“It’s not my kind of picture”: the only thing John Wayne liked about the “perverted” movie he despised
One of the most irritating things about watching a movie you hate is when there’s something really good about it, whether it’s a performance, a scene, the musical score, or the direction. John Wayne openly lambasted a history-making movie he despised as “perverted,” but even he managed to find a positive.
He went public with his opposition to the film, but he kept his praise private. For a while, at least, until his daughter revealed that he actually had something genuinely nice to say about an Academy Award-winning classic that helped nudge Hollywood in a direction ‘The Duke’ didn’t want to see it go.
If he had his way, things would have remained exactly as they’d been for the duration of his career as a leading man and box office draw. Unfortunately for Wayne, the industry doesn’t work that way, and as the ‘Golden Age’ gave way to ‘New Hollywood’, the icon was repulsed by the latest paradigm shift.
During his infamous Playboy interview, he decried John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy and Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, two of the most influential films of their era, as “perverted.” He especially rounded on the latter, though: “Wouldn’t you say that the wonderful love of those two men in Midnight Cowboy, a story about two fags, qualifies?”
Needless to say, Wayne wasn’t impressed. However, the Academy was; it won three Oscars for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’, where it also became the first, and still only, X-rated feature to win a prize at the biggest and most celebrated awards ceremony in town.
Ironically, ‘The Duke’ found himself competing directly against its two stars, with Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight shortlisted for ‘Best Actor’ alongside his turn as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, with Anne of a Thousand Days‘ Richard Burton and Goodbye, Mr Chips‘ Peter O’Toole rounding out an impressive field.
According to his daughter, Aissa, he didn’t think he stood a chance of winning. “At least I keep damn fine company,” she remembered him saying. “But one of them is bound to win.” The way he spoke about Midnight Cowboy would suggest that he’d rather do anything else than bestow it with even the tiniest shred of praise, but that wasn’t the case.
“His performance was so big, so brilliant,” he told his daughter, referring to Hoffman. “It’s not my kind of picture, but I know a great actor when I see one.” As it turned out, the only reason he bothered watching it was because he wanted to check out the competition and gauge whether or not he had a chance of finally winning the Oscar he coveted so dearly.
“With its explicit violence and homosexuality, it really wasn’t his kind of picture,” Aissa wrote in John Wayne: My Father. “Normally, my father would never have seen it, or else stomped out on it very early.” He wanted to see what he was up against, and as much as he abhorred Midnight Cowboy, he couldn’t help but admit that Hoffman delivered a top-tier performance.
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