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. 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 21CALL HIM WAYNE 21Duke Morrison didn t like Bond and told him, You re not gettingon this train, Bond.You re too ugly to be in movies. Screw you, Duke, replied Bond, and shoved his way on to thetrain with the other football players.At the Naval Academy, the players were taught how to drill andact like midshipmen.Finally, Ward Bond called out, What is thisbullshit, anyway? Ford asked Duke, Who is that big ugly guy? The one with theliver lips and the big mouth. His name is Ward Bond, answered Duke. He s just a bigloudmouth who thinks he can play football. He sure is ugly, said Ford. He s a lousy football player too, said Duke. I m going to use him, said Ford and, so the story goes, heinvented a small part for Bond to play.Henry Hathaway trashed this whole story for me: Wayne had nopull with the university.He was probably totally forgotten by theuniversity.There was no way he had the authority to cast the film.Only a studio executive could do that, and that s what reallyhappened.No one was handpicked by Duke; Ford chose his teamfrom photographs the studio collected.And Ford never invented apart for Ward Bond.That part was already in the script.I tell you,that Jack Ford really knew how to blarney! And I can tell you,Wayne thought the world of Ward Bond. It was just as well that John Ford knew how to blarney; he wascarrying out secret activities for the navy.Wayne told me, He wasrecruited by Rear Admiral Sims to work with Captain Ellis Zacharias[who was to become commander of the Eleventh Navy District inSan Diego].They were concerned over the rise of Japanese power inthe Pacific.Zacharias ran a semiofficial intelligence unit using localNaval Reserve officers to collect information on Japanese and Germaninfluence in Mexico and the Far East.This information was passedto J.Edgar Hoover and Vice Admiral T.S.Wilkinson. Ford happily conducted intelligence activities on his owninitiative without pay or official recognition.I didn t know it then,but while we were filming Salute, he met with naval intelligence 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 2222 JOHN WAYNEleaders and was given a mission to go to the Pacific.His official jobwas to research and film sequences for his next film, Men WithoutWomen, but unofficially he was reporting on harbor access anddefenses. Morrison and Bond were both in Men Without Women, the storyof a submarine damaged and trapped on the ocean floor withfourteen men on board.Another legend has built up around Wayne sinvolvement in this film.It s been claimed that when Ford wasfilming a scene in which the men of the submarine have to dive intochoppy water, the stuntmen were too afraid to take the plunge.SoFord said, Duke, get in the water, and Duke obliged by diving intothe rough sea.Wayne confirmed the story when I asked him about it, but YakimaCanutt said, There s no doubt Duke was fearless and he did do a lotof his own stunts, but I d be ashamed of any stuntman who couldn tdo a simple thing like jump into the sea.That just doesn t sound rightto me. In the first few films Wayne appeared in at Fox, his roles were sosmall he received no billing.But when he played a student in a 1929musical, Words and Music, he received credit, way down the castlist, as Duke Morrison.Although the studio found him occasionalwork as an extra, his main living was as a propman.But he wasmaking friends on the Fox lot, and one of these was George O Brien,one of the studio s leading romantic actors.O Brien was able to getDuke a small role in the 1930 film Rough Romance, although he wasstill way down in the cast list, as he was in Cheer Up and Smile, alsoin 1930 and again playing a student. Through my friendships with John Ford and George O Brien, Wayne told me, I was made to feel like I belonged on the lot.Ijust loved going to work at Fox, and I began to feel this was mylife. Life for Duke Morrison was about to change forever and so washis name.Raoul Walsh told me, When sound first came to movies in 1927, thestudios thought that sound would be unsuitable for Westerns.Theyfelt that sound meant you had to have plenty of talking, which is why 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 23CALL HIM WAYNE 23they called the first sound films talkies, and the studios asked, Who wanted to see a Western crammed with talking? There wasalso the practical problem of filming with sound.The cameras werebig and noisy and had to be enclosed in a box to prevent the noisebeing picked up by the microphones.The studios had converted alltheir stages to soundstages where the heavy cameras could not beeasily moved.Silent cameras were easy to move and pioneers of thecinema had developed techniques such as tracking shots [wherebythe camera moved along with the action]. But I believed Westerns could be made with sound.I liked theidea of being able to hear hoofbeats and gunfire.But no one had triedfilming outside of a studio soundstage.Then in 1929 I saw a FoxMovietone newsreel in which a longshoreman was interviewed inthe open by means of recording equipment housed in a speciallyconstructed wagon. I headed straight for the nearest phone and called a productionexecutive at Fox and said, I want to make a Western with sound. The executive said, Are you drunk? I said, No.Get me a Fox Movietone News wagon
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Tematy
IndexJohn Ringo Ghost 01 Ghost
John Norman Gor 04 Nomads of Gor
John Norman Gor 01 Tarnsman of Gor
John Norman Gor 23 Renegades of Gor
John DeChancie Castle 07 Castle Spellbound
John Norman Gor 12 Beasts of Gor
John Dalmas Farside 01 The Lion of Farside
Marcin Wolski Eurodzihad(1)
Trigiani Adriana Pula szczęÂścia
Fred Saberhagen Swords 3 The Third Book Of Swords