How John Ford sabotaged John Wayne’s career: “It was just unforgivable”
Hollywood is a cut-throat business, even in the modern age of filmmaking.
Whatever rivalries, feuds, and grudges are present in the modern day, however, are no match for the routine malice of Hollywood’s golden age; something that the Duke himself, John Wayne, found out the hard way.
Unlike the vast majority of actors who broke into Hollywood in the 21st century, John Wayne never truly intended to move into the film industry. He didn’t spend his childhood being moved around to auditions or joining his school drama club; the Duke’s legendary film career arrived almost by accident. After a broken collarbone brought an end to his college football career, Wayne was hired as a prop boy by the filmmaker John Ford, setting him on an unlikely path to becoming one of Hollywood’s defining stars.
It was Ford who gave Wayne his ‘big break’ in that sense. Beginning in the 1920s, Ford gave the budding young actor a handful of minor film roles, which eventually led to much larger roles, like that of Ringo Kid in 1939’s Stagecoach. A breakout role for the actor, Stagecoach brought Wayne firmly onto the Hollywood radar, leading other filmmakers to start taking an interest in his career. Raoul Walsh, for instance, cast Wayne in the western thriller Dark Command in the wake of his performance in Ford’s classic.
That role in Walsh’s western proved to be a key moment in Wayne’s career, elevating the actor to a higher level than simply being the most available actor in John Ford’s arsenal. Although Ford had initially supported Walsh in using Wayne’s acting talents a decade earlier, for The Big Trail, the filmmaker wasn’t overly pleased with the idea of the actor moving on to bigger and better things.
“Duke Wayne loved Ford, and I’m sure that from time to time, Ford loved Duke,” fellow actor Henry Ford once shared, per Michael Munn’s book John Wayne: The Man Behind The Myth. “But Ford was just so jealous when Raoul Walsh beefed up Duke’s career after Stagecoach [with Dark Command].”
So, when Wayne’s work with other filmmakers began to dry up, Ford cast him in various minor roles, doomed projects, and terrible B-movies.
As Fonda recalled, “It was just unforgivable, and I know that Ford made him pay for it by letting him stew in films that really kept Duke out of the so-called A-list of stars for a long time.”
Elsewhere in Munn’s book, Fonda continued, “There’s no doubt in my mind that Ford could have helped Duke anytime he wanted. But he didn’t. He let him suffer in those B Westerns for years.”
Wayne and Ford shared a great deal in common, in terms of their brash, hard-headed approach to Hollywood, and perhaps why the pair stuck together for so many years. Whether or not Ford was truly punishing Wayne by casting him in a lot of dismal roles from the 1940s all the way into the 1960s, the actor still remained an icon of Hollywood’s golden age.
What’s more, Wayne managed to have the last laugh. His 1969 Oscar-winning appearance in True Grit forming an ultimate highlight of his career, long after many filmmakers had written him off, and long after John Ford had attempted to sabotage his career.
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