The Oscar-winning movie John Wayne hated making: “He still doesn’t think it’s any good”
Despite being one of his era’s biggest stars, which also made him one of the most powerful actors in the industry, John Wayne made a surprising number of movies that he didn’t really want to make in the first place, with necessity and studio politics forcing his hand into starring in films he wasn’t invested in.
Even at the height of the old studio system, where performers were largely told what to star in, ‘The Duke’ didn’t work that way. He’d sign multi-picture contracts with various Hollywood players, sure, but for the most part, he wouldn’t step foot on set until the script had been tailored to fit his signature sandbox.
Of course, there are exceptions. The only reason he took top billing in 1955’s Blood Alley was that William Wellman threatened to quit the production if Robert Mitchum wasn’t fired from the lead role and replaced by Wayne, a demand he acquiesced to not only because the filmmaker was a friend, but because his Batjac company was also producing.
The driving force behind ‘The Duke’, John Ford, and Maureen O’Hara making Rio Grande was that his nemesis, Herb Yates, told the trio that the only way he’d give a green light to The Quiet Man was if they made a western first, which was enough to convince them to make one for the studio so that they could then make one for themselves.
Blood Alley was the actor’s third feature with Wellman behind the camera, and curiously, it was the second in a row where he only played the main character because he had to. Wayne’s plan was to remain off-camera as a producer only on The High and the Mighty, but when the film struggled to find a starry enough ensemble cast, he was left with no other choice.
“We tried to get some big-name stars like Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, and Ida Lupino, but they all turned me down because they didn’t feel the parts being offered were big enough,” the director told Michael Munn. “Spencer Tracy read it and thought it was lousy and said he wouldn’t do it. So Wayne had to do it, and Wayne thinks that he wasn’t that good in it.”
A progenitor of sorts to the star-studded disaster epics that would become commonplace in the 1970s, Wayne’s first officer is called to action when he’s forced to assume the controls of a commercial flight experiencing engine trouble, when it becomes clear the pilot is no longer up to the task. It’s formulaic stuff, and one of his biggest bugbears was the lack of a love interest.
“Wayne didn’t think he was good when we were making it, and he still doesn’t think it’s any good,” Wellman explained. “I said to him, ‘What the hell? You mean to tell me you don’t think you were good in that?’ He said, ‘Well, it never had any love story.'” Not to point out the obvious, but romance isn’t usually found in a confined plane in the midst of a life-or-death situation, Still, ‘The Duke’ didn’t care.
The High and the Mighty was a box office success, as Wayne’s films tended to be, and it even won the Academy Award for ‘Best Original Score’ from six nominations, which wasn’t enough to change his mind. “Oh, we used to argue like hell,” Wellman concluded. “He still thinks it’s lousy, and I think he’s crazy.”
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