The infamous line John Wayne didn’t want to say: “Blame the assholes who made the decision”
Apocrypha can be a hell of a thing, especially when the subject isn’t around to clear the air. Having been dead for almost half a century, it’s not like John Wayne can do anything to prevent urban legends from circulating, although what is true is that he didn’t even want to say the line that led to one of the most famous.
‘The Duke’ was already borderline mythological before he’d passed away, with the actor towering over the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood as one of its most famous faces. Everyone knew who John Wayne was, they knew what a John Wayne movie looked like, and an audience would almost always be guaranteed to shell over their hard-earned cash to see the next one on the big screen.
He was very protective of his image both onscreen and off, though, which is why he didn’t pimp himself out for too many cameos. When he did, he always had a reason. He played William Sherman in an episode of Wagon Train because he was close friends with Ward Bond, and John Ford was directing the episode.
Wayne made a similarly fleeting appearance in George Stevens’ biblical epic, The Greatest Story Ever Told, because he was offered a lot of money to do so. Bizarrely, a living legend was given one line of dialogue as a Roman soldier, which gave rise to a widely-held belief that ‘The Duke’ did something truly idiotic.
As the (untrue) story goes, Stevens was unhappy with the star’s delivery of, “He was truly the son of God,” so he asked him to say it again, this time with “more awe.” Taking it literally, he said, “Aw, he was truly the son of God.” It’s a cute anecdote, but it never happened. In fact, in the scene in the film, Wayne doesn’t say anything at all, but it’s hard to notice because he’s cast in shadow when he says the line.
He didn’t even want to say it in the first place, which he made perfectly clear when he showed up for the required ADR session. “George decided he needed the centurion to say the line after all, and he got Wayne into a sound studio, and he wasn’t in costume, and he just had a microphone, and George asked him to deliver the line,” co-star Roddy McDowall remembered. “Wayne told him, ‘I can’t do this.'”
“George said, ‘You’re an actor, aren’t you? That’s what you’ve been trying to prove all these years?'” McDowall elaborated. “And Wayne said, ‘I’ve got nothing to react to, so if I screw up, don’t blame me’. And he was right. He couldn’t give the line what it needed. You can’t blame Wayne, you can’t blame George; you can only blame the assholes who made the decision to use Wayne.”
As disappointing as it is to know that the “Aw, he was truly the son of God” tale isn’t true, it isn’t as disappointing as the way ‘The Duke’ delivered the actual line. It’s one of the most stilted, lifeless things you’re ever likely to hear come out of an actor’s mouth, and knowing that it was only added in post-production because the director changed his mind at the last moment, it makes sense.
Wayne was too much of a professional to phone in a brief soundbite if he was there in the flesh, but speaking it into a microphone long after the fact wasn’t something he wanted to do, and you can tell.
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