John Wayne.

Wayne has never been less than credible in every one of his major films (I guess The Alamo is major). Watching In Harm's Way for the first time during the holiday break, I was moved by how quiet and courtly he can be.

in harm's way is a great film

might be the only great film produced by a studio in 1965, actually.

tbh i think the idea that john wayne was a bad actor is mainly popular with ppl who have never watched a john wayne movie

and from decades of terrible imitations/lampoons.

in harm's way is a great film

― he quipped with heat (amateurist), Tuesday, June 9, 2015 10:09 PM

I like Bunny Lake is Missing but I thought Preminger's thread snapped with The Cardinal. I checked it out, ready to face some ponderosity, but no! The editing rhythm was beautiful and the elisions almost Ozu-like.

yeah, i was surprised by it, too. bunny lake is missing is a masterpiece... until the ending, which is hasty and something of a letdown.

I like a lot of things in IHW and Bunny, but neither really works for me.

Two extraordinary things about Hondo, his OK 3D western directed by John Farrow:

He and Geraldine Page (her film debut) play really well together.

Wayne describes his character as part Indian. That has to be the only time.

Saw it years ago and, yeah, their pairing was odd and persuasive -- a bit like Wayne and Clift.

Just finished the Scott Eyman bio: excellent.

The above encouraged me to (re-)watch Wake of the Red Witch, which should be considered one of Wayne's better ones. He's terse and mean in this, perhaps uncustomarily cruel. It's a bit convoluted in construction and the action scenes are awkward, but the dialogue has a real bite to it. Gail Russell is not much of an actress but has a truly otherworldly look at least.

Took a look at Hondo also and one can see why it was a favorite of Wayne's. It seems to effectively condense his ideas about the West and it also looks great. Maybe a little too simple to be a great film though.

^carrying on...

Saw a 35mm print of Wake of the Red Witch (1948) last night at a (second) retro of Republic studio films restored by the Film Foundation; it was introduced by Martin Scorsese, who pegged it (occasionally quoting his cinephile pal Bertrand Tavernier) as a "heightened" romance with "a fight with a giant octopus" "influenced by the Brontes." (or, Wuthering Heights at Sea.) Luther Adler plays Wayne's antagonist, a South Pacific shipping magnate and romantic rival for Gail Russell, for all he's worth. Very strange, but certainly gives the lie to the idea that Wayne didn't play any unhinged sadists before The Searchers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMamNIofWBU

(rumor has it the rubber octopus was the one later stolen by Ed Wood)

thought this piece was superb:

https://lithub.com/on-john-wayne-cancel-culture-and-the-art-of-problematic-artists/

fabulous. thx for posting

Very good, and I didn't know the factual basis of The Searchers.

The fact that Wayne is dead makes the films less problematic for me. Also, the Rock Hudson story shows that there's ambiguity even in someone who professed opinions as vile as some of Wayne's.

well "he was one of the good ones", I assume

agree that the dead are less problematic, you aren't supporting them financially for one thing

Haven’t read the whole thing yet and am still more of a Red River than Searchers guy, but yeah.

herself ("she" for the strict anglicans) is just after reading didion's piece on him over several meetings around the filming of katie elder and was surprised by the gentleness with which she treats the subject

Damn that was excellent.

And like Mrs Dmac I was struck by the gentleness of the Didion interview too. Quite unexpected.

I like that

I wonder if Duke ever found out that Ford was likely bisexual (as Maureen O'Hara did)

When the Ward Bond rehabilitation comes I'm gonna kill myself

Feel like I just read something unsavory about him in Me Cheeta.

According to all accounts he was an obnoxious loud-mouthed reactionary asshole. Nobody liked him except for John Wayne, who was his bestie.

Good actor though

Just found this in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, by David Thomson:

But that begins to take us into his strange career as boaster, bully, boozer, and member of the unwholesome John Ford gang. As such, there are many stories about Bond’s stupidity, his uncouthness, and his being the butt of jokes—and sadly these are more entertaining than many of the films he made. Which is not to say that Bond was a hopeless case:

he made Wayne look like a mild Red-basher

I've given The Searchers about six chances; still think it's as overlit, broadly written and acted, and pokily directed as I did twenty years ago. I've given up because Ford and Duke made at least four better cowboy films less revered.

That has more or less been my experience as well

Speaking of Ward Bond, do yourselves a favor and don't do a deep dive looking into Walter Brennan. Hoo-boy, what an asshole...

with or without teeth?

Both!

5th-best Ford-Wayne western is still pretty good

I liked The Searchers the one and only time I saw it years ago. The only thing that threw me was the goofy mid-film fight scene (Jonathan Lethem's amazing essay on the film had already defended/contextualized the racial stuff for me). But yeah, of the Ford/Wayne collabs I've seen, Fort Apache is at least as good and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence is definitely superior.

Has anyone seen either of the films Wayne made as a (co-)director? Are they as embarrassing as rumoured?

Has anyone seen either of the films Wayne made as a (co-)director? Are they as embarrassing as rumoured?

The Green Berets is. The Alamo is only embarrassing as an Oscar contender, which is what Wayne campaigned for it to be.

I like The Searchers the way I like Blood Meridian. It’s depressing & violent & I wouldn’t ever casually recommend it but there’s something sort of mythological/biblical about it that I really like & that keeps me watching it every now and then. goth-western? idk.

the searchers is not a perfect film, but i think wayne's performance in it is just as good as everyone says. the character as written is meant to be fairly mysterious and contradictory, and he conveys that really well. ward bond is pretty good in it too. definitely some fairly weak attempts at comic relief in there, but mostly what i remember is the incredible bleakness of so much of it, especially toward the beginning. wayne's quiet reaction to realizing that his brother's family has been brutally killed is probably his most moving on-screen moment.

Did anyone (else) read the Scott Eyman boo?

I mean the lionization of The Searchers is largely in part due to its messiness. Ford certainly made more airtight Westerns, but this is the one that broke things apart. Occupies a space similar to Vertigo in my eyes. Not one that succeeds as much in the ways the more straight genre films did, but ultimately the most interesting.

xp I read the Scott Eyman bio. Thought it was good, it revealed sides to the man I wasn't aware of. I read it back-to-back with the Bob Hope bio by Richard Zoglin, so that was an interesting comparison.

man, I love Hope (thru the mid '50s) but his life sounded fairly dull (aside from the infidelities), so I didn't read that.

I learned a great term from that Eyman bio, dog heavy, meaning the under assistant West Coast Promotion Man to the main heavy, who comes out and kicks the dog.

What’d you think of the Hope bio?

xp Yes that struck me as a conspicuous difference between him and Wayne. Duke had actual hobbies and interests and you could imagine that sharing a drink with him would be enjoyable. Hope had an incredible work ethic (especially when younger) but beyond that there's a blankness. One image that sticks is the fact that his house was strewn with all his honorary awards and photos of him with US presidents. That's what he cared about. I don't think he even drank (father was a bad alcoholic).

xp!
I was sort of intrigued by that one but yeah figured he was kind of cold fish in person, same reason I steered clear of Carson bio.

can’t wait to watch John Wayne and ray milland battle a giant octopus in hd pic.twitter.com/eM5jCXCjmy

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) August 7, 2019

that makeup is touching

Wait Steve Martin and Lionel Barrymore are in that too?

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/usc-john-wayne-exhibit-removal-protests-1027317/

Joseph McBride, author of SEARCHING FOR JOHN FORD, posted this on Facebook:

"USC's 'School of Cinematic Arts' dishonors itself and its name by taking down its exhibit about the school's greatest filmmaking alumnus. Wayne doesn't need their tribute. They fail to separate the actor from the flawed man who played so many indelible roles onscreen. Who among us is without character flaws? Let him or her cast the first stone. I interviewed Navajos in Monument Valley about the 1971 Playboy interview two years later, and they said they were disappointed because they always got along well with Wayne and thought he was their friend. All but one of those I spoke with then were more disappointed and philosophical about him than angry, although one young Navajo who had just returned from Vietnam and was wearing his Army flak jacket told me if Wayne ever returned to Monument Valley to make a film, 'He'd better watch out, because I'll be sitting up there in those rocks with my M-1 rifle and I'll pick him off.' I thought what a story that would be: 'INDIAN KILLS JOHN WAYNE.' Until Wayne died I had to wrestle with what I do would do if I heard he was going back there and whether I would warn him or let history happen. But I can appreciate the films of my favorite actor while still deploring and regretting his political stands. I just watched him again tonight in one of John Ford's masterpieces, THEY WERE EXPENDABLE. And the other night I saw Wayne in Ford's FORT APACHE, in which he plays the Army officer who is friendly with the Apaches and honors Cochise, while trying to make peace with him and his people. I wonder if anyone at USC has bothered to watch that great film."