There are not many people without a strong opinion about John Wayne. He is undoubtedly one of the most popular yet divisive actors to have ever graced the silver screen. While we may now be more inclined to look unfavourably at the roles he played and unequivocally dismiss his political and social outlook, which often included racist and homophobic outbursts, for a time, Wayne was arguably the most famous man in all of Hollywood.
Perhaps even more imposing was the shadow he cast over his audience. Wayne operated largely as a brutish gunslinger on screen, but he was thought of as America’s own superhero. As the war effort took its toll on the country, Wayne pushed himself forward through his performances as the nation’s moral compass, something he took into his personal life, too.
An uber-conservative unafraid to not only challenge the political ideals of his industry contemporaries but actively try to have writers, actors, and directors blacklisted because of them, Wayne’s outlook on society feels far removed from the Hollywood we see today. He routinely argued with his directors, reportedly drank heavily during work days, and battled his co-stars whenever he felt necessary. One performer he struggled to align with was the legendary Montgomery Clift.
On the set of Red River, Clift and Wayne struggled to become friends. Clift was of a different generation and subsequently took the art of acting a little more seriously than Wayne. Clift tried to envelop himself with the character, while Wayne saw himself more as a player in the picture. Either way, the duo failed to be partners off-set.
No better is this shown than in the planned bear hunt headed up by Wayne and Howard Hawks. “We had an old Army sergeant as a guide,” the director’s son David Hawks said to Todd McCarthy for his book Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood. “It was near the Mexican border. We were looking for smaller Mexican brown bears, and we rode and rode through the mountains. We never saw any bear, but we did get lost. The guide admitted that he didn’t know the way back. So, John Wayne took charge, and he really and truly led us back. One horse fell, lost its footing, and broke its leg, and we had to shoot it.”
Clift, however, was never interested in taking part. He had already labelled the boy’s party of Wayne and Hawks damaging. “They tried to draw me into their circle, but I couldn’t go along with them,” Clift shared. “The machismo thing repelled me because it seemed so forced and unnecessary.”
In response to the failed bear-hunting trip, which had cost the set valuable time and a horse its life, Clift notes, “You see what happens when you turn a bunch of fascists loose in the hills?”
The two men’s off-screen tension didn’t work well enough on-screen for Wayne. He later blamed the actor for not gaining him an Oscar nomination. “Clift couldn’t take a piss by himself. Hawks must be an idiot if he thinks that SOB can act,” claimed the movie’s make-up artist, Web Overlander. Wayne simply said: “Clift is an arrogant little bastard.”
It’s tough to be definitive over what exactly caused the rift between Wayne and Clift, but one can easily assume that taking time off the shoot to head into the wilderness to shoot bears and, in the process, having to put down a horse, was enough to push the more liberal Clift over the edge.