The only actor John Wayne admitted he was wrong about: “We didn’t always see eye to eye”
Hollywood isn’t the only place where first impressions matter, and it’s far from the only place where grudges can last an eternity. John Wayne was a famously difficult man and actor to win over, which is why so many of his peers took up a permanent residency on his shit list.
Even Clint Eastwood, who inherited Wayne’s mantle as the face of the modern western, missed out on the chance to work with his spiritual predecessor because he had the temerity to make High Plains Drifter, a film that offended ‘The Duke’ so much that he lost any interest he had in a team-up for the ages.
As soon as his arch-nemesis, Herbert Yates, couldn’t force him to work with Vera Ralston anymore, he didn’t. He struggled to deal with Rita Hayworth in Circus World, and they’d never cross paths again. His assessment of True Grit‘s Kim Darby was a withering, “Jesus, I got along better with Kirk Douglas,” which says it all about his feelings on the pair of them.
Wayne publicly denounced either the personalities or acting abilities, and often both, of Clark Gable, Gene Hackman, Marlon Brando, and Frank Sinatra, and he never worked with any of them, either, underlining that when ‘The Duke’ had made up his mind that he wasn’t going to get along with someone or they were the wrong fit for one of his pictures, he wasn’t going to reverse course.
Ironically, the only reason he ended up working with the solitary actor he changed his mind about was because he had to. If things had gone the way that Wayne had wanted, he wouldn’t have starred in The Alamo at all, instead focusing all of his energies on directing his first feature.
The studio didn’t want John Wayne directing a movie that didn’t have John Wayne in it, though, and after trying to pitch himself in a supporting part, he reluctantly agreed to headline the ensemble as Davy Crockett. He offered the role of Jim Bowie to Charlton Heston, and when he made it perfectly clear he didn’t want to work with ‘The Duke’, the first-time filmmaker was forced to look elsewhere.
“I wanted Charlton Heston to play Bowie,” he confirmed. “He could have played [William B] Travis. Either part. But he didn’t want to do it. United Artists insisted on Richard Widmark. I thought he was wrong for the part.” It was Wayne’s passion project, and despite Widmark’s Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-winning pedigree, he was only cast because the studio said so.
Their relationship proved to be somewhat fractious, but not enough for ‘The Duke’ to make an unprecedented comedown. “I was wrong,” he said, holding his hands up and admitting defeat. “He was magnificent. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but he was just great as Bowie.”
They may not have ended The Alamo as friends, or even particularly complimentary co-workers, but that shouldn’t detract from the fact that Widmark achieved one of cinema’s rarest feats: getting John Wayne to admit that he was wrong.
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