The producer who tried to ruin John Wayne’s career: “Nobody in Hollywood would touch me because of that bastard”
Based on nothing but the fact he spent decades as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and remains one of the most iconic figures in cinema history almost half a century on from his death, it would be fair to say that any attempts to sabotage John Wayne during his ascent up the industry ladder were unsuccessful.
It wasn’t for lack of trying, though, with one powerful producer taking such an intense dislike to ‘The Duke’ that he actively tried to prevent the young upstart from making waves in Tinseltown. Any actor who dreams of making it to the top will face a setback or two on the way, but for Wayne, making an enemy of somebody with so much sway could permanently derail his prospects.
He might have spent most of his professional life as a household name, but Wayne was far from an overnight sensation. He made his screen debut in 1926 but wouldn’t land his first major leading role for another four years, and in between those two points, he went uncredited in no less than 20 pictures.
Even when he took top billing in 1930’s The Big Trail, the western was a box office bomb that failed to establish him as a viable commodity, and it would be nearly a decade before he finally made that much-needed breakthrough when he collaborated with John Ford on Stagecoach.
During those early years, ‘The Duke’ was under contract with Columbia Pictures, founded, owned, and operated by Harry Cohn. Unfortunately for Wayne, he was summoned to the studio mogul’s office during the production of the war drama Men Are Like That, where he was accused of having an affair with Cohn’s girlfriend. Naturally, he denied the accusations, but Cohn was so convinced that Wayne was having it off with his missus that he set out to ruin his career.
In his next Columbia-backed film, Wayne was cast as a dead body, and then he was kicked down the call sheet to play a bit-part as a football player in Maker of Men. He made two more unsuccessful westerns under Cohn’s stewardship before deciding that enough was enough: ‘The Duke’ was freed from his contract, distanced himself as far away from the studio as possible, and vowed never to work there again after barely surviving the acts of sabotage that attempted to kill his momentum.
“Cohn dropped me as soon as he could, and he began putting the word about Hollywood that I was a rebel and a drunkard,” he explained to Michael Munn in John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth. “Well, maybe I was a bit of both from time to time. But I never got drunk when I was working. For a whole year, nobody in Hollywood would touch me because of that bastard Cohn, and that’s why I’ve never worked at Columbia. Never have, never will.”
Cohn’s dirty tricks didn’t work, and Wayne was offered a six-picture deal by Warner Bros the very same year he was booted out of Columbia. Needless to say, ‘The Duke’ got the better end of the deal after embarking on what would eventually go down in history as one of the most famous film careers of all time.
