Why John Wayne “couldn’t understand” his hated co-star’s Oscar nomination: “There was just silence”
Having spent the bulk of his career playing John Wayne, it shouldn’t have been much of a shock to John Wayne that he was rarely in the running for any major acting awards.
He did win an Academy Award and Golden Globe for his performance as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, but that was it. Even then, there were criticisms that it was more of a lifetime achievement prize than a reward for delivering the best onscreen work of the preceding 12 months, not that he cared.
That was the only time ‘The Duke’ was nominated for a competitive Golden Globe, and one of only two Oscar nods for his on-camera prowess, the other coming two decades previously when he was shortlisted for Sands of Iwo Jima. He knew what he was good at, and that was leaning into his persona, which seemed to leave him with the occasional blind spot when it came to his scene partners.
Wayne didn’t have to do much to play the title role in 1953’s Hondo. It was the sort of character he’d brought to the screen countless times before: a rugged hero who forges a connection with a woman after riding to her rescue, saving her from an attack, and escorting her and her son to safety.
For the female lead, the production enlisted Geraldine Page, a relative newcomer. Hondo was her first time being credited in a feature film, and while she had almost a decade of experience on stage, her preference for method acting made her an unusual candidate to work opposite ‘The Duke’, who didn’t exactly care for what he dismissed as the industry’s newest performative fad.
If anything, he wished she’d never been hired at all. To immerse herself in character, Page adopted the lifestyle of a 19th-century woman, which meant she’d eat cast and crew meals with her hands and largely forewent personal hygiene, which Wayne didn’t care for at all.
He acknowledged that even though “she may have been great on Broadway,” Page “doesn’t know a damn thing about making movies,” referring to her as one of those “artsy New York theatre people.” Wayne was convinced she’d tank the picture, only to get the shock of a lifetime when she notched one of Hondo’s two Oscar nominations.
Page made the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ shortlist for her turn as the headstrong, determined, and altogether scene-stealing Angie Lowe, leaving ‘The Duke’ completely and utterly bemused. Echoing his words on her suitability for cinema, the production manager, Andrew McLaglen, recalled his incredulity.
“Duke always said that Geraldine may have been great on Broadway, but she didn’t know a damn thing about movies,” he told Michael Munn, almost verbatim from Wayne. “Well, you can imagine his surprise when I called him a few months after the film came out and told him that Geraldine had been nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Hondo.”
For a while, McLaglen probably thought there’d been a signal failure. “There was just silence on the other end of the line,” he recalled. “Duke just couldn’t understand it.” He may have savaged Page for her method stylings, but when the dust settled, she won more acclaim for Hondo than he did, and he couldn’t comprehend how or why.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out John Wayne Newsletter
All the latest stories about John Wayne from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.