The method actor John Wayne couldn’t stand working with: “Get the goddamn words out!”
The notion of John Wayne holding a deep-seated disdain for method acting shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, even if his hatred of the approach is as oxymoronic as it is ironic.
Once Marlon Brando came along and ushered in a new era of performance, with others following in his wake by immersing themselves into character and refusing to break it until their work was done, ‘The Duke’ was left scratching his head and wondering why the hell it was even necessary.
A decent point, and one that many others would agree with, and he held Brando personally responsible, suggesting that “they’re all copying that poor guy.” That’s not untrue, but there is a bit of throwing stones in glass houses going on, since you could argue that Wayne was among the greatest method actors ever.
After all, once he ditched Marion Morrison and became John Wayne, he lived that persona 24 hours a day for the rest of his life. He spent more than 40 years as ‘John Wayne’, a fictional creation he’d devised to separate himself from the rest of the aspiring actors he was trying to edge in front of, and if keeping up that façade until his death isn’t some top-tier method acting, then what is?
He’d have argued against it, but he wasn’t averse to siphoning off some of its practices, either. When he made The Searchers, Wayne said it was easy to get into the mindset of Ethan Edwards hunting down and killing Native Americans because he “thought of the Apaches not as Indians but as the communists who were trying to kill me.”
However, when he was paired with a real method actor, his short fuse revealed itself. In 1961’s The Comancheros, a tricky production to begin with, his Jake Cutter fell in with Ina Balin’s Pilar Graile. Originally a New York stage actor, she was steeped in the ways of the method, and as someone who had no time for such bullshit, Wayne grew increasingly frustrated.
On paper, the pair’s first scene is as simple as it gets. Balin says, “They’ve got my father,” and Wayne replies with, “Let’s go.” Two lines, six words, and that’s that. She still wanted to rehearse, insisting that it was “because I’m from the stage and I’m used to rehearsals,” but ‘The Duke’ wasn’t having any of it.
“Let me tell you something, little lady,” he unleashed. “I’ve worked with stage people before. I’ve worked with Miss Geraldine Page of the New York stage. Best goddamn part she ever had: Hondo.” That’s funny in itself, because he fucking hated working with her, and couldn’t comprehend how she’d managed to win an Academy Award nomination for the film. Stuart Whitman, the third of The Comancheros‘ central trio, had a front-row seat to Wayne’s indignation.
“Shooting with him was easy, although Ina Balin worked from the method, and that pissed him off,” Whitman recalled. “Before each shot, she’d dig down and get emotional, and he was a little impatient: ‘Get the goddamn words out!'” She did manage to get them out, but her meticulous preparations only served to wind ‘The Duke’ even tighter, solidifying his hatred of method acting.
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