John Wayne’s sole, calamitous attempt at being a stage actor: “Duke, you are a disgrace!”
The majority of Hollywood’s finest and most iconic actors either learned their craft on the stage or dabbled in theatre once they’d made it big, but John Wayne wasn’t one for treading the boards.
He was devoutly against the idea of appearing on television, although he’d make very rare exceptions when his closest friends and confidants were involved, but at no point in his career did he ever perform in a play in front of a live audience, and only once did he even consider it.
Of course, having a theatre background isn’t obligatory when movie stardom is the end goal. ‘The Duke’ didn’t have one, neither did Clint Eastwood, and in the modern era, you can add Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and countless others to that number, and they’ve all come to call the A-list home.
In the 1930s, when he was still in the awkward period between The Big Trail and Stagecoach, where he was a prolific actor but not a big deal in the industry’s eyes, Wayne’s buddy, Paul Fix, told him that he’d written a play. Fix, who was instrumental in turning Marion Morrison into John Wayne, had written a piece called Red Sky at Evening, and he knew exactly who he wanted to play the leading role.
Driven partly by a desire to impress his first wife, Josie, the daughter of a Panamanian consul who travelled in some well-to-do circles, and to prove himself as a serious actor, ‘The Duke’ was game to take to the stage, until he quickly realised that reciting lines in front of a camera was a whole different ballgame to doing it in front of a live audience.
With Sally Blane, the younger sister of the legendary Loretta Young, as the female lead, rehearsals started in a theatre on Los Angeles’ Figueroa Street that Fix had hired. After two weeks, it was time for the first dress rehearsal, with hundreds of friends, family, and film industry figures set to be in attendance. At this point, though, Wayne started absolutely shitting himself.
To calm his nerves, Wayne’s brother, Bob, appeared backstage with a bottle of whiskey. By the time the curtain came up, they’d necked the whole thing. Blane smashed a prop vase over his head as the scene dictated, only for Fix to discover that his star had deviated from the script, slurring, “Where am I?” as his introductory line.
In fairness, the character was supposed to act dazed and confused, having just been bashed over the skull, but it didn’t take Fix long to figure out something else was afoot. “I realised the son of a bitch was out of his mind,” he reflected. “I wanted to kill him. I went back and told Gordon Oliver, the stage manager, to bring down the curtain. Duke was still onstage.”
Too drunk to even bullshit his way through, Fix recalled “a shrill voice in the audience yelling, ‘Duke, you are a disgrace! You are just a disgrace!” That voice belonged to Josie, and that was the end of her husband’s career on the stage. Two weeks of rehearsals, a couple of minutes of a dress rehearsal, and that was that: Red Sky at Evening didn’t even make it as far as an opening performance.
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