“It went into a long limbo”: the western John Wayne sabotaged from beyond the grave
While he wasn’t known as a saboteur in life, John Wayne conspired to leave a western stuck in development hell for almost a decade and a half, and partially from beyond the grave.
‘The Duke’ turned down plenty of movies during his career, many of which went on to become iconic, but even though he was one of Hollywood’s most headstrong figures, he wasn’t the type of back-stabber to purposefully prevent a movie from happening because he didn’t agree with it.
At least, he wasn’t in life. In death? That’s a slightly different story. In the early 1970s, having recently collaborated with Peter Bogdanovich on the feature-length adaptation of his novel, The Last Picture Show, Larry McMurtry fancied giving this whole screenwriting thing a bigger go.
Reuniting with Bogdanovich, he penned a script titled Streets of Laredo, and setting his sights as high as possible, he’d already earmarked its three stars: Wayne, Henry Fonda, and James Stewart. It was bold to write something with three ‘Golden Age’ icons in mind, but one was much less enthusiastic than the others.
“It was originally written about 1971 for John Wayne, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda, with Peter Bogdanovich, fresh from his triumph of The Last Picture Show, to direct,” McMurtry confirmed. “It was quite a good script, I think; the studios loved it.” Wayne didn’t, though, and that was an issue.
“This block existed for years,” the author explained. “And Henry Fonda came around, and James Stewart came around, and John Wayne did not come around. And he died. And Henry Fonda died. And it went into a long limbo.” With Streets of Laredo dead on the big screen, he went back to basics.
With ‘The Duke’ six feet under without his mind being changed, and the film’s chances of making it to the screen growing increasingly slim as a result, McMurtry paid $35,000 to buy it back from the studio he’d sold it to, refitted it into a novel, and in 1985, Lonesome Dove was published, with history eventually repeating itself.
Almost 20 years after he’d gauged Wayne’s interest in starring in it, and that interest was hovering right around zero, and after he’d retreated with his tail tucked between his legs to turn his script for a feature into a novel, the rights were picked up again, with Tommy Lee Jones playing the role of Woodrow Call, which ‘The Duke’ had baulked at.
Wayne had more interest in playing Gus McCrae instead, and in an ironic twist of fate, the character in the 1989 miniseries was played by Robert Duvall, who’d also knocked back an offer to play Woodrow, and to continue the theme of cosmic coincidence, some location shooting took place at Alamo Village, the set-turned-tourist attraction originally built for Wayne’s directorial debut, The Alamo.
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