The moment John Wayne knocked out Frank Sinatra’s bodyguard
No other icon of cinema has ensconced itself with such conservative cultural affection as the immortal western star John Wayne.
And he was conservative. Representing a paragon of hypermasculine ideals and evoking the mythos of the American frontier, ‘The Duke’ became a lauded embodiment of the political right’s fetish for ‘rugged individualism’. Off-screen, Wayne would throw himself behind the McCarthyite paranoia around communism’s supposed Hollywood infiltration, vocally supporting the House Un-American Activities Committee’s blacklisting efforts against left-leaning actors and directors.
Years later, Wayne would reveal candidly in a 1971 Playboy interview his support for white supremacy, backing the Vietnam War, a loathing of the welfare state, as well as contempt for the anti-establishment dissidence that had exploded during the counterculture.
While shifting across the 1970s, Frank Sinatra was otherwise a staunch Democrat for much of his life. An ardent champion of the progressive Vice President Henry Wallace, accusations of socialist sympathies dogged ‘Ol Blue Eyes’ for much of his life. A staunch opponent of Jim Crow, Sinatra was well-known for challenging Nevada’s segregation policies across the hotels and casinos he performed or frequented, and played Civil Rights benefit shows with Martin Luther King.
Naturally, The Searchers star didn’t harbour much affection for the Rat Pack leader, allegedly not above the odd sparring words over the years wrought from their political differences. Things came to a heated clash one night in the 1960s when the pair were both staying in the same Las Vegas hotel.
According to Carol Lea Mueller’s 2007 book The Quotable John Wayne: The Grit and Wisdom of an American Icon, Sinatra was hosting one of his famous parties involving much drinking, smoking, singing, and noise. Unfortunately, staying at the residence while shooting a movie, Wayne found himself staying in the room above, in desperate need of sleep.
Calling Sinatra’s room to ease up on the commotion, the conviviality was dialled down for a while, until the party began kicking off again in earnest. Calling again to no answer, Wayne finally lost his patience.
Reportedly, Wayne marched downstairs and vigorously knocked on Sinatra’s door. Once open, Wayne fired off a final warning to keep the noise down. Sinatra remained nonchalant, but his minder stepped up and quipped, “Nobody talks to Mr Sinatra that way”. Looking at the bodyguard, Wayne turned as if to leave before taking an almighty swing and knocking Sinatra’s security to the ground. For the rest of the night, the roaring party tentatively carried on little more than a polite together, and Wayne caught his beauty sleep.
Feelings warmed over the years, however. Perhaps owing to Sinatra’s rightward drift in later life, the pair became friends, even enjoying socials in Wayne’s Newport Beach home in California. “They were buddies,” Sinatra’s fourth wife, Barbara Marx, recounted in 2014’s John Wayne: The Life and Legend. “I don’t know why, because they were completely different in almost everything. But they liked each other a great deal, and they kidded a lot”.
So close, that apparently, when visiting Wayne in the hospital as he was suffering stomach cancer, Sinatra was “devastated” and close to tears at witnessing the sorry state his old nemesis turned pal had wound up in.
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