American Titan: Searching for John Wayne (69 page)

105
  Her annulment was granted by the Catholic Church because she was able to prove that Weldy had not been officially divorced from his first wife.

106
  Gail Russell told Louella Parsons during the trial’s run that she was considering bringing a lawsuit against Chata: “All day yesterday Gail Russell was in conference with her attorney about what action to take in regard to what she claims are false representations made concerning her in the John Wayne divorce trial. Gail, who was shocked at the bitterness of the attack, gave me an exclusive interview . . . ‘There was absolutely nothing between us.’ ”—Louella O. Parsons, Los Angeles Examiner and syndication, October 1, 1953.

107
  Hilton’s girlfriend at the time was actress Betsy von Furstenberg; she publicly denied there was an affair, saying that she had asked Chata to put Hilton up “as a favor” that week, to let him recover from an auto accident. Left unanswered was why Hilton couldn’t stay at Furstenberg’s home, or at one of the several Hilton hotels in Los Angeles.

108
  It won Best Music Score—Dmitri Tiomkin; Tiomkin and Ned Washington won Best Song for the Title Song. Jan Sterling, and Claire Trevor, two of the passengers, were nominated for Best Actress; both lost to Eva Marie Saint for her performance in On the Waterfront. Wellman was nominated as Best Director but lost to Kazan for On the Waterfront. Ralph Dawson was nominated for Best Editing but lost to Gene Milford for On the Waterfront.

109
  Mocambo catered to the Hollywood movie set. There was always top talent playing there, including Ella Fitzgerald and Edith Piaf. The restaurant was also a favorite night spot for Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Charlie Chaplin, Henry Fonda, and dozens of others. Its décor was copied for several episodes of the I Love Lucy show, where Desi Arnaz’s Ricky Ricardo was the house band.

110
  Hughes bought back two negatives from General Teleradio—Jet Pilot and The Conqueror, the latter not released until 1956, both for $12 million ($8 million up front, $4 million deferred). After their initial theatrical releases, he never allowed either to be shown or distributed during his lifetime. Both eventually appeared on television and are now available on DVD. The “Big Five” were MGM, Paramount, Twentieth Century–Fox, Warner, and RKO, the latter considered the least successful of these. The “Little Three” were Universal, United Artists, and Columbia.

111
  According to some records, Pilar may have been twenty-nine when she married Wayne.

112
  The others arrested were John True and A. P. Settle, both deep-sea divers, and Donald McClean and Gass Gidley, marine workers. Gidleywas seriously injured in the melee.

113
  The top-ten-grossing films of 1955 were, in descending order, Clyde Geronimi’s Lady and the Tramp, $100,249,000; John Ford, Joshua Logan, and Mervyn LeRoy’s Mister Roberts, $9,900,000; Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Guys and Dolls, $8,075,000; Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch, $7,875,000; Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause. $7,100,000; Joshua Logan’s Picnic, $6,350,000; Jesse Hibbs’s To Hell and Back, $6,500,000; Fred Zinnemann’s Oklahoma!, $6,275,000; Charles Vidor’s Love Me or Leave Me, $6,150,000; and John Farrow’s The Sea Chase, $6,000,000.

114
  Ford’s original version was only released in theaters overseas. It was not seen in America until Ford’s cut was used for a 1990 VHS release of the film. To date, it has not been made available on DVD.

115
  “Good evening. My name’s Wayne. Some of you may have seen me before; I hope so. I’ve been kicking around Hollywood a long time. I’ve made a lot of pictures out here, all kinds, and some of them have been westerns. And that’s what I’m here to tell you about tonight: a western—a new TV show called Gunsmoke. No, I’m not in it. I wish I were, though, because I think it’s the best thing of its kind that’s come along, and I hope you’ll agree with me; it’s honest, it’s adult, it’s realistic. When I first heard about the show Gunsmoke, I knew there was only one man to play in it: James Arness, who is actually my friend. He’s a young fellow, and maybe new to some of you, but I’ve worked with him and I predict he’ll be a big star. So you might as well get used to him, like you’ve had to get used to me! And now I’m proud to present my friend Jim Arness in Gunsmoke”—John Wayne, Gunsmoke, TV episode one, first broadcast September 10, 1955.

116
  Le May’s novel, in fact, may not have been entirely based on Parker’s life. She was only one of sixty-four real-life cases of nineteenth-century child abductions in Texas he researched for his book. His notes suggest that Amos was likely based on Brit Johnson, a black man who ransomed his captured wife and children from the Comanches in 1865. Afterward, Johnson made at least three trips to Indian Territory and Kansas relentlessly searching for another kidnapped girl until Kiowa raiders killed him in 1871.

117
  Ford was also considering Robert Francis, who had shot to fame as Ensign Willie Keith in Edward Dmytryk’s 1954 The Caine Mutiny, and played a leading role in Ford’s The Long Gray Line. Not long after Ford chose Hunter, Francis was en route to promote the release of The Long Gray Line when on July 1, 1955, the plane he was on went down and he and the other two people aboard were killed.

118
  Wayne was, by now, suffering from a chronic bad back that made it difficult for him to lift Natalie Wood. In an earlier scene he also lifted Lana Wood, Debbie as a young girl. As Lana Wood remembered: “He was always very sweet to me. When I first met him, his concern was could he lift me . . . every day on the set he would come with his little box of Allenbury’s Black Currant Pastilles for his throat . . . he was always ruffling my hair and giving me a hug . . . I was eight years old . . . Jeffrey Hunter was a beautiful, wonderful kind man . . . John Ford loathed children. He was not fond of me at all.”—Lana Wood, interviewed by Red Carpet News TV, March 2013.

119
  VistaVision (1:66 to one screen ratio) was different from CinemaScope in that it did not use an anamorphic lens that CinemaScope (2:66 to one) did, but turned the 35 mm negative horizontally in the camera gate, allowing it to shoot a single frame in a larger area. Special equipment was required to run the prints. That, and finer-grained film stocks that were developed, made VistaVision obsolete after only seven years, although it is still used by some filmmakers to produce a sharper image when necessarily reduced to 35 mm.

120
  The year’s top-ten-grossing films, in descending order: Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments ($43 million); Michael Anderson’s Around the World in Eighty Days ($23 million); George Stevens’s Giant ($14 million); King Vidor’s War and Peace ($12.5 million); Walter Lang’s The King and I ($9 million); The Searchers; Joshua Logan’s Bus Stop ($7.2 million); Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It ($6.2 million); Charles Walters’s High Society ($5.9 million); and Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind ($5.7 million).

121
  Dean was nominated for Best Actor twice, for Elia Kazan’s 1955 East of Eden and Giant. He lost both times.

122
  Bridge on the River Kwai won seven of eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Screenplay. The Wings of Eagles wasn’t nominated for any Academy Awards.

123
  Dean Martin wasn’t Hawks’s first choice for the role; Frank Sinatra was. Hanks wanted Montgomery Clift in the part that went to Ricky Nelson. For the villain, played in the film by John Russell, Hawks had wanted James Cagney, Richard Widmark, Rod Steiger, or Edmund O’Brien. In the film, for good luck Wayne wore the same tattered cowboy hat he’d worn in westerns since Stagecoach. After Rio Bravo, he finally retired it.

124
  Batjac’s value was its negatives. It had no available cash. In order to raise money from it, the company would have to sell off its library, something Wayne refused to do. Roos handled the finances of several other major Hollywood stars, many of whom had similar catastrophic experiences. Red Skelton was one who lost a fortune and only found out when he discovered he didn’t have enough money to pay for his child’s hospital care. Others, like Fred MacMurray, held the reins tight on Roos and allowed him only to invest in blue-chip stocks. He, too, was ultimately dissatisfied with Roos’s management techniques and fired him in 1956. When MacMurray died in 1990, he was worth a half-billion dollars.

125
  LaCava had no previous training as an accounted or investment manager. His only qualification was that he was a member of the family. He eventually formed Markland Management Associates. Wayne fired him in 1965 when Wayne, as had happened with Roos, went looking for immediate cash, and there wasn’t enough money to pay bills. LaCava’s inexperience had led him to put Wayne’s money into dry oil wells and bad real estate deals, while operational costs for Markland Management and exhorbitant management fees drained whatever was left.

126
  Some of the other investors were Texas oilmen O. J. and I. J. McCullough ($2.5 million), and Texas businessmen Clinton and John Dabney Murchison ($1 million).

127
  Sinatra was never able to get the film made. A different TV version written by Richard Levinson and William Link, directed by Lamont Johnson, was made and shown on NBC in March 1974. The part of Slovik that Sinatra had originally wanted to play went to Martin Sheen. The blacklist was officially broken in 1960 when Kirk Douglas, the star and producer of Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, adapted from the Howard Fast novel by Dalton Trumbo, insisted that Trumbo use his own name; he agreed, and that ended the blacklist. John Wayne and Kirk Douglas were friends, but Wayne was also furious at Douglas for using and crediting Trumbo.

128
  The original 202-minute version was released in VHS and laser-disc formats, but not on DVD due to the deterioration of the original negative. A massive new painstaking restoration is currently under way that will result in the original 202-minute version being made available in DVD and Blu-ray.

129
  David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia was the highest-grossing film of the year, at $44 million domestic. Just ahead of Valance was Blake Edwards’s Days of Wine and Roses at $8.3 million, just behind it Jose Ferrer’s State Fair at $7 million.

130
  The top-grossing film of 1965 was The Sound of Music, at $163 million. The fourteenth film was Guy Green’s A Patch of Blue ($13.5 million). Number 16 was Richard Lester’s Help! ($12 million). The three top box-office westerns that year were Elliot Silverstein’s Cat Ballou ($20 million); Andrew V. McLaglen’s Shenandoah, starring Jimmy Stewart ($17 million); and The Sons of Katie Elder.

131
  The top ten box-office stars in America for 1966 were Julie Andrews, Sean Connery, Elizabeth Taylor, Jack Lemmon, Richard Burton, Cary Grant, Wayne, Doris Day, Paul Newman, Elvis Presley.

132
  Toni and La Cava separated a year later and divorced in 1981. They had eight children. Toni, an actress in her younger years, became something of a recluse after the marriage ended.

133
  Darby and Glen Campbell each received $6,500 a week. Jeremy Slate (Emmett Quincy) received $5,000 a week. Strother Martin (Colonel G. Stonehill) was paid $3,000 a week; Jeff Corey (Tom Chaney), $2,500 a week; and Dennis Hopper (Moon), $1,500 a week.

134
  The top ten stars of 1969 were Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, John Wayne, Elliot Gould, Dustin Hoffman, Lee Marvin, Jack Lemmon, Barbra Streisand (the only female on the list), and Walter Matthau.

135
  It also made Sarris’s Most Misappreciated American Films of All Time list he issued in 1977.

136
  Ford won Best Director in 1941 for How Green Was My Valley over Hawks, who was nominated for Sergeant York.

137
   Wayne and Jimmy Stewart had no scenes together in How the West Was Won. This was Stewart’s first film in five years, since 1970’s Fool’s Paradise. Stewart made five more movies after The Shootist.