‘Beau John’: The cinematic swansong John Wayne died before he could make
Even though he was becoming increasingly disenfranchised with what Hollywood was evolving into, John Wayne never lost his passion for acting. His last feature may have been released a full three years before his death in 1979, but ‘The Duke’ continued harbouring ambitions of making at least one more.
Don Siegel’s The Shootist served as a fitting exclamation mark on a legendary career, though, with art truly imitating life. Wayne starred as an ageing gunslinger diagnosed with cancer who shows no interest in dying quietly when the prospect of going out in a blaze of glory remains firmly on the table.
Considering that he ultimately passed away from stomach cancer and he’d already gone down in history as the marquee face of the western genre, perhaps it was meant to be. However, the star had another project lined up that would have seen him play a character unlike the ones who turned him into a household name, even if it didn’t come to pass.
‘The Duke’ purchased the rights to Buddy Atkinson’s novel Beau John before it had even been published, with the title nothing but pure coincidence. As a further indicator of how strongly he felt about the material, it was the first time his production company had gone out of its way to land the rights to turn a novel into a movie since True Grit, which won him the solitary Academy Award of his career for ‘Best Actor’.
It may have been a western in the broadest strokes, but Beau John was more light-hearted and comedic than Wayne’s repeated forays into the genre, with the story unfolding in rural Kentucky in the 1920s. The star would have played the patriarch of a close-knit family, and when he pitched it to Peter Bogdanovich as a potential directorial vehicle, he referred to the narrative as “kind of a half-western thing”.
The main selling point for Wayne was “the humour and the wonderful relationship between this grandfather, and the son, and the son-in-law, and the grandson”. Realising that time was running out to get into production, ‘The Duke’ confessed how “I hope to hell I live to do it”.
Bogdanovich didn’t end up committing to Beau John, but Wayne was as determined as ever. Having worked together on The Shootist, the actor had forged a close bond with Ron Howard, who made his directorial debut the following year on 1977’s Grand Theft Auto. Keen to reunite with such a towering figure in Hollywood, the Happy Days veteran was nonetheless sceptical it would come together.
Even though Wayne told him, “It’s you and me or it’s nobody,” Howard harboured doubts. Conceding Beau John “never got past the verbal stage,” the failing health of ‘The Duke’ ensured the filmmaker “was a little doubtful” the project would ever come to pass.
Studio executives were already growing increasingly concerned about his deteriorating condition in the face of a number of ailments, and things took a turn for the worse when Wayne was diagnosed with the stomach cancer that eventually killed him in January 1979, passing away just six months later. He knew time was of the essence and continued to hold out hope that Beau John would come to fruition, but it never did.
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