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Blow for Liberty "There's a lot of yella bastards in the country who would like to call pa triotism old-fashioned," grouses Wayne today. As he sees it, yesterday was even worse. "With all that leftist activity, I was quite obviously on the other side," he recalls. "I was invited at first to a coupla cell meetings, and I played the lamb to listen to 'em for a while. The only guy that ever fooled me was the di rector Edward Dmytryk. I made a pic ture with him called Back to Bataan.
He started talking about the masses, and as soon as he started using that word — which is from their book, not ours — I knew he was a Commie."*
Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee were uncovering more leftists back East, the Hollywood Ten were cited for contempt, and Wayne decided that it was time to help out. "An actor is part of a bigger world than Hollywood," he announced. Together with Scenarist Chase and such rigid stalwarts as Actors Adolphe Menjou and Ward Bond, Wayne helped to form the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. Wayne may have seen himself as a patriot. But next to some of his red-white-and-blue-blooded colleagues he looked a little pink. "We had a split in the group," Chase later reported, "the once-a-Communist-always-a-Communist group and the group that thought it was ridiculous to destroy some of those who, say, joined the party in the '30s in Nazi Germany. Duke and I were in the latter group." A risky place to be; when Wayne praised Larry Parks for admitting his Old Left indiscretions, Hedda Hopper bawled out the Duke publicly. He got the message. "I think those blacklisted people should have been sent over to Russia," he now declares. "They'd have been taken care of over there, and if the Commies ever won over here, why hell, those guys would be the first ones they'd take care of —after me." Still, even when he became president of the alliance, Wayne viewed politics as a necessary evil. "My main object in making a motion picture is entertainment," he confesses. "If at the same time I can strike a blow for liberty, then I'll stick one in."
Grinding out his two or three epics a year, Wayne feinted a jab with Big Jim McLain, the story of a ham-fisted HUAC investigator. It failed because Wayne was as uneasy in mufti as he was playing Genghis Khan in The Conqueror. In that film, Mongolia became westernized when Wayne announced to Tartar Woman Susan
Hayward, "Yer beoodiful in yer wrath."
In the troubled '60s, Wayne the political theorist and Wayne the film maker formed a merger. After mulling over the drama for 14 years, Wayne produced, directed and starred in The Alamo — as Davy Crockett. The picture was about the Texans v. the troops of Santa Anna, but it was also, he said, "to remind people not only in America but everywhere that there were once men and women who had the guts to stand up for the things they believed."
As Wayne saw it, the Alamo was a metaphor for America. There was Mexicans and there was Us, there was black and there was white. "They tell me every thing isn't black and white," complains Wayne. I the hell not?"