When John Wayne “almost chickened out” of finally playing against type
If there is one genre few cinephiles associate John Wayne with, it’s comedy. ‘The Duke’ was a man of action who dominated the western and war movie genres, after all, not someone who cracked many jokes between shooting fellow gunslingers.
Interestingly, though, this perception of Wayne’s career isn’t entirely accurate, because he made several romantic comedies, especially in his early years. His first taste of the genre came in 1943’s A Lady Takes a Chance, which cast him as a romantic suitor for a wealthy New York City socialite played by Jean Arthur, and he equipped himself fairly well. He took another spin with comedy in 1949’s satirical The Fighting Kentuckian and 1953’s Trouble Along the Way, but his most famous romcom was undoubtedly 1952’s The Quiet Man, a classic co-starring Maureen O’Hara.
However, while Wayne wasn’t a stranger to comedy, as many may have thought, it did take him a while to warm up to the genre. In fact, even after A Lady Takes a Chance, he took some convincing to make his second romcom: 1946’s Without Reservations. In John Wayne, The Man Behind the Myth, “I was a little hesitant about making a light comedy without any of the action scenes my audience expected. So I almost chickened out.”
Amazingly, Wayne wasn’t the only one who nearly backed out of the picture, which told the story of a marine who becomes enamoured with a beautiful writer making her way to Hollywood. In the movie, Wayne’s military man has no idea the woman he’s fallen for is actually a celebrity scribe, and comedy hijinks ensue. Claudette Colbert played the object of his affection, and she almost got cold feet about the movie, too, fearing it was too similar to It Happened One Night, for which she had won an Oscar a decade earlier.
Wayne, who was more insecure about his acting abilities than his ultra-confident, brash screen persona might lead people to believe, wondered if Colbert feared he didn’t have the same comedy chops as her It Happened co-star, Clark Gable. Producer Jesse L Lasky attempted to put both their fears to rest by telling them he was sure they’d be able to make a success of the movie, but they still wanted to stack the deck in their favour by enlisting one of the best directors of the day.
“Claudette and I insisted on an outstanding director to make sure it would be good, and he got Mervyn LeRoy,” Wayne revealed. LeRoy is best known as the producer and driving force behind The Wizard of Oz, but he also directed well-received pictures like 1931’s Little Caesar and They Won’t Forget. “I knew Mervyn and liked him, although we’d never worked together,” Wayne noted, “and I thought I’d like to do a movie with him, and he convinced me I should try light comedy.”
To LeRoy, the situation was much simpler than Wayne was making it out to be. He told Duke not to think about it from the perspective that he’d only made one comedy before, and instead, think about all the light comedy moments he’d played in his westerns and war movies. He had an aptitude for nailing those moments, which added light relief to serious pictures, so “why not do it for a whole movie?” Once he’d put Wayne’s fears to rest, LeRoy did the same with Colbert, and the movie was off to the races.
