What John Wayne taught Ron Howard about filmmaking
After coming to the fore as an actor in the sitcoms The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days, no one would have ever dreamed that Ron Howard would one day work with the legendary and inimitable John Wayne, but that’s precisely what happened in Wayne’s last movie, The Shootist, released in 1976.
Directed by Don Siegel and based on Glendon Swarthout’s 1975 novel of the same name, Wayne made his final film appearance before he died just three years after its release. The western movie remarkably saw young Howard stand tall next to the likes of Wayne, James Stewart and John Carradine.
Having managed to work with one of the most prominent figures in the film industry on his final movie, Howard was fortunate enough to have been handed down some secrets to success, and in a feature with Men’s Journal, the director was asked what he’d learned about “manhood” from the likes of Wayne and James Stewart.
“John Wayne used a phrase, which he later attributed to [film director] John Ford, for scenes that were going to be difficult,” Howard responded. “‘This is a job of work,’ he’d say. If there was a common thread with these folks – Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Glenn Ford – it was the work ethic.
“It was still driving them,” Howard added, “To cheat the project was an insult. To cheat the audience was damnable.” It’s fair to say that Wayne was an actor who took his job very seriously; he loved the film industry and was damned if he was ever going to allow his reputation as one of its greats to fall by the wayside.
In another interview with HuffPost, Howard again turned his attention to the work ethic that Wayne seemed to possess, and once more, he likened his dedication to that which the likes of Stewart and Henry Fonda all seemed to exhibit, which showed him that the only way to really succeed is to work with focus and commitment.
“I always admired him as a movie star, but I thought of him as a total naturalist,” Howard said. “Even those pauses were probably him forgetting his line and then remembering it again, because, man, he’s The Duke. But he’s working on this scene and he’s like, ‘Let me try this again.’”
The director signed off on his admiration for Wayne’s dedication, “And he put the little hitch in and he’d find the Wayne rhythm, and you’d realize that it changed the performance each and every time. I’ve worked with Bette Davis, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda. Here’s the thing they all have in common: They all, even in their 70s, worked a little harder than everyone else.”
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