The reason James Caan called John Wayne a “piece of work”
Following his effort as Sonny Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, James Caan established himself as one of American cinema’s all-time greats, but at one point, he was still the new kid on the block. An early piece of Caan’s professional career saw him rub shoulders with another notable Hollywood name, John Wayne.
The film in question was 1966’s El Dorado, directed by Howard Hawks, loosely based on Harry Brown’s novel The Stars in Their Courses, also starring Robert Mitchum. El Dorado focuses on a gunslinger who helps out his drunken sheriff old friend and a rancher to prevent his water from being stolen.
The movie was one of the first that Caan had ever been in and was certainly one of the first moments that he found himself next to such huge cinema figures like Mitchum, Hawks and Wayne. Interestingly, Caan had conflicted feelings about The Duke, a level of annoyance but also a deep respect.
“He was a piece of work,” Caan once said of his El Dorado co-star. “It took a little while because he tried to get you intimidated. We became pretty close, but only because he knew I was like his half-assed stuntman, and that’s what he liked. He would really try to intimidate you.”
Evidently, Wayne wanted to lay down the law on a movie set and show the younger actors who was the boss. Caan, in just his fifth movie role, was starstruck by Wayne, noting, “First it was him and me, and I come out of the neighbourhood playhouse, and I’m looking at this guy acts, and I’m like, I can’t believe that I’m listening to this. The reality was I’m smiling.”
When Robert Mitchum saw the dailies of El Dorado, he also noticed how happy Caan seemed to be working next to the likes of Wayne and himself. “I had a lot of fun with those guys,” Caan said of his impressions working with two of the most famous American actors of all time. “Of course, I had to wear lifts this big between those two guys.”
As for Hawks, Caan also had a deep admiration for the iconic director, explaining, “He was his own guy. Nobody told Howard what to do. He’d go and write an eighth of a page in his trailer, and we’d just ride horses and wait for him to come out. Paramount wasn’t going to say nothing.”
While Caan was certainly in dreamland when it came to one of his early roles and his taste of the big time, Wayne wasn’t about to let things go to the young actor’s head and decided to play a little prank on Caan to show him who the real actors were.
Caan explained, “The Duke said, ‘Listen, kid, when he yells action, I want you to turn around, take a step and give me that look you give me.’ I had no idea what he was talking about.” Every time Caan did as Wayne told him, Hawks would scream cut and ask Caan what the hell he was doing, but Wayne would always give him the same advice. Caan had been walking out of the shot at Wayne’s advice.
Eventually, the shot went on so many times that Caan “came close” to hitting him, but thankfully, Mitchum stopped him from doing so. “He knew what he was doing,” Caan laughed before explaining that he would also try to wind up The Duke. “It became you could screw up who. He was like a twelve-year-old kid, The Duke.”
