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Ringo Kid. By the time Director Ford finally got around to giving his young friend a really good role, the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach, Wayne had married a college sweetheart, Josephine Saenz, daughter of a retired Los Angeles doctor, and was living with his growing family in a duplex apartment. His salary was now up to $6,000 a picture, but "we were always just one jump ahead of the bills," he says.
Without defying the accepted formula in any way, Ford's Stagecoach raised horse opera to a higher level and became both a critical and box-office success. The part of the sleepy-eyed, lightning-fast, misunderstood outlaw Kid fitted Wayne's pattern to a T. Soon every studio in Hollywood was asking for him. Republic, the studio which then had him under contract, considered his popularity a passing fad, and went right on casting him in low-budget westerns. But he was lent to other studios for bigger jobs, and he signed future commitments on his own, right & left. The Waynes were soon able to move out of their flat and buy a substantial $15,000 house on sturdily respectable Highland Avenue. Eventually, Republic caught on to the value of its property, and began putting time and money into Wayne pictures. The results were the biggest box-office smashes (Wake of the Red Witch, Sands of Iwo Jlma) in the studio's history.
A year and a half ago, when the movie industry was at a low point, no fewer than nine Los Angeles first-run theaters were showing Wayne pictures. Those that couldn't get new ones were scrabbling for the old. TV producers across the land were finding Wayne's ancient quickies a more than adequate challenge to Hopalong Cassidy. As one famed producer sat listening in growing irritation to the alibis and explanations of his colleagues, he finally burst out: "What they're all trying to say is that there's nothing wrong with this damned industry that a dozen John Waynes couldn't cure."
Call It Corn. Many a Hollywood actor who hits the jackpot is content to make hay while the sun shines, buy up a few annuities and wait uncertainly for the certain end. But Wayne, who is well aware that he is no actor, takes a somewhat longer view. "All I do is sell sincerity, and I've been selling the hell out of that ever since I started. But I'm an investment, and I gotta protect that investment."
He probably exercises a tighter control over the films he appears in than any other top star in Hollywood. He insists on simple stories, sympathetic parts that fit his personality, and dialogue that he can speak convincingly. Most Wayne pictures are heavily larded with his own pet phrases ("Let's get charging! Saddle up!"). "If someone starts acting phony at a party," says Wayne, "you go out and get a drink and the hell with him. But if I start acting phony on the screen, you gotta sit there. Pretty soon you're just looking at me instead of feeling with me. When I do a scene, I want to react as John Wayne."