The production role John Wayne said that women couldn’t do: “I think it’s ridiculous”
One of the most iconic stars to ever grace the silver screen he may be, but John Wayne was hardly famed for his progressive or forward-thinking personality, with cinema’s manliest man living up to his reputation both on and off-screen.
Plenty of soundbites and interviews he gave during his decades in the spotlight have aged terribly, with ‘The Duke’ repeatedly lashing out at changing attitudes in society as well as cinema, which doesn’t make it surprising in the slightest that he couldn’t fathom the idea of a woman taking on a standard role as part of a film’s production team.
The job of a grip is to build and maintain the rigging and equipment that supports the cameras, which extends to tripods, cranes, rigs, dollies, tracks, and jibs, as well as overseeing the maintenance of lighting stands, nets, and diffusers among others. It’s a key component in realising the director and cinematographer’s vision for any given shot, but Wayne wasn’t convinced women had what it takes.
His shameful reasoning was that he didn’t think women were capable of the intense physical exertion required to operate as a grip throughout the entirety of a production schedule. As backwards as that is, Wayne was at least clear in pointing out that he wasn’t convinced that every man who applied for the gig had what it takes to do it, either.
“I mean, there’s a lot of men that couldn’t go in and be a grip because they’re not capable of the physical effort required to perform their job,” he was quoted as saying in Scott Eyman’s John Wayne: The Life and Legend. Being the bastion of physicality and machismo that he was, Wayne felt compelled to lump every woman and a great deal of men into the category of being ‘not tough enough’ to work as a grip.
“I think it’s ridiculous for the studio to have a woman be a grip on a set,” he explained. “There are certain standards of hard work that are expected of a grip that a woman can’t cut. That doesn’t mean that she couldn’t direct the picture if she had the talent to do it.” They can direct, sure, but can they set up the equipment? In Wayne’s eyes, no, they could not, even though there’s no small amount of evidence to the contrary stretching back decades.
Strangely, though, Wayne was a proponent of equal pay despite his belief women couldn’t do labour-intensive jobs on set. “I have always felt that women should get exactly the same salary for the same work that a man would,” he said, but evidently that didn’t stretch as far as convincing him they were able to carry out the duties required of a grip.
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