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
Maybe you answered your own question...
... 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.
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/
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." (!)
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.
> 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.
He also advocated white supremacy and had a FETISH for Hispanic women.
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