The movie John Wayne hated with a passion: “Let’s just get this piece of shit over with”
John Wayne was never one to mince his words. The actor, who lashed out at everyone from on-set colleagues to Native American activists, has a long and highly controversial history of blurting out his often bigoted viewpoints. This means his name now carries a legacy that is both unsavoury and complex but also undeniably pioneering in a cinematic sense.
So, in 1947, when Wayne starred in Tycoon, a sweeping romantic drama that saw him step outside his natural wheelhouse of westerns and war movies, he hated it. This wasn’t the sort of All-American hero who welcomed change easily. However, he also didn’t appreciate being hassled on-set by his leading lady’s husband, a famous baseball player who didn’t like the idea of his wife snuggling up to The Duke on camera.
When Wayne originally became attached to the film, based on a 1934 novel by Charles Elbert Scoggins, his leading lady was supposed to be the beautiful Irish star Maureen O’Hara, with whom he’d later star so famously in The Quiet Man. In Tycoon, Wayne would play an engineer who goes to South America to build a railroad tunnel for a rich industrialist, but things get complicated when he falls in love with the wealthy magnate’s daughter. Unfortunately, at the last minute, RKO Pictures decided to deploy O’Hara in Sinbad the Sailor instead, and the industrialist’s daughter role was up for grabs again.
O’Hara was replaced on Tycoon by Laraine Day, the star of films like The Bad Man and The Locket. She had married baseball icon Leo Durocher barely a month before cameras rolled, and in later years, would become known as the ‘First Lady of Baseball’. In fact, she made significant sacrifices in her career to support Durocher as he managed giant teams like the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, and Chicago Cubs.
“Before I married Leo, I wanted to win an Academy Award,” she famously said. “Now all I want is for us to win a pennant. My work is secondary.”
During the Tycoon shoot, Day and Durocher were newlyweds, and this caused some friction, especially when Durocher kept showing up during filming to stare daggers at Wayne from off-camera. According to co-star Anthony Quinn, “He didn’t like to see his wife being held and kissed by John Wayne. Every day, Durocher sat and watched, and when it got to a love scene, he glared at Duke.”
Durocher clearly wanted to intimidate Wayne and make him think twice about trying any funny business with his new bride. What he didn’t know was that Wayne was having a tough time in his own relationship, and thought the movie they were making was garbage, so the last thing he was thinking about was putting the moves on Day.
“I think Duke just thought, ‘What the hell, I’m not going to get him all upset by being all over his wife, and so the love scenes lacked a certain passion,” Quinn explained. “I said, ‘Duke, don’t worry about him. You’re a pro. Do your job.’
Quinn claimed Wayne then fixed him with a stony gaze, and deadpanned, “Tony, I got enough problems in my own marriage without getting Laraine into any rift in hers. Let’s just get this piece of shit over with.” An amused Quinn must have agreed with Wayne’s damning assessment of the film, because he confirmed, “That’s what the film was. Total shit.”
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