John Wayne never really projected friendliness in his roles. Like any western star of his day, his characters embodied rugged individualism. He often banded together with like-minded vigilantes, but they always had their own particular set of skills to bring to the table. Consider the Howard Hawks classic Rio Bravo. Duke does have to draw on the skill and integrity of Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Walter Brennan, but their camaraderie is largely circumstantial.
Off camera, the life of a movie star also seems conducive to isolation. You’d either want to retreat to avoid being bombarded by the press, or always be the sole subject of the spotlight’s glare. However, even a megastar like John Wayne needed friends, and it turns out that his best friend of all was hiding in plain sight the whole time.
You might not have heard his name, but you have almost certainly seen Ward Bond at some point in your movie-watching career. Between the late 1920s and his death in 1960, he appeared in nearly 300 movies and television shows – 278 to be exact. That’s about nine credits per year for 30 years, a staggering accomplishment that only a few other actors have matched.
It’s hardly surprising, given this track record, that he still holds the record as the actor to have appeared in the most ‘Best Picture’ nominees. Between 1932 and 1956, 13 of the films he appeared in received nods from the Academy, including It Happened One Night, Gone with the Wind, and It’s a Wonderful Life. He was one of the most recognisable character actors of all time, and he also happened to be John Wayne’s best friend.
Precise accounts vary on how the two met, but according to an unpublished autobiographical manuscript that Duke wrote, their introduction came in 1929 when the future western star was hired by John Ford to oversee a group of extras on his film Salute. Wayne had initially rejected Bond for the job because he suspected that the young football player might be a bit of an unruly rebel, but Ford vetoed his decision, considering him to be quality entertainment at the very least. When the cast was scheduled to catch a train to Los Angeles, Wayne recalled that Bond turned up “an hour late, a dollar short, one pocket torn, and a gin bottle hanging out of the other.”
Soon, however, the two hit it off, and embarked on a 30-year friendship. Bond appeared in 22 movies with Wayne, as well as 25 movies directed by Ford. As a trio, they collaborated on eight films. The two actors got up to plenty of antics, the most famous being an incident in which Duke shot his friend in the rear-end (presumably by accident) with his own gun. When Bond died in 1960, he left that gun to Wayne as a friendly reminder of his fuckup.
When he gave the eulogy at his friend’s funeral, Duke said that they were “the closest of friends,” and described Bond as a “wonderful, generous, big-hearted man.” In his unfinished memoir, which he began writing shortly before he died in 1979, Wayne reflected on the friendship, saying that he often read screenplays and imagined casting Bond in one role or another. “Part of me knows he’s gone,” he wrote, “Another part automatically spots good parts for him. Instincts stay long after friends are gone.”