Marlon Brando once explained the magic of John Wayne: “He made you feel good”
Actors don’t have to be friends or even know each other to dish out a little mutual appreciation, with Marlon Brando taking it upon himself to celebrate the magic of John Wayne despite the pair not exactly being the best of buddies.
It was a two-way street, though, with ‘The Duke’ using Brando as an example of everything wrong with acting at the tail-end of his career when On the Waterfront launched him to superstardom and ensured that until the end of time, any aspiring thespian would look to the method playbook for inspiration.
They flirted with the same parts on occasion, too, although Brando did at least manage to dodge a bullet when he declined the opportunity to headline The Conqueror. Not just one of Wayne’s worst movies, the alarming number of cancer cases to emerge in the aftermath of the production potentially paints it as the single deadliest shoot in cinema history.
Wayne didn’t care much for Brando’s politics, either, with one of Hollywood’s staunchest anti-communism proponents taking umbrage with The Godfather star declining his Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ and sending Sacheen Littlefeather to the stage to accept in his absence, so there clearly wasn’t any love lost between them.
And yet, even when he was passing judgment on his own propensity for tearing down the very profession that gave him his livelihood, Brando couldn’t bring himself to say a bad word about ‘The Duke’, his persona, and how the mythology he’d created around himself became so pivotal to the American cinematic experience.
“I’ve always tried to run acting down, tried to be very tough about it, and I don’t know why,” Brando mused to Shana Alexander. “It’s a perfectly reasonable way to make your living. You’re not stealing money, and you’re entertaining people. Everybody has had the experience of feeling miserable, of feeling the world is coming to an end.”
It was a surprisingly self-reflective moment from the notoriously publicity-shy Brando, even more so when he directly invoked ‘The Duke’. “And you go watch John Wayne ride across the prairie and see the grass blowing and the clouds, and he grabs the girl, and they ride off into the sunset,” he said. “You went in there feeling awful, and you come out feeling good.”
The star wasn’t even referring to any film in particular but Wayne as a whole. “He made you feel good,” Brando reflected. “That’s not bad. That’s not a bad thing to do in life at all.” They were never going to sit down for dinner and drinks. Still, even though they were two polar opposites who each changed the industry in their own very different ways, it was Wayne who Brando singled out as being the epitome of how cinema’s escapism can instantly wash away any negativity being carried in by the audience.
