Credit: Far Out / Monogram Pictures Corporation

The 1967 movie John Wayne nearly quit over a piece of jewellery: “I’m walking off the picture right now!”

Mon 11 May 2026 17:15, UK

Figuratively speaking, of course, John Wayne was fond of a bit of dick-measuring on set, but he hated it when another actor turned up for work brandishing a ruler of their own.

In most cases, when ‘The Duke’ made a movie, he was the top dog in almost every respect. John Ford could bring him down to size in an instant, sure, but in terms of scene partners, there weren’t many stars who could waltz onto a Wayne flick and play the ‘Golden Age’ icon at his own game.

Some were even wary of working with him because they knew of his reputation for throwing his weight around, bending entire productions to his whim, and occasionally undercutting a filmmaker’s authority to install himself as an uncredited ghost director, and few had the stones to pull him up for it.

Even though they weren’t the best of friends, which was putting it lightly, Wayne developed a grudging respect for Kirk Douglas eventually. They were cut from a similar cloth, as A-listers who also produced, but they approached the business from opposite directions, which inevitably caused some tension.

Despite that, they made three pictures together in three consecutive years, only for ‘The Duke’ to come the closest he ever got to reaching breaking point on the final flick of their 1965-1967 run that yielded In Harm’s Way, Cast a Giant Shadow, and The War Wagon, all because of a single piece of jewellery.

In the latter, ‘The Duke’ starred as a rancher recently released from a wrongful imprisonment, who returns to his small-town home to settle the score with the unscrupulous businessman who put him there. To get his just desserts, which means robbing the titular stagecoach, he teams up with Douglas’ gunslinger.

Wayne took top billing, as he always did, but his co-star wanted to make sure the audience’s eyes were drawn to him. To accomplish that, he came up with a wardrobe flourish for his character: ahead of his first scene as Lomax, he arrived sporting a black leather glove on his left hand, complete with a garish, oversized ring.

Ever the progressive sort, Wayne wasn’t impressed with Douglas’ pre-emptive attempt at scene-stealing, telling director Burt Kennedy, a Batjac regular, “If you don’t get that faggot ring off that sonofabitch, I’m walking off the picture right now!” Unwilling to face his leading man’s wrath on day one, he made a plea.

“Don’t you think the right is a little much, Kirk?” the filmmaker asked him. “No, I think it’s just fine,” Douglas replied. He wasn’t budging, and since ‘The Duke’ had no intention of following through on his pledge to quit The War Wagon over a glove-and-ring combination, he gritted his teeth and carried on.

Not without sidling up to his co-star and asking him about his character, “You’re going to play it in that effete fashion?” though. Once again, Douglas refused to back down, didn’t alter his performance, and in the version of the movie that was released in cinemas in May 1967, the ring is there for all to see.