Re: Why did Patricia Neal hate John Wayne?
John Smith
"Candace" <uly...@mscomm.com> wrote in message
news:922772b5.04072...@posting.google.com...
> I was reading a a new interview with Patricia Neal and she said she
> really hated working with John Wayne. They made at least two movies
> together, one in 1945 and then again in 1965. She went on about how
> gorgeous Gary Cooper was (duh) and what a great lay he was, but added
> that working with the Duke was a real pain in the ass and she didn't
> like him. Anyone know the inside scoop why these two never hit it off?
> Usually co-worked seemed to enjoy Wayne, especially when he was sober
> which I gather was rather rare.
First, Wayne tended to be a big-mouth schnook at the best of times.
Comparing Duke with Coop could be simple: tall, made lots of westerns,
right-wing. And it ends there. Intellectually, Coop was a highly educated,
intellectual, caring sort who had no difficulty speaking to men and women on
a similar level. He was a talkative social butterfly. Wayne had his cronies,
and was noted for his sexist attitudes towards women. Wayne was pro-HUAC all
the way. By the time that Coop was working (ironically) on The Fountainhead,
where he met Neal, he was beginning to get second thoughts on the HUAC
process. And...unlike Wayne, there were very few people who had bad things
to say about Coop once they knew him.
But why did Neal dislike Wayne? I dunno. But I am sure going to find out.
Thanks for the question. It's a good one!
John
Nikita
> I was reading a a new interview with Patricia Neal and she said she
> really hated working with John Wayne. They made at least two movies
> together, one in 1945 and then again in 1965. She went on about how
> gorgeous Gary Cooper was (duh) and what a great lay he was, but added
> that working with the Duke was a real pain in the ass and she didn't
> like him. Anyone know the inside scoop why these two never hit it off?
> Usually co-worked seemed to enjoy Wayne, especially when he was sober
> which I gather was rather rare.
Maybe you answered your own question...
maryanne kehoe
several weeks ago? She was asked about John Wayne, and she was very
non-committal about how she felt. Did it have to do with Roald and
around the time she had her stroke?
Dudhorse
> really hated working with John Wayne. They made at least two movies
> together, one in 1945 and then again in 1965. She went on about how
> gorgeous Gary Cooper was (duh) and what a great lay he was, but added
> that working with the Duke was a real pain in the ass and she didn't
> like him. Anyone know the inside scoop why these two never hit it off?
> Usually co-worked seemed to enjoy Wayne, especially when he was sober
> which I gather was rather rare.
... I saw her being interviewed on TCM by Robert Osborne and she said she
definitely did NOT get along with Wayne on their first film
together(Operation Pacific); she said he was in the middle of a messy
divorce and drinking heavily and basically was a all around jerk but their
next movie together(In Harms Way) he was much better behaved; he had
remarried and had some more kids and was a happier person. She said it was
much better the second time around.
Ambrose
"John Smith" <johnsm...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:hpWMc.2504$BU4.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
was another film my cousin who also worked with Ms Neal on Hud appeared in.
I don't know much on Wayne except what was said above about him
essentially liking a crony atmosphere is true but, a number of women were on
record as having liked working with Wayne. He was pretty generous, at least
according to Angie Dickenson, Lauren Bacall and certain others. Even Sophia
Loren and even the fragile Capucine said he made a point of giving them
screen time and making sure their shots look good. And in one of the books
on pioneer rebel atress Louise Brooks, who was attempting a humiliating
comeback when she was forced to appear in a Wayne western later said he was
courteous and helpful to her.
I don't have any details on the making of IHW's but by that point in
Wayne's career he like Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable were at similar points
in their careers was essentially on auto-pilot. As for his politics' I don't
think Wayne, who was strongly conservative, made any appearances before
HUAC, or at least I've never seen the newsreels.
In any case the real HUAC damage was largely the work of behind the
scenes studio heads and not the actors appearing before the committees which
were basically political dog and pony shows that many studios used as
excuses to cut staff as after war cutbacks and the beginning of the 47
recession were cutting into profits, and things only got worse as TV got a
foothold.
We always hear about all the writers and directors who were hurt.
Actually there were not that many and most of the stores of destroyed lives
are largely apocryphal, but an odd fact that is rarely mentioned is the
incredible numbers of African American actors who were put out of work in
the late forties because the studios saw them as easy to fire to provide
jobs for returning servicemen. Perhaps no one remembers but there were
actually Tarzan movies without black actors or extras and the number of
blacks in film were markedly decreased all through the red scare era and it
had nothing to do with communism or governmental investigations. Even the
made for black audience B movies decreased and the budgets which had never
matched general audience B movies budgets were cut. Other than Mantan
Moreland, Sleep and Eat and a few comedians playing domestics, blacks were
disappearing from the screens. But for some reason all the attention and
countless books, TV programs and movies have lavished sympathy to the few,
highly educated, well-to-do, almost all white, former thirties radicals and
communists who were blacklisted by the studios and radio networks. Other
than Paul Robeson, and while there were black radicals and Fellow Travelers
blacks names are rarely mentioned as victims of the Red scare in Hollywood.
Separate from politics Wayne was regarded with hostility by certain
directors and favored by others for reasons that had more to do with what a
John Wayne film was and what he was as a movie star that anything else. But
it was the Wayne type of film associated with the old studio system couple
with his publicly acknowledged politics that became a kind of litmus test
for a certain attitude about what was acceptable to appreciate in socially
liberal Hollywood and what wasn't.
By the end of the sixties when Wayne was broadly known as Mr. Super
Conservative, he was pro-Vietnam war but was also known for forgiving past
rebellious or controversial behavior by other actors. He got Dennis Hopper a
job when no one would hire him was friendly to Luke Askew and LQ Jones and
others and he had a curiously tolerant attitude about counter-cultural
matters in general.
Patricia Neal was always a remarkable and unusual screen presense, and a
legendarily tough outspoken woman in the Tallulah Bankhead southern broad
tradition, a mold that would later be filled by Elizabeth Ashley. Like Ms.
Bankhead Ms. Neal often pushed for affairs with her leading men, something
which didn't happen with Wayne on In Harms Way, probably to Ms. Neal's best
interests. Wayne was already in bad health from Lung cancer, and on top of
it was married to a woman of Latino extraction who was extremely jealous.
Ms. Neal's remarkable survival and recovery from a massive stroke with the
help of her then husband Roald Dahl, documented in Life Magazine, was one of
the great stories of recovery from adversity ever by a movie star of Ms.
Neal's stature.
Ambrose
JAH
Question: Do you know an actor named Jim B. Smith? He was a character
actor in many movies (Airport, Viva Max, Mitchell, etc) and did
commercials way back when (he was one of the "soap" guys - I can't
remember if it was Dial or not).
JAH
Net Crimes & Misdemeanors
www.netcrimes.net
www.livejournal.com/users/netcrimes/
Candace
with Wayne on either of their movies, including 1965's "In Harms Way."
They asked her about Kirk Douglas who also co-starred in that film and
she completely ignored that and launched into a tribute to Brandon
DeWilde, who had played Joey in "Shane" and was also in "In Harms Way"
and died in an accident in 1972.
The interviewer was persistent and said, "And what about Kirk
Douglas?" Neal again refused to discuss him, which indicated to me
that she loathed the smug jerk, as did everyone else who everyone laid
eyes on that leopard-hunting creep.
I find the whole thing interesting because it's rare to find someone
saying they didn't like working with Wayne. He was a sexist,
clique-ish, hard-drinking guy, but there seems little real animus
existed between him and anyone else. As noted, his hard-right wing
pro-Vietnam politics made him the butt of jokes in the 60's and 70's,
but his co-stars were almost universally praiseworthy of him. So I am
very curious about why Neal apparently hated his guts. It can't have
anything to do with the HUAC (Wayne never appeared, just supported it
behind the scenes), or his politics, she said it was "personal." (!)
Zeb Quinn
Like Reagan, people who didn't like his politics assailed John Wayne,
and they still assail him, accusing him of things and saying things
about him that have no basis in fact. And, like Reagan, he was in
truth a warm and generous man, well-liked by his peers, regardless of
politics.
And the women who knew him and who appeared opposite him always spoke
the highest of him. In fact, when he was on his deathbed, it was
women from Hollywood led by, IIRC, Maureen O'Hara, Elizabeth Taylor,
and then SAG president Kathleen Nolan, who descended on Washington and
implored a Democrat-controlled Congress and a Democrat President to
award him the Medal of Freedom. I have no idea what Maureen O'Hara's
politics are, but the other two are not conservatives by any stretch.
Yeah, his screen persona is a little corny, and yeah he was almost a
caricature of himself by the end, but I gotta admit that I get a kick
out of kicking back and watching an old John Wayne movie when they
come on, and they still regularly do on AMC and on the Westerns
Channel.
azindn
> news:hpWMc.2504$BU4.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
> >
> > "Candace" <uly...@mscomm.com> wrote in message
> > news:922772b5.04072...@posting.google.com...
> We always hear about all the writers and directors who were hurt.
> Actually there were not that many and most of the stores of destroyed lives
> are largely apocryphal, but an odd fact that is rarely mentioned is the
> incredible numbers of African American actors who were put out of work in
> the late forties because the studios saw them as easy to fire to provide
> jobs for returning servicemen. Perhaps no one remembers but there were
> actually Tarzan movies without black actors or extras and the number of
> blacks in film were markedly decreased all through the red scare era and it
> had nothing to do with communism or governmental investigations. Even the
> made for black audience B movies decreased and the budgets which had never
> matched general audience B movies budgets were cut. Other than Mantan
> Moreland, Sleep and Eat and a few comedians playing domestics, blacks were
> disappearing from the screens. But for some reason all the attention and
> countless books, TV programs and movies have lavished sympathy to the few,
> highly educated, well-to-do, almost all white, former thirties radicals and
> communists who were blacklisted by the studios and radio networks. Other
> than Paul Robeson, and while there were black radicals and Fellow Travelers
> blacks names are rarely mentioned as victims of the Red scare in Hollywood.
Ambrose, this is an interesting point and I had not thought of this
perspective in relation to HUAC. I'm always interested in this era of
Hollywood history which I was too young to realize when I lived there.
El Nino
> news:hpWMc.2504$BU4.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
> >
> > "Candace" <uly...@mscomm.com> wrote in message
> > news:922772b5.04072...@posting.google.com...
> > > I was reading a a new interview with Patricia Neal and she said she
> > > really hated working with John Wayne. They made at least two movies
> > > together, one in 1945 and then again in 1965. She went on about how
> > > gorgeous Gary Cooper was (duh) and what a great lay he was, but added
> > > that working with the Duke was a real pain in the ass and she didn't
> > > like him. Anyone know the inside scoop why these two never hit it off?
> > > Usually co-worked seemed to enjoy Wayne, especially when he was sober
> > > which I gather was rather rare.
> >
> > First, Wayne tended to be a big-mouth schnook at the best of times.
He also advocated white supremacy and had a FETISH for Hispanic women.
John Smith
Navasky's Naming Names and Vaughan's Only Victims have more than mention of
the black fellow travellers. Robeson doesn't get so much mention in their
books because they were more interested in Canada Lee's story.
John