(3 of 8)
An admirable philosophy, one the actor still clings to, along with an advisory from his druggist father. Though it was made in this century, it has the terse ring of orders from Davy Crockett: 1) always keep your word; 2) a gentleman never insults anybody intentionally; 3) don't go around looking for trouble. But if you ever get in a fight, make sure you win it.
Part 3 became the cornerstone of the Wayne tradition. "When I came in," he claims, "the western man never lost his white hat and always rode the white horse and waited for the man to get up again in the fight. Following my Dad's advice, if a guy hit me with a vase, I'd hit him with a chair. That's the way we played it. I changed the saintly Boy Scout of the original cowboy hero into a more normal kind of fella."
Contained Violence
In the distinctive Wayne drawl there is the implication that somehow it would be effeminate to pronounce the ow in fellow or the / in of. In a field where male stars are constantly rumored to be epicene, Wayne's masculinity is incontestable. As a boy he owned a dog named Duke. The child became Big Duke, and the sobriquet stuck. By 30, Big Duke was a looming figure of contained violence waiting for a place to let loose. "I was in a saloon once where a guy shot all the way down a bar," he once complained to a director during a western fight scene. "And I wanna tell you, those extras aren't moving fast enough." The trick was to release the violence in neighborhood theaters. But somehow the oversized part continued to elude the outsized Wayne. The first picture he made for Monogram literally took place in a one-horse town; the budget did not allow for any more livestock.
In the 80 or so features that followed, Wayne earned his head-'em-off-at-the-passport, but his salary and his reputation remained minuscule. In one he suffered the ultimate indignity as Singin' Sandy, the screen's first melodious cowpoke. The hoarse opera was swiftly dubbed, and Wayne returned to the role of Speakin' Star. The movies soon found an acceptable substitute: fella named Gene Autry.
Wayne never did jump from the treadmill. He was lifted off by John Ford, who had become a poker-playing buddy. "I had been friendly with Ford for ten years," recalls Wayne, "and I wanted to get outa these quickie westerns, but I was damned if I was gonna climb on a friend to do it. He came to me with the script of Stagecoach and said, 'Who the hell can play the Ringo Kid?' " It was a part that called for a strong, inarticulate frontiersman vengefully seeking his father's killers. "I said there's only one guy: Lloyd Nolan, and Ford said, 'Oh, Jesus, can't you play it?' "
Yes, he could and yes, he did. The film became a classic of the genre, and Wayne changed to archetype casting. Following the wheel marks of Stagecoach, he became the essential western man, fearin' God but no one else. Tough to men and kind to wimmin, slow to anger but duck behind the bar when he got mad, for he had a gun and a word that never failed.