and ‘The Duke’ ended up headlining one of his biggest-ever flops, for anyone who believes in karmic retribution.
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