John Wayne: The Life and Legend by Scott Eyman

Author:Scott Eyman [Eyman, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Actor, Biography & Autobiography, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Movie Star, Nonfiction, Retail
ISBN: 9781439199602
Google: eSdvAAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1439199582
Barnesnoble: 1439199582
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2014-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

By the second week of November, just as Wayne was to begin shooting the all-important battle scenes, a wire arrived from United Artists. The film was about to use up its budget, and the studio estimated that Wayne would need an additional $400,000 to finish the picture. UA refused to advance the money, which left Wayne no choice but to kick in more of his own money.

Cliff Lyons got credit for the second unit direction, but Dean Smith remembered that Wayne directed a lot of the battle. “Scenes like jumping horses over the barricade, Duke was right there. He was an action man and he knew every move the stuntmen knew. Duke Wayne wouldn’t ask a stuntman to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. We all liked him, we knew he wanted the best, and we loved and respected him.”

For much of the shoot, Pilar was there with the children; Bob Relyea thought the relationship seemed strong. One night, there was banging on Relyea’s door. It was one of the company saying he needed a plane to San Antonio. It seemed that he had said something negative about Pilar at dinner, or Wayne thought he did. The man’s nose was now resting on the side of his face.

Wayne seems to have been sensitive to Pilar’s isolation. Karen Sharpe, the ingenue of The High and the Mighty, was visiting her father in San Antonio, and the two drove over to Brackettville for a visit. After an exchange of pleasantries, Wayne asked Sharpe if she would take Pilar shopping. “You know how they treat Hispanics,” he said, the implication being that being accompanied by a beautiful blonde would insulate Pilar from racist exchanges. “I said I certainly did understand,” recalled Sharpe. “I could never stand Texas because it’s such a reactionary place.”

On December 15, after eighty-three days of production, seventeen days over schedule, Wayne wrapped principal photography on The Alamo. He had shot 560,000 feet of film and lost more than twenty pounds. Cliff Lyons spent a few more weeks shooting close-ups of the battle that would be spliced around scenes of the principals. With that, the film went into the cutting room for ten months of postproduction that featured Dimitri Tiomkin’s epic musical score spread over a running time that eventually encompassed three hours and twelve minutes.

“After it was all over,” said Relyea, “I liked Duke. It was hard not to. Being an assistant director on a picture like The Alamo, you worry about everything—shooting, what people do when they’re not shooting, everything else. But I could always count on Duke being prepared. Sometimes hung-over, but always prepared. And organized. And definite. It was always, ‘Yes,’ or ‘no.’

“Everybody took direction from him. You can tell when a director is organized and has a point of view. If he’s got that, unless you’re totally opposed to that approach, it’s a relief. The cameraman knows where to put the camera, the actors know where to stand. And you could tell he knew what he was doing.

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