The cinematic contributions of John Wayne are set in stone, with countless classic roles in the western movie genre etched into history, including his collaborations with directors John Ford and Henry Hathaway. Yet, despite the actor’s industry fame and prominence, he ruffled his fair share of Hollywood feathers throughout his career, with tales of on-set clashes being rife from his earliest years in the industry.
As Wayne swung his weight about during that classic era of Hollywood, he had several run-ins and feuds with his fellow stars. Many of them fell out with the actor for his conservative political views and extremely questionable and offensive personal views, which saw him conduct racist rants and try to remove left-leaning figures from the Hollywood sets. Some of the resulting confrontations were more than sticky, while others just never quite saw eye to eye with the cinema icon.
The truth is, Wayne was a generally tough character to be around. The star was very comfortable throwing his weight around onset and often operated more closely to the behaviour of a school bully than the magnificent hero he was presented as on set. While some co-stars enjoyed favourable relationships with Wayne, the star was a brute to many of his co-stars who were often left emotionally scarred by the ordeal, something in itself that would have angered the uber-conservative actor.
It looks as though few stars felt the brunt of Wayne’s vitriol as harshly as Clark Gable, though, via a falling out with Wayne’s frequent collaborator and conservative ally, John Ford. Gable had starred in Ford’s 1953 movie Mogambo, but the two figures clashed on set and fell out for good. Ford himself had a reputation for being troublesome on set and would even fall out with Wayne on occasion, notably making fun of the actor for having never served in the military.
Ford had made several comments about Gable’s looks and age during the production of his movie and had been equally rude to the actor’s co-star, Ava Gardner, leading to Gable walking off set on more than a few occasions because of how Ford treated his actors, completely ignorant to their feelings as human beings.
John Wayne’s daughter once explained the feud between Gable and Ford and how this impacted her father’s opinion of his fellow actor. “During the filming of Mogambo, Ford and Gable had clashed again and again, and the subsequent feud had simmered for years,” Aissa Wayne wrote in John Wayne: My Father.
“In my father’s way of thinking, disloyalty to allies, support in any fashion for their enemies, was expressly forbidden,” she continued. In an ironic mimic of the military way of life, for Wayne, this meant he was steadfast by the side of his director, even if he did find himself berated by the filmmaker. As his daughter said: “If Clark Gable took on John Ford, my father’s code demanded that John Wayne stand by his old pal.”
And stand by Ford Wayne did, feeling that the best course of action was to speak rudely of Gable, despite having no direct problem with him. “[He’s] extremely handsome in person,” Wayne noted. “That’s one guy that doesn’t need Hollywood to make him look good. But Gable’s an idiot. Do you know why Gable’s an actor? It’s the only thing he’s smart enough to do.”
Gable was indeed one of the best-looking actors in classic Hollywood, but to say that he’s only intelligent enough to act seems to be a great disservice. By the same line of reasoning, what did John Wayne ever do but act? In that light, perhaps his words prove that he was the imbecile all along, as per the opinions of several of the movie industry figures who knew him all too well.