John Wayne’s childish feud with the man who launched his career: “He got me so damn mad”
His name has become so deeply etched into Hollywood history that it’s nearly impossible to imagine a version of cinema history without John Wayne as one of its most iconic stars, but the gradual shift from Marion Morrison to ‘The Duke’ wouldn’t have happened without one industry executive.
Wayne had been acting for almost a decade and a half before John Ford’s Stagecoach set him on the path towards legendary status, and he considered quitting more than once. He was cast as dead bodies, hired to play a singing cowboy despite being unable to carry a tune, and placed in roles he knew he was ill-suited for, but was powerless to prevent under his ironclad contract.
While his most famous filmmaking collaborator’s classic western is generally pinpointed as the moment the actor came into his own, it was Herb Yates who initially got the ball rolling. The founder and president of Republic Pictures signed Wayne to his upstart outfit in 1935, the year it was founded, and they’d remain in business together for decades.
Republic backed Wayne’s first Academy Award-nominated performance in The Sands of Iwo Jima, and many of the 30+ pictures they made together were westerns, which provided ‘The Duke’ with a platform to refine his acting skills, hone his signature persona, and become the genre’s biggest name, bar none.
Yates was even instrumental in Wayne’s breakthrough turn in Stagecoach, with the star’s agent convincing the industry mogul to loan him out to rivals United Artists, which worked out in everyone’s best interests when he returned from Ford’s film as a much bigger and more valuable name than ever before.
It was a mutually beneficial relationship, albeit one that eventually frosted over. When ‘The Duke’ set his sights on The Alamo as his feature-length directorial debut, Yates was apprehensive to say the least. On the set of Ford’s The Quiet Man, Wayne stepped in to direct several scenes, and the Republic boss just happened to be visiting the set, which the actor thought would stand him in good stead.
“I was already in discussions with Herbert Yates about The Alamo, which I was going to direct come hell or high water,” he told Michael Munn. “I got to direct a scene where Maureen walked up from the beach, and when Yates saw it, I said, ‘You see, I know how to direct’. The son of a bitch said, ‘Maureen O’Hara walking up from the beach is not the same as filming the battle of the Alamo.”
“I always said he had no taste, and I was right,” Wayne continued. “I knew where to put the camera, and I knew how to work with the lighting cameraman, and all there was to know. But Yates knew nothing about filmmaking.” Having finally grown tired of being belittled by the man who launched his career and kept hinting that he wouldn’t let him helm The Alamo, ‘The Duke’ took things to literal, childish heights.
“He got me so damn mad,” he admitted. “I got Ward Bond to climb up a tall water tower with me with a piece of slate with the words ‘Fuck Herb Yates’ scratched on it.” Funnily enough, Wayne left Republic in 1952, the same year The Quiet Man was released, to found his own production company, largely to bring The Alamo to fruition. When it finally arrived in 1960, United Artists was in charge, and Yates was nowhere to be found.
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