“I’m going to be killed”: the only actor brave enough to hit John Wayne where it hurt the most
Bigger stars tend to have thicker skin, and as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history, John Wayne had thicker skin than most, making it very difficult for anyone to truly get under his skin.
Not that it was impossible, though, and nobody mastered it better than John Ford. Preying on his surrogate son’s insecurities, the cycloptic tyrant frequently called out ‘The Duke’ for his lack of military service during World War II, which was guaranteed to generate a reaction.
Several studio heads also ran afoul of Wayne by not giving in to his demands, with Herb Yates becoming public enemy number one when he baulked at The Alamo, which caused Republic Pictures to lose its marquee attraction, which saw the company begin a slow decline into complete and utter obsolescence.
Another unspoken rule that nobody dared mention when he was within earshot was his toupee. When ‘The Duke’ started losing his hair, he quickly remedied that by covering up his thinning scalp, joking that while he was technically always onscreen with a full head of real hair, most of it wasn’t his.
Everyone knew it, and some cast and crew members were even bold enough to joke about it, but only behind his back. One person who couldn’t have given less of a fuck about Wayne’s aversion to his baldness being brought out in the open was Maureen O’Hara, even if she thought she might be killed for her transgression.
The two were firm friends, with the face of the ‘Golden Age’ western even calling O’Hara the closest thing the industry had to his female equivalent, which was intended as a compliment. He could intimidate and bully plenty of actors, but she wasn’t one of them, although it could have gone very badly for her.
When shooting Ford’s The Quiet Man in Ireland, O’Hara’s hair kept blowing into her face, ruining the take. As a natural instinct, she kept brushing it away, only for Wayne to start shouting at her to keep her hands down. In the heat of the moment, she unleashed an insult that immediately created an atmosphere on set where you could hear a pin drop from a mile away: she called him a bald-headed son of a bitch.
“I immediately thought, ‘Oh, god, what have I done? I’m going to be killed,'” O’Hara recalled. “And in the flash of a second, I could see him check every face on the crew, up in the lights. And I saw him make his decision about whether to kill me, or laugh.” Much to her relief, it was the latter, and it was a brave or foolish soul who’d dare call ‘The Duke’ out for his follicular challenges in front of everyone.
In fact, O’Hara might have been the only person who could get away with saying something like that to Wayne and not suffer any repercussions, but that’s not the impression she was under in those agonising moments where she had no idea if she was about to be murdered or not.
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