John Wayne
Handing Dirty Harry To Clint Eastwood Was A Decision John Wayne Would Come To Regret
Following a brief resurgence powered by his enormously entertaining (and Oscar-winning) portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in “True Grit,” John Wayne suddenly found himself scrambling in the midst of the 1970s New Hollywood era. He’d already played the tough old man of the West who whips kids into shape in “Big Jake” and “The Cowboys,” effectively leaving him nowhere to go in the genre but revisionist à la Sam Peckinpah or Clint Eastwood. This was not the red-blooded American movie star’s style.
With his Western safety net cut out from under him, Wayne turned his attention to law-and-order cop flicks. He had a crack at “Dirty Harry,” and would come to regret passing on it. Ergo, when Lawrence Roman’s script for “McQ,” a straightforward actioner about a gruff detective in hot pursuit of the drug dealer who killed his former partner, turned up at The Duke’s Batjac production company, he leaped on it. After all, who better to slake his generation’s thirst for busting up long-haired, non-caucasian scumbags than the movie star who represented everything the Boomer-driven counterculture hated about the United States?
Dirty Harry versus slightly unkempt Wayne
Warner Bros.The primary problem with Wayne attempting to capitalize on the success of “Dirty Harry” was the star-producer’s conservative, visually flat aesthetic. At the time, The Duke mostly favored out-to-pasture filmmakers who had no issue with getting overruled by their leading man on set. So it was a tad surprising that Wayne opted for John Sturges, a director of supreme widescreen style in classics like “Bad Day at Black Rock,” “The Magnificent Seven” and “The Great Escape.” Alas, those movies were made a decade prior, and Sturges had lost his zest for filmmaking since then. According to Scott Eyman’s “John Wayne: The Life and Legend,” the once great director was now more interested in hobbies like boat designing.
Not that this mattered. Wayne knew “McQ” was a formulaic mediocrity on the page. Still, this placed it a cut above his most recent work. Per Eyman’s book, The Duke remarked, “I haven’t made a movie in over six months, and this one is better than most of the junk they’ve been sending me.”
A lumbering model of law enforcement
Warner Bros.If not for Sturges’ widescreen framing (which, sadly, is rarely better than competent), a delicious supporting turn from the late, great Clu Gulager, and Wayne busting out a Mac-10 submachine gun in the film’s finale, there would be nothing to distinguish “McQ” from a network cop show. It’d be easily forgotten if anyone other than The Duke had been cast in the lead role. This is not a compliment.
As Eyman notes:
“[E]ven if Wayne hadn’t looked every week of his 63 years and been far too old for the part he was playing, ‘McQ’ would have been an ordinary picture. ‘John Wayne,’ wrote Vincent Canby of The New York Times, ‘looks as if he should be celebrating his diamond jubilee on the force. […] There’s a scene […] in which Wayne is required to pick a lock and his massive hands are so gnarled from years on the range that you get the impression of a bear trying to tie a shoelace.’”
The film wouldn’t recoup its budget until 1980 (one year after Wayne’s death), but this didn’t stop the star from plowing forward with another, worse cop thriller in 1975’s “Brannigan.” Though it’s not surprising Wayne would want to capitalize on the law-and-order fervor that had gripped the nation, it’s disappointing he didn’t care to do more than go through the by-now creaky motions. He was just making movies to make movies and turning out second-rate imitations of vigorously violent films that were well out of his traditionalist wheelhouse. Unwilling to challenge himself, his time had passed.
John Wayne
The Legend Lives On: John Wayne is Still Alive!
John Wayne
Why John Wayne Turned Down the Chance to Work With Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood and John Wayne are the two biggest legends in the history of Western movies, however, they never worked together. The duo did have the opportunity to work together once in the 1970s. Here’s why the film never came to fruition.
How John Wayne responded when Clint Eastwood tried to work with him
Firstly, a little background. According to the book John Wayne: The Life and Legend, it all starts with Larry Cohen. Though Cohen is not a widely known director like Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino, he’s a huge name to fans of B movies. He directed famous B movies like The Stuff, Q: The Winged Serpent, It’s Alive, and God Told Me To. He also wrote a script called The Hostiles shortly after Eastwood released his classic High Plains Drifter.
The Hostiles was about a gambler who wins half of an estate of an older man. The gambler and the older man have to work together despite the fact that they don’t like each other. Eastwood optioned the screenplay with the intent of playing the gambler alongside Wayne as the older man.
Eastwood sent a copy of the script of The Hostiles to Wayne. Although Eastwood felt the script was imperfect, he saw its potential. However, Wayne was not interested. Eastwood pitched the film to Wayne a second time and Wayne responded with a letter. Wayne’s letter complained about High Plains Drifter. Wayne was offended by the film and its portrayal of the Old West as a cruel, violent place.
John Wayne
Ann-Margret Refused to Call John Wayne ‘Duke’ While Introducing 1 of His Movies
Ann-Margret once starred in one of John Wayne’s lesser-known movies. However, she refused to call him by his popular moniker Duke. Here’s a look at the film they made together — and why she declined to call him by a nickname.
The one time Ann-Margret and John Wayne made a movie together
Ann-Margret is probably most known for her work in musicals, specifically Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas, and The Who’s Tommy. However, she also dabbled in the Western genre. She starred alongside Wayne in the mostly forgotten movie The Train Robbers.
Wayne was also known as The Duke or just Duke. According to USA Today, the nickname was derived from his childhood dog. It stuck with him for many years. It continues to be used today — even on the box covers of the DVDs for his movies.
John Wayne | Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images
During an interview with Interview Magazine, Ann-Margret explained why she didn’t refer to the Rio Bravo star by this famous name. “When I came to this country, first of all, mother and I didn’t know English,” she said. “I would curtsey, then say, ‘Thank you,’ and then when I was leaving, curtsey. For example, we went to Dallas to introduce a film I did with John Wayne. And I never called him Duke. I just couldn’t. That’s the way I was raised. When you meet someone, you say either Mr. or Mrs. or Miss. You stand up.”
Ann-Margret revealed she treated other famous people in much the same way. For example, she worked with director George Sidney on Bye Bye Birdie and Viva Las Vegas. She always called him Mr. Sidney.
What Ann-Margret thought about John Wayne
Ann-Margret refused to use Wayne’s most famous moniker. However, she had a positive view of the actor. During an interview with Fox News, she was asked what she expected when she met Wayne. “Oh, I didn’t know what to expect,” she revealed. “But when he hugged me, it’s like the world was hugging me. He was so big and wide with that booming voice.
“We were shooting in Durango, Mexico and my parents came down to visit me,” she added. “He was so great with my parents. So absolutely welcoming and gentle with them. And anybody who was great to my parents was on a throne in my eyes.”
How the world reacted to ‘The Train Robbers’
Wayne starred in many classic Westerns, including The Searchers, Stagecoach, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. However, The Train Robbers is mostly forgotten. It didn’t gain a cult following like Once Upon a Time in the West or Dead Man. It wasn’t a critical success either, garnering a 33% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. However, Ann-Margret had some fond memories of making the film — even if she refused to call Wayne by his famous nickname.
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