The “vicious treatment” on set that made John Wayne’s co-star “go to the bathroom and vomit”
For most of his career, John Wayne presented himself as the roughest, toughest, manliest sonofabitch in Hollywood, a persona that he ate, slept, lived, and breathed, both onscreen and off. However, even ‘The Duke’ could be made to look like a naughty schoolboy when he pissed somebody off.
A combination of star power and natural gravitas ensured that whenever the iconic actor set foot on any movie set, he was the top dog. His co-stars knew they were starring in a John Wayne movie, and for the most part, his directors accepted the assignment in the knowledge they were helming a John Wayne film.
It was a setup he’d become accustomed to, and it worked wonders for his bankability and perennial position as one of the industry’s top draws. There are exceptions for almost every rule, though, and in the case of ‘The Duke’, John Ford was the only one capable of cutting him down to size, stepping on the tiny little person he’d become, and then wiping him from his boots like he’d stepped in dogshit.
That might sound excessive, but it’s as close to the truth as it gets. Even though they were friends and frequent collaborators who had a father/son relationship, Ford was a tyrant who went out of his way to tear Wayne down in front of everybody. Despite ranking among the most powerful figures in the business, he’d always just stand there and take it.
Maureen O’Hara knew the star socially, but they didn’t work together until 1950’s Rio Grande. That was also the first time she’d been in one of Ford’s pictures, so she was a newcomer to their inner circle. Ford and Wayne had already made half a dozen pictures together, and their rapport left her so shocked that she had to remove herself from the proceedings to throw up, turning her against the director in the process.
“It was Mr Ford’s vicious treatment of John Wayne that changed my feelings,” she explained. “He was extremely severe and cruel to Duke on the set. It was horrible treatment, unlike anything I had ever seen. He repeatedly belittled and insulted him in front of the entire cast and crew. Duke would just stand there with his head lowered, hat in hand, while Mr Ford tried to reduce Duke to a miniature version of the man he was.”
O’Hara couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but since this was her first time with the formidable duo, she kept her concerns to herself. “I kept silent, while screaming in my head, ‘Punch him, Duke! Knock him on his ass! Do Something!” she recalled. “But Duke was too much of a professional, so he took it, all of it.”
In fact, the actor was so shocked and appalled by what she’d witnessed, it made her physically ill, with O’Hara revealing that “it made me sick to my stomach, and more than once, I had to excuse myself from the set so I could go to the bathroom and vomit.” Meanwhile, Wayne remained firmly in place being berated, offering absolutely no defence to Ford’s constant offence.
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