Why John Wayne turned down so many “mean” movies
Once John Wayne settled into his groove as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, he never showed much interest in deviating from the template that had gotten him there in the first place.
Like many young actors, he initially struggled to get his foot in the door and toiled in a string of forgettable productions, but there was no looking back once he’d established himself as a bankable leading man. From there, he rose right to the top of the A-list.
Along the way, Wayne’s biggest and most popular movies largely saw him sticking firmly to extensions of the same persona, where he’d play a grizzled hero willing and happy to dispense justice. His filmography hardly shied away from violence, but he drew the line at anything he deemed excessive.
As time wore on, ‘The Duke’ became increasingly critical of Hollywood’s growing fondness for blood-soaked shootouts, sexual content, and near-the-knuckle subject matter. Instead of moving with the times, he opted to simply reject the notion entirely and aim both barrels squarely at the industry.
By the time The Shootist was released in 1976, Wayne was in the final stretch of his career, while a new wave of auteurs had emerged to take cinema in bold, brave, and exciting new directions. Always one for classicism, a behind-the-scenes video revealed the western icon lamenting where his industry was heading.
“The whole idea of our business is illusion and they’re getting away from that,” Wayne said. “They’re putting electric squibs in livers and blowing them up in slow motion and then having blood all over everything. I mean, it’s not that there’s more violence in pictures today. It’s that it’s done with such bad taste that people turn their stomachs, not their emotional insides are affected. It turns their stomach.”
Injecting more realism into depictions of on-screen violence left a bad taste in Wayne’s mouth, and he wouldn’t even consider the idea of lending his name to something that compromised those core values. “I just don’t want to play anything petty or small or mean,” he continued. “I don’t mind being rough and tough and cruel, but in a big way, no little petty things.”
It’s a touch oxymoronic that he had no issues wielding a six-shooter and gunning down his enemies but opted to draw the line at anything that pushed the envelope. That’s to say nothing of Wayne’s political and societal leanings, either, which hardly painted the picture of a man willing to embrace change and move with the times.
Wayne was still starring in films into the 1970s, but the medium had already started moving well beyond his generation to embrace modernity, leaving him less than thrilled with the shift in direction.
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