The surreal time John Wayne was visited by wild animals on set: “See what he wants”
John Wayne made a career out of his casual toughness, becoming a legendary figure in the western canon.
In Howard Hawks’ Hatari!, the actor found himself out of his comfort zone, literally and figuratively, shooting a nonchalant hangout movie deep in the African savanna – Mount Meru looming large on the horizon, watching the film crew at all times.
Hatari! marked the third collaboration between Wayne and Hawks, the first of which was not a western. To explain what the movie is about is no easy task because Hatari! basically has no plot. A group of animal dealers set out to capture wild animals and sell them to goddamn zoos and circuses. In between chases, they drink, they gamble, they laugh, they fall in love. Hatari! is about people being people and animals being animals – but also a little bit of people being animals and vice-versa.
When Hawks started shooting the movie, he didn’t even have a finished script. He sold the movie as “John Wayne catching big wild animals in Africa,” and the studio executives thought, ‘Say no more’. The rest of the story just flowed as naturally as the character dynamics. Everything in Hatari! seemed to work almost entirely by chance, perfectly mirroring the film’s carefree spirit. Any number of things could go wrong at any time, but Hatari! was fated to succeed.
Reality and fiction often collided on set. One night, Wayne and Red Buttons were casually playing cards when a leopard crept out of the bushes and approached them. “See what he wants,” Wayne reportedly said, a line that makes perfectly clear how little distinction there was between Wayne and Sean Mercer, the character he plays in Hatari!. The difference, however, was that Hawks was willing to explore a rare, soft side of Wayne through Mercer. He wanted the movie to be partially about a tough guy finally open to the possibility of love.
The leopard episode wasn’t the only incident on the set of Hatari!, though. Things would get wild very quickly in the action-packed animal chase sequences, all of which were shot without stuntmen. This included Wayne capturing a real wild rhino in the opening and closing acts of the movie, bringing Hatari! full circle. At the climax of the film, Wayne and the crew succeed in lassoing a massive fucking rhino, but the animal gets loose. The actors are forced to resume the pursuit and recapture the animal.
The rhino really did get loose, and Hawks decided to include the full chase to add more layers of realism to Hatari! Wayne wasn’t too happy about it, though. Viewers will notice that the audio of every animal capture gets a little weird. That’s because Wayne kept cursing and swearing at the animals, forcing Hawk to re-dub the footage.
These stories only add up to the magic of Hatari! It goes without saying that a movie like that would never be made today, with so many scenes featuring animals in distress. The whole animal dealing business has faded away, thanks to the rise of breeding programs and animal rights movements. It establishes Hatari! as an exciting product of its time.
The brutality of the animal chase scenes can be hard to watch at times, but the moments of tenderness carry greater weight. For example, how did they even manage to make those three baby elephants follow Elsa Martinelli wherever she went? Her unique bond with the animals gave rise to one of the catchiest fucking tunes of all time: ‘Baby Elephant Walk’, by the one and only Henry Mancini.
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