The 1928 scene that almost destroyed John Wayne’s career: “Get that sonofabitch out of here!”
Plenty of acting careers have been destroyed before they’ve had a chance to get off the ground, and if it wasn’t for a timely intervention from the right person at the right time, it might have happened to John Wayne.
Given the impact he made on Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’ and the legacy he left behind, both as one of the industry’s biggest stars in his pomp and one of its most contentious relics after the fact, it’s almost impossible to imagine a version of cinema history that didn’t have ‘The Duke’ strutting through it.
And yet, that’s almost what happened, after the unproven and still wet behind the ears rookie ballsed up a simple scene so badly that he was nearly given his marching orders. Not by anybody, either, but by the director who’d go on to become the single most important driving force in his professional life, both onscreen and off.
Wayne and John Ford are one of the silver screen’s most iconic and indelible partnerships, and their association stretches back much further than 1939’s Stagecoach, the first time the protégé played a starring role for his mentor. Their first collaboration came a decade beforehand, and their second could have easily been their last.
After working as a background extra in 1928’s Mother Machree, ‘The Duke’ thought he was on his way toward the big time when he was given a visible on-camera role in the same year’s romantic drama, Hangman’s House. All he had to do was say absolutely nothing, and he still couldn’t manage to pull it off.
In one scene, the actor, who’d recently been rebranded from Marion to Duke Morrison, as short-lived as it was, needed to stand on a box and bow his head while an executioner informed him that, “You shall hang by the neck until dead, dead, dead.” On the first take, he burst out laughing. On the second take, he did exactly the same thing, and having seen enough, Ford was apoplectic.
“Get that sonofabitch out of here and don’t let me set eyes upon his idiot face again!” the filmmaker roared, sending Wayne scurrying away from the set with his tail between his legs. Humiliated in front of everyone, he changed out of his costume and prepared to head home under the belief that his chances of succeeding in the business were either hanging by a thread or dead and buried.
Right when he was about to exit Hangman’s House, and potentially cinema, for good, an assistant director consoled the dejected ‘Duke’, insisting that Ford shouldn’t be taken at face value. “You just keep out of sight for a while,” the AD insisted. “And I’ll bring you over to the old man when he’s in a better mood.”
Wayne stayed the course, successfully pulled off the challenging sequence of standing there without saying a word, and all was forgiven. If it wasn’t for that last-second intervention, though, things could have turned out very differently for one of Hollywood’s most iconic figures.
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