The co-star who hated working with “big slob” John Wayne: “I’ll crack his head wide open”
There are a lot of things you can call John Wayne, and while some of them are choice words not really suitable for general consumption, one of them is certainly “patriot”. If John Wayne cut himself, he’d probably bleed red, white, and blue.
‘The Duke’ was the epitome of onscreen Americana and a performer who always made sure they were presented as the manliest man in the industry, which had a habit of rubbing people the wrong way. It was a persona that would follow him onto every single set and, without fail, rub one person or another up the wrong way.
In addition to being one of the most famous names in Hollywood and a bankable commodity with decades of A-list experience under his belt, Wayne was a forceful figure who wasn’t shy in flexing his status in order to bend certain productions – and a few collaborators – to his will. His tough guy persona, and huge career, had afforded him a sense of self-esteem that few could match. He was happy to go toe-to-toe with just about anybody on the planet.
That didn’t necessarily make him an ogre who stomped his way through his career, though, but the easiest way to earn Wayne’s respect was to play him at his own game. It was a tactic that worked wonders for countless co-stars over the years, even if one of them initially saw the face of the classic western as nothing more than a rampaging slob with no airs or graces. To make friends with Wayne, you had to square up to his bruiser nature and threaten to land your own blow.
He eventually mended his ways, though, with Lauren Bacall initially left indignant at the icon’s slobbishness. The two had first worked together on 1955’s Blood Alley, and they’d reunite more than 20 years later on Wayne’s final film, The Shootist. The ‘Golden Age’ legend remembered ‘The Duke’ being awful to director Don Siegel, but he still found the time to ruffle her feathers.
In the Dirty Harry director’s book A Siegel Film: An Autobiography, Wayne’s fondness for chewing tobacco was a source of constant frustration for Bacall, who was left at the end of her tether by ‘The Duke’ constantly spitting in her immediate vicinity. It’s a pretty disgusting habit at the best of times, but imagine watching it happen daily, if not hourly, in your vicinity, and you can start to understand why Bacall would act the way she did.
“If that big slob spits on my hemline once more, I’ll crack his head wide open with a two-by-four,” he recalled her saying. One of Hollywood’s leading ladies was threatening to break the emergency glass on her fists and deliver so many knockout blows. When Siegel tried to diffuse the situation, she was having none of it. “Don’t get funny with me,” she told him. “I’m in no mood to banter words with you.”
Trying to smooth over the tensions between the two stars, Siegel maintained that “Duke doesn’t know he’s doing it,” with his lifelong love of chewing tobacco making his phlegmy ejections second nature. “He’ll feel ashamed when I tell him,” the director insisted. “I promise not that he won’t spit, but that won’t spit on or near you.” Such is the lif eof a Hollywood director, caught between two stars, trying to make sure one doesn’t spit on the other, but that the other allows them to spit quite near them.
Whether or not Siegel kept up his end of the bargain remains up for debate, especially when he had his hands full during the making of The Shootist, trying to prevent ‘The Duke’ from usurping his authority and taking over as his cinematic swan song’s ghost director.
Then again, no stories emerged from the set detailing how Bacall had battered Wayne over the head with a hefty plank of wood, so it’s reasonable to assume that he managed to keep his nasty habits in check for the remainder of principal photography.
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