John Wayne hated watching his own movies until one thing changed: “He had trouble”
He’s one of the biggest names in Hollywood history and, no matter your views on the person behind the moniker, it is hard to ignore the iconic nature of John Wayne. A serial performer, rarely shying away from his preferred position as the gunslinging hero of the adventure, Wayne is one of the foremost names in the earliest moments of global cinema. For millions, he became the archetypal American.
As time has passed, the more divisive elements of Wayne’s character off-screen have become hard to ignore. He not only regularly spent time trying to oust people from Hollywood for having left-leaning views, but he was also flagrantly against movies that shed light on homosexual experiences and was has been routinely considered a racist for his outburst towards Sacheen Littlefeather as she appeared at the Oscars for Marlon Brando to reject his award for ‘Best Actor’.
On-screen, however, Wayne was often pitched as the ultimate hero. Across a host of movies, Wayne operated as the story’s true moral compass and deliverer of justice, making him one of the most-watched men in American cinema. However, Wayne struggled to enjoy his pictures until he perfected his now-iconic walk.
While Wayne was able to command the set, he hated watching the final product. He would regularly recoil from them on the screen, but it was soon sorted out of necessity as he approached one of his earliest leading roles in 1935. He and his The Desert Trail co-star, Paul Fix, had identified that Wayne had one major issue when it came to performing: he struggled to deliver on the physical side of acting.
“Duke was bright, and you could teach him, and he’d quickly learn,” Fix said, according to Michael Munn’s John Wayne: The Man Behind The Myth. “He had trouble with the physical side of acting, like how to move and what to do with your hands. He said he hated watching himself on the screen because he always looked so stiff.”
“I told him to try pointing his toes into the ground as he walked,” Fix continued, “and when he did that, his shoulders and hips sort of swung.” The walk would become one of the most iconic in cinema history, with almost every child in the land able to deliver some version of it when asked to walk like a cowboy. However, it would also give Wayne one more sincere direction: he had to watch his own movies to get better.
Fix continued: “He practised that walk until it looked so graceful on the screen that I told him he had to watch his films so he could see what he was doing. I told him, ‘You can’t learn what to do if you don’t watch yourself on the screen.’ And in a short time he had that distinctive rolling walk down perfect.”
It would cure Wayne of his inability to watch himself on screen, but only for a short while. Soon, he would turn his head away from his earlier picture for more vane reasons. “Occasionally,” he confessed. “When there’s a real old movie like Wake of the Red Witch on the other night. I looked at that until I fall asleep.” Unfortunately, the downside was that he wasn’t a huge fan of what he saw. “It’s kind of irritating to see,” he said. “I was a good-looking 40-year-old man, and suddenly, I can look over here, and there’s this 71-year-old. You kind of think, ‘God, it was pretty wonderful then.’”
The ability to watch oneself as an actor is pivotal in learning how to be better in almost every aspect of your job. There is no doubt that without that advice, and the walk that accompanied it, Wayne would have never become the icon he is.
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