Kingrat, Wayne was cautious about Reap the Wild Wind because he was a Republic contractee working at Paramount. He thought he'd be chewed up and spit out,but DeMille promised that he would take care of him, that he would show off very well in the movie. DeMille was as good as his word, and the two m...

LZcutterm Ford shot Lberty Valance more or less as written, so the credit for this incredibly sad film should probably go to Ford and the writers. Ford's health was beginning to deteriorate at this time, and he simply didn't have the energy for extensive location jaunts anymore. (He tried to pull it...

Miss Goddess, I think Jimmy Grant was a good writer who probably could have been a better writer if he hadn't spent so much of his life drunk, not to mention tied to Wayne's apron strings. For instance, his last script was for the James Garner "Support Your Local Sheriff" which is a low-ke...

Hi Cinemaven, Welcome to the large roster of fans of The Quiet Man. Wayne adored O"Hara, plain and simple. They shared a clear view of life and of acting - get up and get on with it. Or, as the Brits say, keep calm and carry on. I think Wayne is a very romantic actor, more in his early and midd...

Hi Feito, Wayne's idea of heaven was a trip to Mexico or South America. He liked the food, the language - which he spoke quite well - the tequila and the culture. I imagine he simply transferred his affection for the area to its women - a simple case of affinities. Unfortunately, the marriages all f...

LZCutter, I think the Wayne /Dietrich thing was based largely on sex. He'd never been involved with a woman with her level of erotic experience, and I'm sure it turned him every which way but loose. On her end, he was entirely different from the men she was usually entangled with - Sternberg, Remarq...

Miss Goddess, Wayne and Cooper were friendly - Wayne always referred to him as "Coop" - but I don't think they hung around together. Cooper was very social around Beverly Hills and Holmby Hills, and Wayne was in Encino, then Newport Beach. Ford was close-mouthed about other directors.There...

Movieman, Oh, the rights issues. Batjac's deal with Warners was that films that hit a certain level of profit would revert back to BAtjac after 7 years of release, which is why The High and the Mighty and Island in the Sky and Seven Men from Now and Hondo among others, were off the market for so lon...

Movieman, Wayne wanted to be a compleat movie man. He set up Wayne-Fellows, later Batjac, as a complete mini studio. They had their own casting director, their own story editor, their own art director and so forth. He liked it a great deal, although Warners, the master of double entry bookkeeping, u...

Mr. Tranberg, 1. There was a breach between Ford and Fonda after Ford sucker punched him. Why not? Fonda would talk politely about Ford's great gifts as a director, or get up and say a few nice words at a testimonial, but he was, in modern parlance, over it. He told Charlton Heston at Ford's AFI Awa...

Sue Sue, To answer your other question, Wayne did feel he was getting too old for romantic parts. Specifically, Donovan's Reef,which he seemed embarassed about when I talked to him. Since that was only a year or two after Hatari, he probably thought he was on thin ice there too, if one can be on thi...

Sue Sue, Hatari is not unlike Rio Bravo in that Wayne is basically playing the spoke of the wheel. The other characters motivate the plot - in this case, it's mostly the animals - and Wayne plays the straight man. Any other actor would be boring doing that, which is why Hawks - or Ford, in Liberty V...

Hey,Jeff. Actually, its now in its 8th printing. Seriously. I had a vague idea of the man before I started the book, both because of my own brief acquaintance with him, and from getting to know Bill Clothier and others of the Ford/Wayne axis in later years. But I was also conscious that it was possi...

Hi Clore, When I talked with Bacall, she didn't comment on the resonance to her own experiences with her late husband. I think everyone on The Shootist was focused on Wayne, and on getting him through the picture, which wasn't easy, between his declining health and the problems between him and Don S...

Hi Rita, Wayne was disappointed in Hayworth; he felt she was difficult to work with and condescending to the crew on the film. In fact, he used he as an object lesson for his children in how not to treat people. Whether this was a function of her drinking or whether the Alzheimer's was already affec...