The one thing John Wayne refused to do on screen: “I’ve had it”
John Wayne did pretty much one thing and one thing only as an actor: play strapping heroes of mythical proportion, usually on horseback and with a bandana around his neck.
He was Hollywood’s cowboy, helping to rewrite history one western at a time. Whether he was playing a sheriff, a former sheriff, or a Civil War veteran-turned sheriff, he tended to present the same kind of thesis: rugged individualism, manifest destiny, and hyper-masculinity are the bedrock of a thriving society.
From time to time, Wayne did break out of his usual beat. Sometimes, he played members of the military. Once, he played a former boxer. Whenever he did stray from the usual formula, he was often quite successful. The Quiet Man, for example, features one of his greatest performances and is full of warmth and even some complexity. By the time he made his final movie, The Shootist, he was also able to soften the edges around his cowboy character and show some vulnerability.
You have to go right to the beginning of his filmography to find the proof, but at one point, Wayne did have to do a little more than shoot guns, ride horses, and shout lines when he was playing Wild West heroes. In the early 1930s, he had to sing, too. Decades later, during a 1969 interview with the BBC, the Duke admitted that there’s a reason he didn’t carry on with all that musicality.
John Wayne’s surprising stint as Hollywood’s first singing cowboy
“I was the first singing cowboy,” he said, referencing his character, Singin’ Sandy, in the 1933 film Riders of Destiny. “And I got a little tired of doing this in pictures,” he continued. “You know, you had to go by guitar trees and find the guitar in the middle of the chase.”
Apparently, whenever he appeared in public during this period, kids would ask him to sing. It wasn’t his favourite part of the job. In fact, he kind of hated it.
When he decided that it was time to stand up for himself, he went to the studio boss and said, “I’ve had it as far as the singing’s concerned”. Instead of firing him for insubordination, the top brass hired a young Gene Autry to take over his acting beat, and a country music star was born. Duke, meanwhile, graduated into more serious westerns, eventually cornering the market entirely.
Interestingly, one of the greatest scenes in all of Wayne’s filmography is a musical number. In 1959’s Rio Bravo, the actor (playing a sheriff, as usual) is holed up in his one-room jailhouse with two of his deputies and a young cowboy as they wait for the little town to be attacked by a ranching gang. To ease the tension, one of the deputies starts to sing in a low baritone, and the cowboy whips out a guitar and starts to play along, eventually adding his voice to harmonise.
By that point, singing cowboys like Gene Autry had set the bar high, so it was no coincidence that the characters who break into song in Rio Bravo are played by none other than Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson, both of whom were predominantly known as singers. It’s a powerful moment of literal harmony in the midst of a violent story, and it adds yet another layer of mastery to an already masterful film.
Wayne kept his distance during this musical interlude. As Martin and Nelson sing, he fills his cup of coffee and watches on with an appreciative smile. Given what we know of his past trauma, this seems only fair. It probably would have been more of a detraction than a bonus to add his voice to the mix.
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