American Titan: Searching for John Wayne (40 page)

Wayne’s 111th feature, 1947’s
Angel and the Badman
, was produced by Wayne himself and co-starred Gail Russell. Wayne had wanted Gary Cooper to play the lead. When Cooper turned it down, Wayne offered it to Randolph Scott, who also declined. He then took the role himself and it proved a big hit for him at the box office.

(Rebel Road Archives)

Hawks’s classic
Red River
deepened Wayne’s appeal by allowing him to play an older character and a villain. It was Wayne’s 114th released film, made in 1946 but not released until 1948. Before production began, Wayne was concerned his co-star, Montgomery Clift, was too small for the climactic fistfight between the two.

A publicity photo released by Paramount Pictures after
Red River
to remind people Wayne was not really old. This is an image Wayne rarely projected onscreen—urban, intellectual, thoughtful.

Wayne’s 114th release,
Fort Apache
, co-starred Henry Fonda in John Ford’s fictionalized version of the battle at Little Big Horn. Ford liked Wayne’s performance in
Red River
and wanted him to “age” in this film as well.
Fort Apache
(made two years after
Red River
, but released before it) was a massive box-office hit, despite war veteran Fonda’s emerging “graylisting” that would keep him out of features for several years.

Wayne with his second wife, Esperanza Baur. They had a tumultuous marriage that began in 1946 and ended in 1954 with a front-page scandal of a divorce.

Wayne and his wife Peruvian actress Pilar Pallete, leaving for Los Angeles just after being married in Hawaii. It was Wayne’s third marriage, Pallete’s second. Wayne, at forty-seven, was twenty-nine years older than his bride. They married November 4, 1954, the same day his divorce became final from his second wife. All three of Wayne’s wives were Latin.

1949’s
Sands of Iwo Jima
, directed by Allan Dwan. It was Wayne’s 119th film, and earned him his first Best Actor Oscar nomination. His lack of military service and politically divisive anti-Communist activities may have cost him the win. The Oscar went instead to Broderick Crawford for his performance in Robert Rossen’s
All the King’s Men
, a role Wayne had turned down because of its negative view of American politics. Rossen was later blacklisted.

William Wellman’s 1955
Blood Alley
, shot in CinemaScope, was Wayne’s 130th feature. He was on his honeymoon when Robert Mitchum, the star of the Batjacproduced film, had an onset fight with Wellman and quit. Unable to find anyone else to play the role of the riverboat captain in this anti-Communist propaganda film, Wayne stepped into it himself.

Wayne, with Lana Turner, one of the many top female leading ladies he starred with. John Farrow’s 1955
The Sea Chase
was Wayne’s 129th film, a top-grossing movie. Filmed in Hawaii, it completed just before Wayne married Pilar Pallete there.

Wayne may be seen smoking cigarettes in virtually every film he made up until 1964, when he was diagonosed with lung cancer. These are two commercial stills that show Wayne posing for cigarette ads and endorsements.