The “irritating” movie that left John Wayne “hurt, mad, and goddamned disappointed”
There was no shortage of movies that John Wayne abhorred for one reason or another, but there was also one picture that irritated him to no end for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with their content.
Befitting someone who embodied Americana every time they were onscreen and would have probably bled red, white, and blue if their characters were even susceptible to any form of injury, any film that went against the values ‘The Duke’ held dear was likely to be savaged by the ‘Golden Age’ icon.
That became increasingly prevalent when the ‘New Hollywood’ era kicked into high gear, with Wayne lambasting how his beloved industry had become so preoccupied with sex and violence. Sometimes, you’ve got to just sit back and roll with the times, but the face of the classic western wasn’t having it.
From boundary-pushing dramas to adulterous subplots, via moving and modern depictions of homosexuality and crass humour, he didn’t like the lay of the land as he entered his veteran years. ‘The Duke’ being angry at the inner workings of the business was nothing new, though, since he’d been known to rage against the machine as far back as the early 1950s.
Bullfighter and the Lady was the first time Wayne had ever produced a movie that he didn’t star in, making it a flagship moment for the imaginatively named John Wayne Productions. However, since it was a Republic Pictures effort, that meant he had to deal with his ultimate arch-nemesis, Herbert Yates.
Being the spiteful fella that he was, even though having the name of a superstar in the credits could potentially entice audiences to see the romantic drama without the lure of ‘The Duke’ himself, Yates decided to remove Wayne’s name from the picture without bothering to tell him first. Needless to say, he wasn’t thrilled.
“If ever a picture should be called a John Wayne production, this is it,” he wrote to Yates in a three-page letter in January 1951. “It is, therefore, damned irritating to not be given even the courtesy of a call when it was time to figure out the credit titles for the picture. I have mixed emotions of being hurt, and mad, and goddamned disappointed.”
Director Budd Boetticher wasn’t thrilled with Wayne’s hands-on approach, with the producer trimming his 124-minute cut down to a sprightly 80 minutes, which he called a “helluva blow,” one that took him “40 years to get it back the way I wanted it” when the extended version of Bullfighter and the Lady was finally made available.
‘The Duke’ was probably too busy continuing his never-ending feud with Yates to care about what the director of his first major undertaking as a producer only thought, but since his name was put back into the movie before it bowed in cinemas, he was happy by the time it premiered.
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