“I’d been told horror stories”: John Wayne’s only British director was terrified of working with him
Having a reputation can be a blessing or a curse in Hollywood, but when it came to John Wayne, he didn’t care what anybody thought of him because he was only interested in looking out for number one.
‘The Duke’ was in the rare position of having huge amounts of creative control over his career, whether that was hand-picking the writers or directors that he worked with, bringing his friends in as supporting cast members, or ordering on-the-spot rewrites for scenes he didn’t agree with.
It’s something that only the biggest stars in the industry can get away with, and since he was one of the biggest stars in history, Wayne got away with it. He wasn’t regarded as a tyrant by any means, but anyone who signed on to work on one of his pictures knew that he wouldn’t take any shit or suffer any fools, and that it was his way or the highway.
Naturally, that was enough to make some filmmakers trepidatious, especially when they’d heard so many tales of ‘The Duke’ running roughshod over filmmakers who were either too weak-willed to stand up to him or were happy to cede control to the superstar to ensure that things between them didn’t reach boiling point.
By the mid-1970s, Douglas Hickcox was hardly a wet-behind-the-ears rookie. He’d been working as an assistant or second unit director for over 20 years, and had more than a decade of experience as a feature filmmaker in his own right. Still, when Wayne crossed the pond for the first time and touched down on British soil to shoot Brannigan, he was understandably nervous at the prospect of meeting an icon.
“I thought I might be in for a tough time because he is… well, he’s John Wayne!” the director confessed. “And I’d been told all these horror stories about how he’s supposed to be a bully.” In his defence, there was plenty of evidence to support that theory, so he was well within his rights to be a little afraid.
Wayne had made life a misery for several directors, more than a handful of co-stars, a smattering of producers, and even a couple of studio heads, many of whom were much higher up the hierarchal ladder than Hickcox had ever been, and if the two didn’t get along, it was going to be a tough couple of months.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and ‘The Duke’ loved his time in London. “There’s been none of that,” he relievedly explained. “Fortunately, we’ve got his son Michael with us, and he’s a good man, and if there’s anything that Duke’s upset about, Michael deals with him. I have a lot of liking and respect for Duke and Michael.”
Brannigan was far from a classic, and it won’t be remembered as one of Hickox’s best, with Quentin Tarantino and Burt Reynolds holding him in high esteem as one of the most underrated directors there’s ever been, but at least he managed to get through the production without ending up on Wayne’s bad side.
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