Thanks, but no thanks: when John Wayne tried to break up Laurel and Hardy
As one of the most forceful personalities in Hollywood, both on and offscreen, John Wayne wasn’t an actor associated with sharing the spotlight. When ‘The Duke’ starred in a movie, he would be the headline attraction, and everybody else played second fiddle.
However, things could have turned out very differently had one-half of a legendary comedic duo accepted Wayne’s offer to become his “permanent comic sidekick”, which had the potential to drive a wedge between Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and dramatically reduce the amount of time the pair had to continue carving out their own bespoke brand of cinematic histrionics.
Hardy only made five films without Laurel during his entire career, and one of them was with Wayne. Of course, the legendary star knew a thing or two himself about dedicating great swathes of his professional life to a favoured collaborator, so it was only fitting that it was John Ford who ended up laying the table.
The Duke and Hardy were already friends, having grown close while performing in a touring production of What Price Glory?, which was overseen by Ford. When Wayne was on the hunt for a sparring partner who would help him elevate 1949’s comedically-inclined adventure The Fighting Kentuckian, the portly and moustachioed performer was at the very top of his wish list.
However, Hardy initially turned down the chance to play Willie Paine opposite Wayne’s John Breen due to his concerns over audiences thinking he’d gone his separate ways from Laurel were he to effectively cheat on him with another high-profile Hollywood fixture.
Ultimately, though, Wayne wore down his resistance, and he agreed to make a very rare outing without his usual other half. Laurel was ill at the time, so he was unable to commit to any picture with or without Hardy, which worked out a little too well for Wayne, who had such a blast working with one of them that he extended an invitation that could have changed the course of history.
Impressed with his performance and the chemistry generated between them, The Duke gauged Hardy’s interest in becoming a permanent fixture of his onscreen arsenal, prospectively setting the stage for the unlikely partnership to star together in a string of films that could have made them a pairing along the same lines as Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, Adam Sandler and pretty much everybody in his contacts list, and of course, Laurel and Hardy.
The unforgettable pairing had not appeared together on screens since 1945’s The Bullfighters, so Wayne was well within his rights to see if he could muscle in on Laurel’s turf after The Fighting Kentuckian. He was ultimately thwarted when Laurel’s health improved, and they resumed their partnership less than two years later when Atoll K was released in 1951.
That being said, the movie would turn out to be their final film together as a duo, with Hardy’s own health issues slowing his output down to a crawl before he passed away in 1957. The production of What Price Glory? that initially brought them together featured three of Wayne’s most famous regulars in Ford, Ward Bond, and Maureen O’Hara, but he was unsuccessful in convincing Hardy to become the fourth.
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