Credit: Far Out / Warner Bros.

How John Wayne single-handedly stopped a riot in 1958: “Thank god no one was killed”

Thu 11 June 2026 13:58, UK

The defining creative partnership of John Wayne’s career blossomed while collaborating with a director who shared his first name, yielding several timeless classics. However, the dynamic shifted when John Wayne teamed up with another legendary director bearing the same name, resulting in a vastly different dynamic and outcome.

For all the acclaim both men carried into the project, their partnership quickly became a clash of equally strong personalities. Wayne was accustomed to exerting influence over productions, while Huston had little interest in compromising his artistic vision, creating friction almost from the moment cameras started rolling.

The decades-long association of ‘The Duke’ and John Ford is enshrined in cinema history as one of the most iconic, but even though he was already an 11-time Academy Award nominee and two-time winner when they ultimately crossed paths in a filmmaking capacity, Wayne and John Huston didn’t exactly see eye to eye.

As the architect of The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and The African Queen, to name but three, the prospect of Huston teaming up with Wayne for a sweeping adventure epic was about as sure-fire a success as movies come, on paper at least. In the end, though, The Barbarian and the Geisha bombed at the box office and failed to catch fire among critics.

There were constant tensions between the star and director, which boiled over to such an extent Wayne punched Huston on set, while they repeatedly disagreed over the direction of the story. Studio 20th Century Fox did, too, with the director even trying to have his name removed from the credits before The Barbarian and the Geisha‘s release after heavy re-edits ordered from above his station rendered it vastly different from his original vision.

The issues weren’t solely restricted to the bad blood between its leading lights, either, with ‘The Duke’ having to step in and stop a riot. In one scene from the film, Townsend burns down a cholera-infested village and fills a boat with dead bodies to push it out onto the water and set it alight. However, a combination of a snapped anchor line and strong winds sent the vessel straight into the fishing boats pivotal to the livelihood of the local population, causing the fuel tanks to explode.

What had begun as a routine day of filming suddenly became a genuine crisis. Beyond the damage caused to the fishing fleet, the accident threatened the relationship between the production and the local community, placing the entire shoot in jeopardy.

“A lot of people were knocked unconscious, and thank god no one was killed,” Huston recalled, but the lack of casualties had no bearing on the villagers becoming so enraged by the American interlopers causing havoc they started a riot and launched an attack on the crew.

Taking credit for diffusing the situation, Michael Munn’s book John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth found ‘The Duke’ in hagiographic form when relaying his involvement in the de-escalation. “The rioters saw me, and I guess they liked John Wayne enough to calm down,” he said. “I promised all the fishermen that I would make good their losses out of my own pocket if the studio wouldn’t.”

The promise of remuneration had the desired effect, then, with Wayne instrumental in single-handedly stopping a riot in its tracks before things got even more out of hand.

While The Barbarian and the Geisha remains a largely forgotten entry in both men’s filmographies, its chaotic production has become almost as memorable as the film itself. Between creative battles, on-set confrontations, studio interference, and a near-disastrous riot, the project serves as a reminder that even the biggest stars and most celebrated directors are not immune to spectacularly troubled productions.