Whether right or wrong, John Wayne wasn’t the type of person to apologise for his actions. He was as headstrong and bullish in real life as the characters he played onscreen, which meant that going around grovelling to his colleagues was about the least likely thing he’d ever be caught doing.
Having built his persona on macho posturing and being the manliest man in Hollywood, it was at least on-brand. ‘The Duke’ knew what his audience wanted to see, and he ate, slept, lived, and breathed the mythology he’d created around himself, which occasionally meant he was a nightmare to work with.
Several co-stars have relayed their tales of woe from collaborating with Wayne, which range from threats and fisticuffs to outright hatred. He was a product of the studio system, one who’d changed their name and adopted an entire personality designed explicitly to succeed in movies, which meant he didn’t have as much control over his destiny as many would think.
Like many of the grizzled figures he played in films, Wayne spent the first two and a half decades of his career as a gun for hire. He was under contract with various studios and starred in the pictures he was told to star in, something he wanted to abandon once he’d finally made a name for himself.
To do so, he founded a production company. The imaginatively named John Wayne Productions was short-lived and eventually replaced by the much more prolific and successful Batjac when it was founded in 1952, with ‘The Duke’ viewing his first tilt at wielding influence behind the scenes as more of a test run.
James Edward Grant’s 1947 effort Angel and the Badman was a safe bet. It was a western that hardly required him to stretch his acting muscles as a cowboy being nursed back to health by a woman, which builds up to a climactic showdown when the protagonist’s violent past eventually catches up to him.
“That was a big step for me, to produce,” he told Michael Munn. “I knew that the film was a modest one, and a good one to start with. But the pressures of producing and acting were more than I’d realised.” The pressures were so great that Wayne admitted his treatment of the cast and crew crossed the line more than once.
“I have to admit I gave a tongue-lashing to just about everybody, which was more than usual for me in those days,” he confessed. “I found I was going around apologising to everyone all the time, and thankfully, because they were my friends, they forgave me.”
The easiest way to avoid such confrontations is to not be a dick in the first place, but at least he said he was sorry. ‘The Duke’ was too proud to let anyone know that acting and producing at the same time was placing him under a huge amount of stress, so he decided it was the better option to be an arse and then beg for forgiveness when the dust had settled.