Films You Wish John Wayne Hadn't Made

[arthurarnell]

Hi.

We have had the best John Wayne pictures. The worst, the Best Cowboys and the Worst
I would like to start a new topic

Films you wish John Wayne Hadn't Made - r even films he didn't make but you wish he had.

In another posting I got on to the subject of minor actors in [i]The Longest Day in which numerous well known and not so well known faces are visible.

Making pen pictures of all the people who acted in John Wayne films I can honestly say that as good as his roles were in

'The Longest Day' 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' and 'How the West was Won'[I]

Fom a purely selfish point of view there is a cast list of about 117 people in the Longest Day most of whom like Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Harry Fowler and Norman Rossington were people that you wouldn't normally associate with John Wayne and that is only the Brits, add to that the German and French actors and it gets really complicated.

It probably approaching the same number in TGSET

And quite a large number in HTWWW

So in a controversial manner I can say that these were three films I wish John Wayne hadn't made.

[itdo]

Every time I watch DUEL IN THE SUN (and I confess, it's often) I imagine Wayne playing the part of Lewt McCanles - which eventually went to Gregory Peck. I think Wayne could have been terrific in this good boy/bad boy kind of part. Lusting for Jennifer Jones, breaking in the horse, wrecking the train and shooting poor old Charles Bickford, and then biting the dust full of bullet-holes in a final embrace - and all in Technicolor and with Tiomkin's music. What a part! They talked Wayne about it but for some reason or another that never came about.

[Hondo Duke Lane]

I wish he never made The Cowboys. This was not a typical John Wayne movie, and being killed off in the picture somewhere just after the middle part, just didn't make Duke the star he really is. This is not John Wayne in his best, and somehow in my opinion belittled him. How can you imagine a person like Bruce Dern capable in size and ability could kill off Duke?

I did like the relationship he had with the boys, and the way he showed them how they had to be men, but ruined the picture with the killing.

Cheers, Hondo B)

[chester7777]

Originally posted by Hondo Duke Lane@Jan 21 2004, 02:42 PM
How can you imagine a person like Bruce Dern capable in size and ability could kill off Duke?

The Cowboys is on my list of least liked JW movies for just the reason you mention. However, the first half of the movie was pretty darn good.

In response to your question about Bruce Dern, it was because his character was a sleazy , disgusting creep of a human being who would shoot someone in the back !

Another one I wish he'd never made was The Conqueror. It was just a bad movie, IMHO, and it was weird to see him with the "Oriental look". There are other JW movies with roles that are different than his usual ones that are pretty good, but The Conqueror wasn't one of them.

Chester

[SXViper]

Hondo, I agree about the Cowboys. Was never really all that enthused with that movie. In fact to this day I still do not own it.

[General Sterling Price]

I agree on the Conquerer, but for different reasons. Maybe if he had skipped it, he wouldn't have had all the cancer he had later in life, due to the radio-active dust used on the set. Could have maybe lived into the mid-to late 80s and been healthier, and maybe done 10 more films. Of course his smoking probably didn't help his health either.

GSP

[arthurarnell]

Hi Hondo,

As an amusing aside to the Cowboys

Bruce Dern's daughter Laura used to tell how whenever she went to college her fellow students would pick her out a say that her dad shot John Wayne in the back.
She said it took years for her to live it down.

Best regards

Arthur

[arthurarnell]

Hi

With regard to 'The Conqueror'. Apparently it was originally written for Marlon Brando but at the last minute 20th Century Fox refused to lease him to RKO.

The script writer had originally made the script with Brando in mind and written in almost old english.

I thought that on a visit to a studio John Wayne had seen a small part of the script lying in a wastepaper bin and after reading it decided that he had to make the film. Other versions say that he picked it up off a desk.

Apparently with his ability to learn lines very quickly he didn't read the complete script until the night before shooting began and was horrified.

But when it came down to it was a western set in Mongolia rather than Arizona with Wayne playing Temajun rather than Stoney Brooke.

Of the location shooting 'John Wayne American' Quotes

* out of the 220 people Dick Powell brought to St George Utah, in 1954, 91* came down with cancer later in their lives...... Duke survived Lung cancer in 1964 but later succumbed to stomach cancer. Pedro Armendariz came down with Kidney cancer in 1959 and then committed suicide in 1963 when diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. Dick Powell fell victim to lung cancer, Agnes Moorhead would die of uterine cancer, and (Susan) Hayward ended up with cancers of the skin, breast, uterus, and brain.

It was also a contributary factor that most of the cancer victims were also heavy smokers.

Another small co-incidence especially in view of films John Wayne might have done. In 1953 the government exploded two bombs which were particularly harmful one went off on April 25 and the other on May 19th.

The name of the second bomb was 'Dirty Harry'
The name of a film that Duke was later offered and turned down, and later turned Clint Eastwood into a star.

However the bottom line says that although the critics lampooned it it was very popular with the public in general.

Regards

Arthur

[A Girl Named Jen]

Roland! Duke as Lewt McCanles? Wow!!! I confess I never thought of it. That role is such a combination of sexiness and smarminess... Duke is certainly capable of the former but I don't like to think of him doing the latter. He's just too big and rugged, I think. Gregory Peck has a taut, finely wrought kind of appeal that IMO translates better.

Unbelievably bad but fun movie, though.

To get back to the original topic, I guess I haven't seen enough of JW's films, because I can't think of any that I wish he hadn't made. Maybe some of the '70s cop films?

[Hondo Duke Lane]

Jen,

That's a pretty good point about the '70's cop movies. I always thought that he made those films because of the highly successful movies Clint Eastwood made in the Dirty Harry series. By the way Duke turned them down because of the excess violence. When he or someone saw them, they thought maybe could make something like that in Brannigan and McQ. Though I don't think they are all that bad, they seem mimic the Dirty Harry style, and of course they failed.

But I will conceed that it probably was a mistake to go that route. <_<

Surely Jen you've seen a lot of his movies of the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's?

Cheers, Hondo B)

[chester7777]

Arthur, thanks for letting us know that Marlon Brando had originally been considered for the lead in The Conqueror - too bad he didn't do it! :D

Gen, Mrs. Chester agrees with you regarding the Duke and his inability to be smarmy - sexy, yes, but smarmy - never!

Regarding the Yucca Mountains and Area 51 nuclear tests, that's over 100 miles from where they were filming, which is quite a ways for fallout to go. Most of it would likely fall in the first 20 or 30 miles, especially those smaller bombs. I think the smoking is what did it. Almost everybody smoked back in those days, it seems. Do you remember Jimmy Stewart or Bob Hope smoking? They both lived to a ripe, old age (didn't Bob Hope make it to his 100th birthday?). I'm sure there might have been an occasional cigarette because of a part, but I don't have a clear memory of seeing them smoking. John Wayne, on the other hand, smoked in almost every movie, and frequently. It really stands out as a continuing thing over many years.

Chester and the Mrs.

[Hondo Duke Lane]

I agree that they didn't smoke all that much, but even in It's A Wonderful Life, Stewart smoked in a couple of scenes. Bob Hope smoke in movies himself, of course that could of been because of the movie and the scenes requiring smoking, and yes they could have done without a smoking scenes, but that was a different time period, and growing up in the 60's it seemed that everybody around me smoked (there were exceptions of a few people).

The Conqueror had a common occurance that happened to almost everyone who was a part of that movie. John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendariz, Agnes Moorehead, John Hoyt, Director Dick Powell, and several others on the cast have died with a cancer causing health problem. Much too early in most of their lives. Duke was later than most. It was reported that a month before the cast & crew came to location, the government was doing nuclear testing.

Though this movie was not memorable as a John Wayne classic, and was a turing point in his career, not a good one, but one, with health related problems that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

And yes, I agree that his smoking habits did not help matters, either.

Cheers, Hondo B)

[itdo]

Just for the record: Brando, who should have played Khan, writes in his biography: that he always thought it ironic that the man who stood very much for "Nuke-em" politics became victim to that very same weapon himself.

[itdo]

I was kinda surprised to see some of you put THE COWBOYS on a list of films he shouldn't have done. Whereas everybody has his own taste of course, I still find it difficult to believe that some of you hate that movie because Wayne is killed off 20 minutes from the finale. It seems you completely miss the point when you dislike it for that reason and I would like to explain.

The parallels of this film seem to be quite obvious and were pointed out even at his first release (critics sometimes need a couple of years to fully appreciate what a film has to give, but THE COWBOYS wasn't one of those sleepers). "Like a Christus of the Frontier" one critic wrote, and nailed it. Look:

The obvious number of 11 (!) boys following their teacher who is eventually taken by night. The Last Supper, western style: Wayne even delivers the line "take a piece and pass it on" - with a pouch of dry meat.

"Carrying his cross" stoically and "going down" three times.

Even the little Judas is forgiven.

His followers carry out the testament of the Old West - Wayne-style.

The resurrection: When they are looking for his dead body - it's not there anymore. But his followers will carry on his gospel: "Saddle up - We're burnin' daylight" is the last line of the picture, and "saddle up" of course is a Wayne trademark line.

Apart from that, The Cowboys stands out as one of the few productions late in his life NOT made by Batjac, and it had a much bigger budget and better production values. Of course, we all love what those Batjac films give us, but to be honest, they were economically made (that's the way Wayne liked it, very much like Eastwood does his Malpaso films, in a stark style, and Wayne even complained at one point of "over-spending" at The Cowboys) but they often just used Wayne as Wayne, not giving him much to do as an actor, just using the image. Like Allen Eyles pointed out in the case of TRAIN ROBBERS: "just using Wayne for what he stands for". As every book about the genre testifies, "The Cowboys", along with "The Shootist", stands out as one of the great and last "old-fashioned" westerns in the final decade of the western.

[arthurarnell]

Hi
It was also said that personally Wayne was very uncomfortable with the Cowboys because of the blooding up. But at the end accepted it as a sign of the violent times that films were going through in the sixties and seventies.


Regards
Arthur