The “son of a bitch” army veteran John Wayne wanted to kick off set: “I’ll take him and boot him”
There is a lot to both like and dislike about John Wayne. He is one of the most prolific actors i the history of Hollywood, and there is no doubt that without his work the industry would be a poorer place. However, there is a giant ‘but’ that always looms over his career.
He was, by and large, an extremely difficult man to work with. Even if you ignore his racist outburst, his unwarranted views on the crippling of American family values enriched by so-called vulgar movies or his persistence in the nationalistic pursuit of rooting out “un-American” members of the movie industry, he was just not a lot of fun to be around for most people.
Having spent decades sitting under the learning tree of the famously prickly John Ford, it was to be expected that his greatest protégé would end up with little time to suffer fools. John Wayne ruled the roost on every production he worked on during the peak of his powers, to the point he was actively disdainful of the people sent by the studio to lend him assistance.
After spending a very long time as one of Hollywood’s most popular and bankable stars, Wayne ended up getting the itch to direct, which may have had a lot to do with his long-standing bond with Ford. However, both of his productions didn’t exactly go smoothly, hinting that perhaps he wasn’t cut out for a life behind the camera.
The Alamo spent over a decade in development hell, endured a shoot fraught with tension, and didn’t make Wayne any money in the long run after he’d funnelled millions of his own dollars into funding the expensive period piece. When he decided that he wanted to give it another try, Warner Bros wasn’t completely convinced he was capable of pulling it off.
Given the well-known political inclinations of ‘The Duke’, there was an air of inevitability about him mounting a pro-war Vietnam movie, which arrived in the form of 1968’s The Green Berets. A reporter staunchly against the conflict becomes embedded with the titular military group, where watching Wayne’s Mike Kirby and his cohorts in action convinces him the United States was right to get involved.
It was so heavy-handed that the jingoism of The Green Berets partially inspired Oliver Stone to write his own screenplay based on his experiences in Vietnam, which eventually became the ‘Best Picture’-winning classic Platoon. Wayne may have been operating under the assumption he was the one calling the shots, but it’s telling that another two directors were drafted in to lend support.
As well as credited co-director Ray Kellogg, veteran Mervyn LeRoy was brought in by Warner Bros, and spent five months assisting ‘The Duke’ on his sophomore feature. The studio had also sent along an official on-set photographer to capture The Green Berets during principal photography, but the glaring flaw in its plan to capture candid images from behind the scenes was that Wayne had their man forcibly removed.
“I kicked that son of a bitch off the set, and he stays kicked off,” he said in a Roger Ebert interview. Warner Bros were pushing for their employee to be allowed back into the actor and filmmaker’s purview, and while he did eventually acquiesce, Wayne underlined that there wasn’t a chance he’d allow anything even remotely offbeat or artsy to be photographed.
Informing the WB representative to “tell him the first time I see him shooting somebody picking his nose or scratching his butt, I’ll take him and physically boot him all the way over to Italy where they make a living doing that.” Was Italy really a haven for arse-itching photography? According to Wayne, it was, anyway, and he furthered his point by stating, “I’ll boot him physically,” as if he wasn’t clear enough.
Historical records have shown that Wayne did not kick a photographer so far up the backside they were transplanted to an entirely different continent by the force of his right peg, which is a small mercy for the poor soul who risked his wrath.
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