American Titan: Searching for John Wayne (17 page)

For this film, Wayne traded in his cowboy chaps for navy whites, and is stationed at the American air base at Boni-Komba, where Bijou happens to be “appearing” at the Seven Sinners Café, protected by her “bodyguard” (pimp), the gruff Broderick Crawford. One night she meets U.S. Navy Lieutenant Dan Brent (Wayne), who falls head over heels in love with her, much to the dissatisfaction of his commanding officer. In a statement of defiance, Lieutenant Brent vows to resign his commission and marry Bijou. Not long after, at the café Brent gets into a rumble with a disgruntled ex-lover of Bijou and is knocked unconscious. He is taken back to the ship, where he slowly regains his senses, while Bijou and her bodyguard (and another girlfriend) slip past the authorities and head out for the next port.

The film was released in October 1940 and proved a critical and commercial success, due in large part to Dietrich’s drawing power at the box office. As for Wayne, playing opposite a sexual bombshell like Dietrich reminded audiences how little heat he really had as a leading man. Rough and tough was his sweet spot, and
Seven Sinners
is filled with saloon-wrecking fistfights that Wayne felt more at home with.

Off-screen, of course, it was a different story. Wayne was like a sweaty adolescent around Dietrich. He couldn’t get enough of her. He had never before had a real whiff of the kind of feral sexuality Dietrich exuded. Certainly there was nothing like that for him at home or with any and all the Claire Trevors of Hollywood. He was crazy for Dietrich from the first time she led him to her bed. He stayed there, at her beck and call, for the next three years and didn’t appear to care who knew it. She was the bad girl he’d never had, the forbidden fruit he’d never tasted. She was as free and easy with her body as Josie was uptight and rigid with hers. Dietrich used that to her advantage and made him not just like sex with her, but crave it.

The gaggle of gossips that included Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper, and Jimmie (Jimmy) Fidler all made reference of the affair in their columns and radio broadcasts, with eyebrows raised in surprise and outrage.
⁶⁷

Josephine was not amused. Even in her insulated social world, it was impossible not to hear about her husband’s wild romance with his decadent German costar. If her marriage to Wayne had had any chance at all of succeeding, it ended with the arrival into his life, and hers, of
La Dietrich.

He was in love with this glamorous actress, who had shown him her world, and he now wanted to show her his by introducing her to American football. He took her to USC games, which she enjoyed
.
He took her fishing and hunting north of Los Angeles, and up to the great Northern California woods and through the vineyards. They were two opposites that seemed so strongly attracted to each other. Dietrich lived off her exotic sultriness, her frilly underthings revealed as easily as her smirk, while Wayne epitomized the American male stoic, the strong, silent type who preferred to let his fists do his talking and to keep his lovemaking a private affair. She was his fantasy of Europe, sexually uninhibited and wild; he was hers of America, big, tough, impervious, sexually repressed. Lacking the refinement of his German counterparts but capable of beating them to a pulp, he managed to escape being the next Unrat to her real-life Lola-Lola. Instead she made him her own personal King Kong.

They carried on in public as if they didn’t care who saw them kissing in nightclubs over dinner, and that proved the final blow for Josephine, who informed her husband she intended to go through with the divorce after all. Wayne was shocked by her decision. He never thought she would have the courage to actually go through with it, to break up the family and defy her church, but she made it clear to him their marriage was over, and until it became official he was no longer welcome at home.

And if that wasn’t enough to make Wayne crazy, there was that other thing going on that was about to affect his and everybody else’s life. America was about to go to war and every able-bodied man would be expected to enlist, put on a uniform, and fight. Young boys would lie about their ages to get in; old men would as well because they, too, wanted to fight for their country. Rich men, poor men, men from good families, men with no families, college students, doctors, lawyers, film stars, and directors—everybody would want in on the action.

Except John Wayne.

Chapter 9

In February 1941, ten months before Pearl Harbor, Republic, via Charles Feldman, signed Wayne to two films, the first be directed by John H. Auer,
A Man Betrayed
(a.k.a.
Wheel of Fortune,
a.k.a.
Citadel of Crime,
a.k.a.
Gangs of Kansas City
), a so-called screwball comedy that had very little screw in its ball. In it, a badly miscast Wayne, whose flair for comedy was never his strongest suit, plays a lawyer investigating the death of a friend, which leads to his uncovering a widespread web of local political corruption. He two-fistedly cleans up the town, and gets the girl while doing so, in this case pretty Frances Dee, married at the time to Joel McCrea. Wayne had no off-screen interest in Dee or any other leading lady, as he was still terribly smitten with Dietrich.

This was a film Yates had pulled from Republic’s trunk of recyclables, the studio having made it once before in 1936 (also directed by Auer), with Edward Nugent in the lead. Wayne was paid $18,000 for his services and he asked for and got Ward Bond to be his costar, the simpleton henchman for the bad guys.
A Man Betrayed
received decent reviews, most critics agreeing it was okay, nothing special.

Two months later the second Republic-produced Wayne feature was released,
Lady from Louisiana,
this one directed by Bernard Vorhaus (who also coproduced). In the film, which wisely leaned more heavily on action than comedy, Wayne once again plays an attorney, this time on a nineteenth-century Mississippi riverboat.
Modern Screen
described it quite succinctly and accurately as having “a colorful background, a capable cast, a considerable cast, a considerable amount of action . . . Wayne competently fills the bill.” The
Motion Picture Herald
noted the film’s “thrilling finale of blood and slugfest.” It was shot in twenty-three days in March and Wayne was paid $24,000 for his services. Ona Munson played his female interest. It opened that May nationwide.

Lady from Louisiana
completed Wayne’s latest commitment to Republic. Free now to accept any and all new offers, Wayne added a key element to his team of business representation, Bö Roos (pronounced
Boo Roos
). For 5 percent, Roos agreed to have his company, Beverly Management, handle Wayne’s finances, an assignment he had done for a number of other Hollywood stars including Merle Oberon, Red Skelton, Johnny Weissmuller, Lupe Vélez, Fred MacMurray, Joan Crawford, Ray Milland, and Marlene Dietrich. It was, in fact, Dietrich who first sent Wayne to Roos, assuring him that Roos could take him from being a comfortable actor to a really wealthy man. Wayne got the message. Everybody knew he and Josie were headed for divorce and he needed to protect as many of his assets as possible. There was no hidden agenda here on Dietrich’s part. She was still married to the same man in Germany and would remain so for the rest of his life.

Roos’s combined portfolios for his clients was about $25 million, an enormous amount for the early 1940s, equivalent to more than a quarter billion dollars today. Tellingly, he was also an expert in managing the finances of divorcing clients and fought for them to keep every last dime they could, no matter how nasty the split.

The first thing he did was put Wayne on a weekly $100 allowance, and he sent an ample amount for household expenses to Josie. He then set up trust accounts for each of their four children. Roos’s maneuverings put a strain on Wayne’s cash flow; he was not used to someone telling him how and how much to spend of his own money. He had become something of a glad-hander among his friends, and was known in Hollywood as a soft touch. He loved picking up the check whenever he went out, regardless if it was with one woman, or a group of twenty-five pals, and if anyone needed some bridge money, he was always happy to give it to them. This was the way he was brought up—he learned to help others from his father, who was quick to help others even if it meant he didn’t have enough for himself. “It was impossible to get Duke to stay on a budget,” Roos later told Zolotow. “He just couldn’t say no to a guy he liked and, hell, sometimes he wouldn’t tell you, wouldn’t tell me, or anybody in the office he was signing a check. However, at least we did get Wayne’s capital invested to some extent.”

Roos put some of Wayne’s money into a Culver City motel, a yachting marina on Catalina, a beach club, a fleet of shrimp boats, a fast-freeze food-processing plant, a country club, a hotel in Acapulco, some oil wells, and a portfolio of common stocks. And Wayne continued to spend lavishly on his three favorite, if somewhat idiosyncratic hobbies: cowboy suits, comic books, and Kachina dolls. Roos succeeded in stabilizing and maximizing Wayne’s income, while protecting as many of his investments as possible from the coming divorce proceedings.

WAYNE MADE HIS NEXT FILM
for Paramount,
Shepherd of the Hills,
directed by Henry Hathaway. The film is about a son whose father deserted his mother when the boy, Matt, was young, which led to her death, an emotional context that recalled for Wayne his own problems with his dad when he had left his mother for another woman. To make the point even more powerful (for him) and to deepen the emotional connections, Wayne insisted that Harry Carey, the actor who had been his role model during the early, formative years, play the father.

In the story, after his mother’s death, Matt becomes embittered and something of an outcast in the Ozark community in which he lives. He gets involved in moonshining and vows to avenge his mother’s death by killing his father, should he ever return. Into this mix comes a stranger who performs what appear to be a series of miracles, including saving the life of Matt’s fiancée, Sammy Lane, played by Betty Field. In an interesting twist, this mysterious “Good Shepherd” turns out to be Matt’s father. The son forces a confrontation and is shot by the father. He miraculously recovers and becomes a changed man. Matt forgives his father and marries Sammy.

The story plays better than it reads. Filmed near Big Bear Lake, Moon Ridge, and Bartlett Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains, which stood in for the Missouri Ozarks (in the village that is now known as Branson, a live version of the original novel is still performed nightly in an outdoor arena), the film was an adaptation of a hugely successful 1907 novel by Harold Bell Wright, with a screenplay by Grover Jones and Stewart Anthony. The script simplifies and improves the original novel.

Shepherd of the Hills,
Wayne’s first film shot in color (Technicolor), opened July 18, 1941, to great reviews and big box office.
⁶⁸
Its neoreligiosity was something of a departure for Wayne and, during production, gave him nightmares. He kept seeing his own father in his dreams; his death still affected Wayne deeply, especially since Wayne had never fully forgiven his father for “abandoning” his mother. Now, in his dreams, he found himself mirroring, or “doubling” the character of Matt, asking the spirit of his father for forgiveness. He also dreamed about being bullied by the other boys at high school, when he was still Marion Morrison, before his father and the father-figure firemen taught him how to fight and defend himself. All this turmoil was not helped by his ongoing feelings of guilt over his romance with Dietrich and his coming divorce from Josephine. Much of this emotional conflict found its way into Wayne’s performance, which, under Hathaway’s direction, remains one of his most unusual and complex, in an interesting, if offbeat film marred only by its reversion to violence as a resolution.

Americans found reassurance in the film’s message of redemption and reconciliation and were moved by Wayne’s thoughtful, introspective performance. Critics, too, liked it. Allen Eyles, in his
John Wayne and the Movies,
wrote that the film was “a powerful one on the lines of
Stagecoach
but with a greater depth involving the kind of intense, interior conflict that [Wayne] could register powerfully.” The
New York Times
liked it less, while acknowledging Wayne’s performance: “Gifted John Wayne and Betty Field do their best against the inanities of their roles.”

That fall, perhaps because of the personal difficulties he had making
Shepherd,
Wayne returned to Republic Pictures for one film, lured back by a $24,000 salary and a guarantee of the film’s gross, a percentage of the box-office sales before expenses were taken out. This type of deal was usually reserved for only the biggest stars, but Republic needed him and was willing to pay whatever it took to get him.

The film he agreed to make for them was
Lady for a Night
(a.k.a.
Memphis Belle
), directed by Leigh Jason, a bit of fluff that finds Wayne again in the Mississippi riverboat milieu, playing another lawyer, with a plot that could apply to any one of a dozen Wayne movies. Shot in black-and-white, filled with leggy chorines and a tuxedoed Wayne,
Lady
ends in a huge slugfest that resolves all the film’s mundane plot twists on Old Man River.

Scheduled for a holiday release, the opening had to be pushed back several weeks, to December 29, because earlier that month, on the seventh, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the next day Roosevelt declared war. The country changed overnight, united in patriot-driven rage and thirsty for revenge against the Japanese. Suddenly, Hollywood found itself with dozens of unreleased films that looked and sounded like they were made a hundred years ago, of which
Lady for a Night
was one.

John Wayne had completed one more film before December 7, this one for Cecil B. DeMille, one of the earliest pioneers of Hollywood, best known for the kitschy, expensive movies he produced and directed. He wanted Wayne to costar in a $2 million extravaganza called
Reap the Wild Wind
. DeMille, via Feldman, agreed to pay Wayne $35,000 to costar with Ray Milland, a sophisticated, handsome British Hollywood transplant. Wayne and Milland formed the two male corners of a love triangle, with Paulette Goddard as the woman they both lust after. The film is set in the Florida Keys in 1840, against a special-effects-riddled background of storms, fogs, sinking and sunken ships and the salvagers who live off them, pirates, kidnappings, crooked lawyers, and a sea monster that conveniently kills off Milland. It was a kind of
Gone with the Wind
lite, with Goddard and Susan Hayward (two stars who tried and failed to land the role of Scarlett O’Hara), and Wayne miscast as an adventure-seeking salvager, the type of expansive but hollow spectacle that DeMille loved to make, complete with his own stentorian voice-over narration, his auteurist signature.