Movie stars don’t get much bigger than John Wayne. Between the late 1930s and the early 1970s, he was one of the most recognisable people in the world, a symbol of a certain type of American mythology that was rapidly fading by the time he gave his final bow in 1976’s The Shootist. He was the face of the western genre and always ensured that his characters either prevailed or died honourably, and in doing so, made himself synonymous with integrity, even when his politics off-screen told a different story.
That persona had to be built from the ground up. No matter how inextricably linked he was to his image by the end of his life, Wayne was not born as a swaggering, unwaveringly noble cowboy. He started on that journey thanks to a handful of savvy directors who helped turn westerns into a prestigious genre. Chief among them was John Ford, an Irish filmmaker who directed the actor in no fewer than 14 pictures, including The Searchers, The Quiet Man, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Their collaboration began in 1939 with Stagecoach and ended in 1963 with Donovan’s Reef, and it was one of the most fruitful actor-director relationships in Hollywood. However, their movies didn’t come easily. Ford was a notorious bully, feared for his fits of rage, manipulation, name-calling, and belittling. This wasn’t limited to Wayne by any means, but because they worked together so often, he was frequently on the receiving end of Ford’s cruelty.
It started with their very first picture. Stagecoach was a breakout moment for them. It helped turn Wayne from a B-movie actor to a bona fide movie star and marked Ford’s first foray into westerns since he switched from silent movies to sound. Wayne plays Ringo Kid, an outlaw travelling through the Old West on a stagecoach with a group of strangers who are under threat from Apaches. It is still considered to be one of the greatest films of all time and was a key influence on filmmakers like Orson Welles, Clint Eastwood, and Martin Scorsese.
Wayne paid the price for the film’s success, earning a crash course in Ford’s directorial style. “Stop slurring your dialogue and show some expression,” the director yelled at the young actor, according to Ronald L Davis’s Duke: The Life and Image of John Wayne. He called him a “big oaf” and “a dumb bastard” and, in a particularly cutting moment, said, “I really should get Gary Cooper for this part.”
He deplored the way Wayne moved as well, saying that he was “skipping like a goddamn fairy” instead of walking. Claire Trevor, who played a sex worker named Dallas in the film, remembered Ford grabbing Wayne by the chin and shaking his head, shouting, “Why are you moving your mouth so much? Don’t you know that you don’t act with your mouth in pictures? You act with your eyes!”
Whether all of this bullying actually helped Wayne’s performance is unclear, but it certainly didn’t seem to stop him from working with the director again. Stagecoach was the beginning of a nearly 30-year collaboration, and though Ford never stopped berating his star, he clearly gained more respect for him.