There’s often a difference between an actor’s favorite movie from their back catalog and the one they hold closest to their heart, with John Wayne naming two different pictures in each respect.
When ‘The Duke’ was asked which one of his films he’d call his personal favorite, he chose for John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, but that wasn’t the one he cherished the most. Instead, he preferred a passion project that saw him try something completely different, even if the rewards weren’t necessarily worth the risk.
Comfortable with his position as Hollywood’s biggest and most bankable star, once Wayne had settled atop the A-list, he could have easily spent the rest of his days sleepwalking through a succession of easy gigs that required little more from him than playing thinly veiled extensions of his signature persona.
Not that he didn’t, with ‘The Duke’ savvy enough to realise that the smartest and safest way to maintain his stardom was to give the people exactly what they wanted, but he did branch out on occasion. Most notably, he bet big on The Alamo, his feature-length directorial debut.
While the 1960 historical epic earned an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Picture’ and fared admirably at the box office, the spiralling budget saw Wayne sign the rights over to United Artists, and the studio claimed most of the profits from the first-time filmmaker’s ambitious debut.
It wasn’t a straightforward shoot either, with Wayne struggling with the additional pressure of steering the ship from behind the camera while anchoring the action in front of it, leading to a few fractious moments where he almost came to blows with at least one of his co-stars.
Was it worth it in the end? Financially, not really, because he barely made a penny from The Alamo. Personally and professionally, though, it was a completely different story. In fact, in Michael Munn’s John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth, ‘The Duke’ called it the crowning achievement of his career.
That said, he was hurt by the studio excising 30 minutes of footage from the theatrical cut, which was driven largely by early screenings, which caused critics to focus on Wayne’s political message at the expense of the narrative. “They didn’t like that I was using the Alamo as a metaphor for America,” he admitted. “It was a warning against anything that stole our freedom, and yes, that included communism.”
“They didn’t like that,” he continued. “They criticised my politics, not my film. So United Artists said, ‘We gotta lose half an hour’. It broke my heart, cutting so much out of the picture. But I know the people liked it. They still do. People still tell me they like it. That picture meant more to me, means more to me, than any other picture I made. Or will make.”
The Alamo may not be remembered as Wayne’s finest hour, and it’s definitely not the best movie of his career, but he clearly didn’t care when it meant more to him on a personal level than any other of the 100+ films he starred in.