The only way John Wayne could relax on set

Throughout his four decades as a movie star, John Wayne appeared in nearly 200 films, many of which were westerns. With his tall stature, cowboy hat, and ever-present bandana, he became the epitome of the genre, creating the template for decades to come. He seemed to invite being typecast, which is hardly surprising given that his characters were almost universally held up as bastions of American values.

Towards the end of his career, Wayne struggled with health issues that made it challenging to continue working. His lung was removed in 1964 after he was diagnosed with cancer, and despite working for another decade, he never regained his health. While filming his final movie, The ShootistDuke was forced to breathe through an oxygen mask due to the high desert elevation in Nevada and was eventually hospitalised.

He did manage to rally and finish the picture, and on the last day of filming, he seemed jubilant. Between shots, a visiting journalist asked whether he felt more comfortable doing westerns, and his response was diplomatic. “When you have a good personal story and you feel everything fits together, then that’s when you’re relaxed,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s really torture to work on a picture you feel isn’t going to be good and that you’re a pawn in somebody’s hand.”

He was confident about The Shootistsaying, “I think this is gonna be a good’un.”

He was right about the film. Following a gunslinger with terminal cancer who is looking for a way to die with honour, it was well received at the time and remains one of Wayne’s better movies. But he also had ample experience working on terrible films.

The 1956 film The Conquererfor example, is considered by many to be one of the worst ever made, an extremely high bar if ever there was one. In it, Wayne plays Genghis Khan, a role which saw him don yellowface and a wispy moustache. It also holds the distinction of possibly causing multiple deaths among its crew. The movie was filmed downwind of a nuclear testing site, and there was a suspicious number of people in the production who were later diagnosed with cancer.

Ironically, most of Wayne’s worst movies were ones that he went out of his way to make. He was so determined to make the pro-Vietnam War movie The Green Berets that he co-directed and partially financed it. He also directed the largely fictionalised account of the Battle of the Alamo, producing a film that was, if not quite as reprehensible as The Green Beretsnowhere near the calibre of the movies he made with director John Ford. Then, there was The Conquerorwhich again, Wayne fought hard to star in, believing the script was just too good to pass up.

His comments about hating working on films where you’re “a pawn in somebody’s hand” was probably the more revealing statement. Wayne was notorious for interfering with the films he was on when he felt like they weren’t headed in the direction he wanted them to go. From an objective standpoint, this often led to terrible ends, with The Green Berets and The Conquerer being primary examples.

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