The “son of a bitch” who almost ruined John Wayne: “I’d worked for 20 years for nothing”
The easiest way to get rich in Hollywood is by putting butts in seats: the most famous faces draw in the biggest crowds, and as arguably the most famous of them all at his peak, John Wayne made a fortune.
However, the more money someone has, the harder they find it to keep. For whatever reason, so many actors, filmmakers, and producers have conspired to earn countless millions and piss most, if not all, of them away to leave themselves teetering on the verge of financial ruin, and ‘The Duke’ was no different.
He couldn’t take all the blame, though, or he didn’t want to. Having invested heavily in his passion project, which was already a gamble, Wayne discovered that his bank accounts were bordering on empty when he was trying to put the pieces back together and recover from an expensive loss, and he was pissed.
The Alamo may have earned $20 million at the box office and notched an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Picture’, which he still wasn’t thrilled about, but despite being the film’s director, producer, and leading man, Wayne didn’t make a penny from the picture after selling the rights to United Artists to avoid falling into a monetary black hole if it bombed.
It didn’t bomb, but he fell into that monetary black hole anyway, thanks to Bo Roos. A business manager by name, although a general mover and shaker would be more apt to describe his wheelings and dealings. ‘The Duke’ was trying to pay off the debts he’d incurred on The Alamo when he demanded to know what happened to his personal wealth.
“He was getting mighty nervous, and I was smelling a rat,” Wayne told Michael Munn. “I said, ‘Just tell me how much I can raise.’ He said, ‘Give me a couple of weeks.’ So a couple of weeks go by, and I asked him again: ‘How much am I worth?’ He was really squirming. He said, ‘It isn’t that simple.’ I lost my patience then and I slammed my fist on his desk and said, ‘It’s a simple question. I’ve given you a goddamn fortune over the years. Millions of dollars! Where is it, goddamn it?'”
The answer was nowhere, because it was all gone. Wayne went to his lawyer, who investigated Roos’ accounts to see if he’d been doing anything untoward with the actor’s money. Technically, he hadn’t, but his legal team nonetheless conceded that the money had vanished due to Roos’ “complete incompetence.”
He hadn’t cheated, lied, or stolen from ‘The Duke’, but he had made a string of catastrophic investments and racked up hefty expenses in doing so. When Wayne argued that “nobody’s that stupid to lose that much money,” his lawyer offered a three-word indictment that’s about as damning as they come: “He said, ‘Boo Roos is.'”
“I said, ‘I want to sue the living shit out of that son of a bitch,'” which he did before being convinced to drop the lawsuit because his business manager was broke, too. “But Roos cost me the first 20 years of my career. I’d worked for 20 years for nothing.” Wayne was still an A-lister and one of the industry’s most popular draws, but thanks to Roos, he had absolutely nothing to show for it, financially at least.
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