The character John Wayne admitted was “rather dull”
For the most part, John Wayne tended to play thinly veiled extensions of the same archetypal character, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing when he spent decades as one of the biggest draws in Hollywood by doing just that.
Having carefully curated his persona and used it as the springboard to a legendary career, very rarely did ‘The Duke’ stray from the path he’d intentionally carved out for himself. Whenever he took top billing in a movie, it was to be expected that he’d play a laconic, square-jawed, and stoic hero who obeyed a strict moral code and very rarely showed any signs of internal or external weakness.
The results can’t be argued with, seeing as he racked up countless classics and a cacophony of box office success stories at the peak of his powers, but even by his own admission, not every protagonist he played was particularly memorable. Ironically, though, the one he singled out for scorn wasn’t the sort of character ‘The Duke’ could typically be found embodying.
Director Edward Ludwig’s adaptation of Garland Roark’s novel Wake of the Red Witch hit cinemas in March 1949 and went on to become a box office hit. Wayne takes top billing as Captain Ralls, a ruthless seafarer and captain of the titular vessel, the flagship of the shipping company Batjak Limited.
The film must have made an impression on ‘The Duke’ in one way or another, considering he founded his Batjac Productions label several years later and lifted the title from the fictional outfit for inspiration, but a captain who avoids a charge of misconduct for intentionally destroying a ship carrying a multi-million dollar cargo of gold bullion didn’t stand out to the star as one of his most memorable.
In an interview with Playboy, Wayne was found looking back at the assortment of characters he’d played over the years and decreed that audiences “kind of consider me an older friend, somebody believable and down-to-earth”. That being said, he did refer to Ralls as “that rather dull character”, so the adventure epic evidently wasn’t one he held among his finest work.
Describing the protagonist as “a nice enough fella sober but bestial when he was drunk,” ‘The Duke’ concluded that Ralls was “certainly a rebel”. Still, that wasn’t enough to prevent him from admonishing his own work in a way because the best and most talented actors have a way of taking characters who may seem “rather dull” on the page and transforming them into something unforgettable.
Wake of the Red Witch is hardly one of Wayne’s most famous films, though, a status reflected in Wayne’s appraisal of his own performance. ‘The Duke’ was many things, but dull was rarely one of them, which speaks volumes about how heavily he was invested in the production.
