Part Two: John Wayne: A Dude Who Sucked

Robert is joined again by Francesca Fiorentini for part two of our three part series on John Wayne. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Oh boy, Welcome back, Pardner to Behind the Bastards the
Cowboy podcast talking about John Wayne who is about to
get his first he's just had his first role on screen. Um,
and he's about to get his first cowboy job. So

(00:22):
he's he's he's he gets on a gig on a
film as a as a prop boy. Yet again with
his dude role. Walsh, this director and his apparently the
thing that gets him his first cowboy job is Walsh
catches a glimpse of Marian while he's carrying furniture across
the sound stage. He's again he's huge and very strong.

(00:43):
So he has this like reputation for people just like
pick up a couch when that needs to be moved
and just like walk it as on his own, like
across the stage or something. And so Roll sees this
big showed of a dude just kind of man handling furniture. Um,
and he feels that like Marian has a warm and
wholesome expression on his face. Uh. Quote. I stopped and watched.

(01:05):
I noticed the fine physique of the boy, his careless
strength and the grace of his movement. Um. Now is
this another forward situation for sure? But are we grooming
hashtag Disney grooming. I mean, I think what you've got
here is a dude whose job it is. Like any director,

(01:28):
this obviously gets problematic a lot of the time, but
as a director you should be able to let you
should be looking and appreciating the way people move and look.
That is part of like your gig is to be like, oh,
I like the way that motherfucker moves. Just appreciate the
human form. Yeah, there's a creepy way for that, but
in this case it doesn't seem to be creepy. Although
I should state John Wayne's opinion is that this is

(01:51):
not the first time Walsh saw him and decided like
he looked good. John Wayne's later opinion is that Walsh
saw him at a Fox Company nick when he was
super hungover and engaged in a walking contest, which he
barely won because everybody was still pretty drunk. Um. Whatever
the case, why did he always has to make these
back stories of like no, actually, like I beat him

(02:13):
at arm wrestling. That's how we first met. I checked
his ass and then you give me a part and
I was like, this part sucks. It is one of
those things. He's a liar, so I wouldn't be surprised
about that, although I don't feel like barely one a
walking contest while drunk is particularly cool either. That's true.
That's true, so who knows. Um, but his story is

(02:35):
very much tall privilege. You can't be a six three
brawny man hanging around a film set is not going
to get noticed doing any of the same stuff. No,
um he is. He is again like being a tall
white guy is the easy mode of life. It is.
There's so many things you can you can get out

(02:55):
of just by being a tall white dude. It's incredible. Um.
So Marian he Walsh is like, I like to look
at this kid. I want to make him a Cowboys star.
Uh and he he puts Marian through screen testing, which
is like where they put you on camera to decide
if you actually do look good on camera, and he
does so they cast him as the star of of

(03:15):
an upcoming film, um, which more than doubles his pay overnight.
But it's clear, however, that he's gonna need a new name.
Marian Morrison definitely not a cowboy actor name. Duke is
that's starlet name though, Like that's a oh yeah, yeah,
Marion Morrison. Yeah, absolutely a great leading female name, but

(03:37):
not not good for a cowboy actor in the twenties.
Still not cutting in. They decide not. They decide he
needs an even better name than Duke Morrison, and I'm
gonna quote from Scott I'm in here. Roll Walsh claimed
that he came up with a name Wayne, and that
she Hand, who's another person involved in the film's production,
added John, but Duke said that the whole thing was

(03:59):
she Hands. I Sheehan was a fan of Mad Anthony Wayne,
the Revolutionary War general, because he had been tough and
a nonconformist. The John seems to have been an afterthought,
but it worked. Gave the two halves of the name
the equivalence of two blocks of granite that miraculously fit together.
And one of the things Wayne will later say that
I think it's true is that it kind of works
as a single thing you call him like John Wayne

(04:22):
is a single name on its own, Like it's not
something you split up in your head. And that's part
of why it's so it became so iconic. Um So
obviously they picked this name for him, which is I
think objectively a good decision. You can't argue with the results. Um,
Wayne John's not you'd call him Wayne or John's, but
you wouldn't call him Wayne John's. Yeah, Wayne, Wayne John fails.

(04:46):
Wayne John can't lift a couch. Terrible name. Absolutely not. No, No,
Wayne John is not a chod John Wayne hardcore chowed.
I love I love your interpret like your definition of
chowed because very different than I think what my understanding
of the word showed is, which is like a short

(05:07):
dick I have I have chosen, I have taken it
from the show. I think you should leave so as
I do every single thing I say. Look, I love that.
So Fox, you know, they change this guy's name. Um,
and when they do their press releases and stuff. In
the movie he's going to be in the big trail.
They have to like come up with a backstory for him,

(05:29):
and they just lie all the time in these right,
Like they don't give a ship what your actual backstory is.
Fox is going to make up whatever it seems best.
So they decided to say that his birth name was
Wayne Morrison, which for whatever reason sounded better for them
than the truth. Um, and John's fine with this. He
doesn't fight back. His museum states quote it was okay
with him. If the people paying his salary wanted to

(05:50):
spruce up his name, Um, which is reasonable as a
poor kid. If somebody's like, hey, we can make you
rich and famous, but you gotta pick a different fuck it.
I don't give a ship. Call me whatever. You can
call iced Tea, I don't. Yeah. Yeah, so please take
that name away from she took the only good name
I had. Give a good name to my fucking brother.
But that's crazy that you're not only invincing like a

(06:11):
stage name, but you're like even your given name is
not tough enough. You can't let people know you were
ever called Marian. You're not going to buy that, absolutely not.
So the Big Trail is not a good shoot. Uh,
it's it's what you might call a problem. Um, I
don't know, you know you You've you've been on some sets,
Francesca Um, probably more than me, certainly more than may Im.

(06:35):
And I guess, uh so you tell me how normal
this all sounds. I mean I've uggled them. Yeah, yeah, okay,
I guess I've been on like a set or two.
What's up? Yeah? So the cast and crew had to
travel out to Huma, Arizona, and Duke now John Wayne
shows up on set drunk and he stays that way
for days. Um, he gets horrible diarrhea instantly, he gets

(06:57):
sick from the water and he can barely function, and
he's almost immediately like both so sick that he can't
walk and still drinking. Um, so this is his first
start and this is his first starring. Row shows up
hammered and then start shooting himself. Amazing, incredible, unbelievable. Is
that where he gets his actual cowboy walk known only

(07:19):
the lead but sort of the wide leg, like I
just shot my past. I don't want to smear this
too much. Yeah. Um so ironized Cody, the Italian man
who pretended to be a Native American person, takes care
of John Wayne during this period when he's got deadly diarrhea,

(07:39):
and Jensen, the biographer claims quote gave him various Indian
remedies for diarrhea. Now again, iron eyed Cody not an
indigenous person, so God only knows. He's just spoon feeding him. Basta.
It was just just a little molla. He is a
classic food of the planes. Uppa settles the stomach every time.

(08:06):
It's like, well that's some I don't understand magic. But
thank you, Cody. He just smacked him. Yeah, he's literally
just cooking a pizza and enough and everybody's like, oh
my god, look at his hes. Not whiskey is not

(08:27):
a meal. Um. So, after, in Cody's words, quote, puking
and crapping blood for a week, the director of the film, Walsh,
is forced to shoot the movie around his star, who
was actively dying at this point. He loses like eighteen
pounds in a couple of weeks. So again, despite the

(08:49):
fact that he is pooping himself to death, he does
not quit drinking all day every day. Jensen writes that
this was partly a factor of him wanting to show
up all of the other drunk people on set. Quote,
he had to show these self important actors that he
was as manly as they were. He drank like crazy,
which prolonged his dysentery. Nothing more manly than shooting your

(09:11):
pants on a set. That is that is what shows
you're tough, pooping yourself to death because you drink so much.
I mean, that's how Johnny Depp got into character for
Pirates of the Caribbeans. That is actually accurate. Yes, um,
it is also how Johnny Depp got in the character
for being Johnny Depp. Yes, every day, it's just rings

(09:31):
and shipping his pants. Yeah, exactly, That's that's really all
he needs. So iron eyed Cody recalled that one night
the drinking got completely out of hand. Uh, the Apaches
hired to work on the film, got really wasted and
decided to attack the settlers. Um. They raced into location
set on their horses, drunkenly firing arrows into the wagons,

(09:52):
the town set, and even the tents in which some
of the cast and crew were sleeping. By the way,
I have no idea if any of these guys were
actually Apache. If they're just cast that way, it's probably
a mix. Like a lot of them are probably like Cody,
just like Italian dude, Like who knows, Um, it is
Hollywood in the twenties. Um. So Cody wakes John Wayne
up to warn him that, like, hey, a bunch of

(10:13):
the crew were shooting arrows at other people. Like it's
kind of a big mess. As it heads up, there's
like an arrow fight going on on set. Um, And
he sees that Duke is like too drunk to like
know what's going on. So Cody sees these these actors
on horses coming and he decides, well, I might as
well join them. So he gets on his horse and

(10:34):
just start shooting arrows at the set and apparently Duke
just keeps lying down and drinking the entire time. Um,
so that's fun. That sounds like a fun filming set
to do. Oh the Golden years of Hollywood. Like this
guy can't even get up, No he's not. Like half
the set is like drunk and pretending to be indigenous

(10:55):
and shooting arrows at the other half of the set. Uh.
And then the star are is drunken, shifting his pants
on on the floor. Just grown up cowboys and Indians. Yeah,
grown up seems like too strong a term. Yeah. Um
it's a bunch of seven year olds with access to
liquor and real arrows. Yeah. Yeah, So the studio is

(11:18):
not psyched with their big star. This is not a
great first performance. You know, even in the thirties, you
wanted a guy who, for example, could hold off on
the being an alcoholic long enough to make the movie. Um.
Wayne does eventually dry out enough to become functional, and
it's because another actor sits down to drink with him,
and instead of giving him normal whiskey gives him what moonshine,

(11:41):
basically peer ever Clear, and so John Wayne drinks like
essentially hundred and eighty proof Ever Clear with a stomach bug,
which makes him so sick that he stops drinking for
a while. Is there anything alcohol can't do? You just
have the jangle keys in front of face, but like yeah,

(12:01):
like worse alcohol for him. Yeah. So the Big Trail
flops not it doesn't do super well. Although people today
will claim it was a really good movie. It just
isn't like a huge hit at the time kind of
is not seen as very successful. But it's people will
argue it's it's a pretty good movie. Um, those people
are fucking lying. Like, I don't know, it seems maybe

(12:23):
it was good, Like who knows. I would watch the
behind the scenes once again, Sure I would much Yeah,
Like like the documentary about the making of The Isle
of dr Moreau, Like I haven't seen it, but believe
it's it's The director initial director of the film was
a wizard who went crazy and got fired and decided

(12:44):
to live in the jungle and sneak onto set in
costume every day while they were trying to make the movie.
It's it's fucking awesome. It's such a fun story. Say it, okay, Um,
can I just put it? Didn't say that ironized Cody's
real name? Yeah? Well, Espera Oscar DECORTI also like a

(13:05):
really effeminate name, Espada. Yeah, so no wonder he and
Marian got along. Um no, it's it's very funny. I
do like the image of him like feeding lasagna to
John Wayne and pretending it's like an ancient Apache remedy
for I can't figure out what he's doing, and all
of the other Italians and costume are like, yeah, no,

(13:27):
that's an ancient remedy. Oh, Hollywood was pretty racist. Um
still is so the Big Trail. You know, it doesn't
kill his career entirely, because a lot of people do
see it as a pretty decent movie. Um, but it doesn't.
It does, like poorly enough that he spends most of

(13:47):
the next decade kind of just hanging in there as
an actor. He's he's moved up solidly from prop Boy,
but he's also kind of a side character. He's like
Ronald Reagan, right, he's not unknown. But no in this
period really considers themselves a John Wayne fan. You know,
like they've got a career. They're doing okay, but they're
also not like they're never like top build usually, right,

(14:09):
they're not they're not going to move a lot of
butts into seats. Um and Westerns are pretty much all
this out there. Correct, There's a lot. No, there's a
lot of gangster movies. There's a lot of romance flicks.
There's some like war pictures and stuff like. But westerns
are they're like the Marvel movies of the day broadly speaking, right,
Like they're the most number one what tends to get

(14:31):
like not like they're kind of the most consistent way
people are making a bunch of money. They're like superhero
films broader than Marvel because there's cheap ones too, because
you can make them pretty cheap sometimes. And this is
the Fast and the Furious franchise. Yeah, I don't know, right,
Like in these are a lot of your action films, right,

(14:53):
this is what puts butts in seats. These are the
popcorn flicks. Right. And John Wayne kind of for a
decade is sort of a side character and those sort
of movies. Right, He's rarely gonna be a particularly big
because he's not a big draw. You know. This changes
in nineteen thirty nine when John gets finally cast in
a john Ford Cowboy film called Stagecoach. If you have

(15:15):
ever whenever you are watching like a movie or a
TV show that mentions John Wayne or cowboy movies, you
will see the same clip from the movie Stage Coach.
And it is John Wayne with a lever action gun
that he flips over and over in his hand as
he fires while walking onto screen, and it like slowly
zooms on in us face. It is one of the

(15:36):
most iconic scenes in Western cinema. Among other things, it's
entirely why Terminator to the action scenes initially are shot
the way. It's why Arnold in that movie gets a
lever action shotgun that he can flip around and fire.
It's this really iconic moment that makes its way into
a bunch of modern pop culture right um, And that

(15:58):
is the moment, that moment when John Wayne walks on
scene in Stagecoach that makes him as a star. And
I'm gonna quote from a BuzzFeed right up by Anna
Helen Peterson. Stagecoach was intended as an ensemble picture. Wayne
doesn't even show up until fifteen minutes into the film,
but When he does, It's with a Heroes intro. Wayne
twirls his rifle as if it were a pistol as

(16:20):
the camera zooms into a glorious close up of Wayne's face.
It's become one of the most iconic scenes in classic cinema,
and Wayne's way out of Quickie Western purgatory. Gradually, Wayne
became something of a leading man. He was in Ford's
next picture, The Long Voyage Home as a Swedish fisherman,
and played a Navy officer opposite Marlene Dietrich in Seven Centers.
Wayne's westernness was treated as a matter of fact. He was,

(16:41):
in photoplays words, the typical Western American, open faced and
open minded, but the press also emphasized that he enjoyed
the finer things. Wayne dressed with meticulous care like any
well capped businessman, looks divine and tucks her tails, and
doesn't wean a guitar or sing sad pieces about Western
skies either. He lived in an exquisitely furnished home and
the swinkiest section of Hollywood, and has no yin for

(17:04):
horses off screen, so he becomes huge after this right
stagecoach makes him into a leading man and he kind
of immediately takes off in Hollywood. Part of it is
that he's been in film twenty years at this point,
he's in his he's like forty, Um, he's old enough
to get he's one of these guys who doesn't look
right until he gets kind of grizzled. Um. And so

(17:26):
he gets very popular for that. And he doesn't just
get cast as the stead in westerns um. And he's
kind of the first cowboy actor who's more actor than cowboy,
because the previous generation, guys like John Mix, are real cowboys,
you know, like that's how they learned. Wayne isn't really

(17:47):
like he's he's got some of that in his background, right,
Like he has some claim to it, but it's he's
kind of you know, he's a fancy dandy boy. You know,
he wants to he's just having a good time being
a rich guy. Yeah, and and he grew up poor,
so it's like, yeah, he's gonna want to not ride
a horse to a crop set right. Right. It's often
framed as like he hated horses, and he's like, no,

(18:08):
he just had to do that as a kid. He
probably doesn't want to do it anymore. Like he's too
many horses. But that's really interesting that like it takes
especially in the Westerns, and maybe in this time that
like having an older hero was much more compelling than like,
you know, you know, the Tom Hollins of today, like
a little baby face Spider Man. You're like, no, you

(18:31):
want a grizzled guy was killed many, many, many people.
You want a guy who's like, looks like he's kind
of seen some ship, who can who can play that
off a little bit, And he doesn't. Even this isn't
really the height of his career because he's still kind
of young at this point. Um, but yeah, this is
the first time he gets his big snakes. He's old
enough to you know, to look like he's been through

(18:53):
some stuff. Um. Now, there's one last PostScript to the
story of Stagecoach. While it ignited John Wayne's career, by
nineteen thirty nine, Tom Fix was largely out of work
and desperate for a good job. He asked John Ford
for a part on Stage Coach, and Mix would allege
until his death that John Wayne begged Ford not to
give Mixed the part, sabotaged the guy who got him

(19:15):
his first job, right, real piece of shit, you know,
I know you're gonna get like, oh my god, that's crazy. Yeah,
because it was supposed to be an ensemble cast or
it is an ensemble cast everybody. Yeah, But you know,
if if Mixes in there, maybe that's gonna take some
shine away from John Wayne. He's not gonna because mix

(19:36):
is a better cowboy actor. Maybe that's gonna funk with
John Wayne's ability to, uh, you know shine on set
right now? Does he learn anything in these in these years?
Like is he a better alcoholic? Number one? He's an
incredible alcohol You gotta give him credit for that. The

(19:56):
King like really, honestly, this is a separate story. But
and I do my podcast on the heroes of drunk driving.
He's one of the most influential drunk drivers they're ever
really invented a lot of modern drunk driving techniques, holding
a beer in between his legs, uh, screaming at his
wife drunkenly from in the back seat while he drives,
like all of those John Wayne originals in the closet

(20:19):
when nobody could piss in a closet like John Wayne.
Absolutely not. You know what else is oscar worthy? These ads?

(20:39):
And we're back, uh, and the Oscar for best, ad
goes to the one about how Mattresses no longer uses
rare earth minerals mind by slave labor in the congo
to make their beds. Not anymore, not anymore. Yeah, that
was back in That was back in the seventeen hundreds

(21:01):
when Mattress was better known as the East India Trading Company. Um,
they've moved on now they just ship people mattresses. It's fine,
We've forgiven them. Yeah, you need to forgive them too.
That's the message of our Oscar winning Mattress ad. So
in the Ford films Seven Centers, John Wayne played opposite

(21:24):
Marlena Dietrich and she's the real actress who inspired the
fictional Bridget von hammers Mark and Inglorious Bastards. So in
that movie, she is the German actress that Quentin Tarantino
insisted on strangling on camera for very unclear reasons. Um
or maybe not so unclear reasons. I don't I'm not

(21:44):
enough of an expert on that. But it's weird, right,
we gotta agree, it's weird. It's kind of uncomfortable that
he did that. Yeah, yeah, I'm remembering that. That's in
the Yes, yes, yes, it's like the Yeah he wanted
it to be his hands on on camera that strangled her.
Very weird. Um, but your feet fucking Quintin Tarantino. So, Um,

(22:11):
she's the real actress that that lady is based off of.
She's quite a star, one of the most famous leading
ladies ever and certainly in this period. Um, kind of
top of the fucking female you know, actor food chain. Um. Now,
in real life, Wayne and Dietrich started hooking up immediately. Um,
she is way more experienced than him. Um she oh yeah, yeah,

(22:36):
she is Marlen di Dietrich, and he is is an
awkward boy who spends most of his time drunk with
a bunch of dudes on a yacht. Um. So one
of the things that like he obviously he gets super
into this thing. He's also kind of insecure with her
and around her because she's more experienced than him and
more famous than him. Um, so a few things are

(22:56):
going on here. This is kind of a complex relationship,
although I think from marline she just likes fucking hot actors.
You know, he's the one who starts developing some complexes
around this. Hey boy, boy, lift that couch over there. Yeah,
Oh absolutely, hang on, Let me, pour some oil on
your back. Keep doing that. No, no, I didn't say

(23:17):
come yet. So obviously he's still married to Josie at
this point. His his wife, of course, when they get married,
when and his gife getting married, Like their friends from
the beginning are like, well, this isn't going to last.
He is incapable of not cheating on you constantly, and
you are super catholic now heartbreaking, Lee. Josie adores her husband. Um,

(23:41):
John mostly seems to be distracted and frustrated by her.
She feels like his acting like her attitude is I
just gotta put up with this for a little while.
Nobody is in acting very long. Eventually it'll he'll get
too old. It'll be a short feeling for him, um,
and then he'll figure out something more serious to do
with his life. Um John Wayne kind of views his
wife and children the same way, right, even my whole thing,

(24:06):
you know. Um. So, he would later complain to friends
that he and Josie only had sex four times during
their marriage. Fucking probably a lie, but like a gross one.
So mean dude, Um, he's just so angry that like,
what does that say about you two? Like that's obviously

(24:27):
doesn't look good on you, bron. Maybe she would want
to suck you more if she didn't feel like you
were sucking every single other person in town because she's
not into that ship. Like, maybe maybe your behavior is
having an impact on the things you don't like about
your marriage. John Wayne, He's not going to into my wife,
you know what I'm saying, Like those kids four nuts. Honestly,
that was it, in and out, five pomps, four nuts.

(24:51):
I mean really not even that hot, Like my wife's
not as hot as Marlen. Wow, you are just quoting
directly from his o biography. The story of It showed
the tale of John Way. Uh so he's initially, some
people will say, was kind of morally conflicted about all
the sleeping around he was doing. But by the time

(25:13):
he's an actual star, it becomes just like totally Uh
it becomes just like so routine to him that he
stops trying to hide it. So everyone in Hollywood knows
that John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich are sleeping with each other.
Um they do not even like they They're out in
public together at events while Josie is eight months pregnant,

(25:35):
which doesn't do She's not happy you know that's not great.
That's not a great position to put someone in. Um.
So she confronts him over it. But she's also too
Catholic to divorce him, right, Like, you don't do that.
So she's yeah, it's it's growny um like his parents
got divorced. Yeah, because pars and he it's interesting years

(25:57):
earlier or whatever that he doesn't push divorce U because
he could have. And Jensen, one of his biographers, suspects
that this is because he's still too possessive and insecure
about her. Um. And I'm gonna he's actually the piece
of ship in the relationship. Oh for sure, Absolutely, he's
the piece of ship in this relationship. I don't know
much about Josie, but I know that John Wayne is

(26:19):
the bad guy in this relationship. Um. I'm going to
read a quote about him as a as a husband
and a father from from Jensen's book. He demanded his
children profess their love to him on a daily basis.
Barely Able to sleep, Duke awoke every day before dawn
and demanded the entire house rise with him, even if
it was a day off for family and friends. He
had a litany of rules based upon superstitions, which were

(26:41):
a result of the childhood of poverty and emotional abuse
by his mother. Ever, convinced that he was destined for ruined,
Duke consisted that the superstitions be followed or his life
would collapse into abject failure. So he he he makes
bizarre rules for his family. He screams at them if
they put hats on beds. Can't do that around John.
If you if you spill salt, you have to toss

(27:03):
it over your shoulder, which is not an uncommon thing
in this day. Umbrella's can only be opened outside. No
one can hand him a salt shaker. You don't hand
John Wayne a salt shaker. You know what's really funny
about that is that I like, I lived in Latin
America for a while and the same thing, Like I mean,

(27:25):
just the superstistent you put the salt on the table,
then you can pick it up. Yeah, there's like a
lot like this is not he didn't invent this. It's
not like only to him. Maybe the no hats on
beds thing. I haven't heard that before. That's kind of weird.
But is he like, you know, you know, look me
in the eyes when we toast otherwise seven years bad luck.
You know that one's true? Yea, like seven years of

(27:46):
bad sex or whatever it is, even though I've only
done it with your mom four times, four times at
the dinner table after screaming about salt. Uh. But what
does it mean, professor? Love like just every day. Yeah,
you gotta tell dad that he's a good dad before
he goes out to fun Marlene Dietrich on Rodeo drive

(28:08):
out in public. He doesn't start it like it can't
be him to say I love you first. That is unclear.
But he does not strike me as I say I
love you first kind of dude. I don't know. Maybe so. Uh.
He's also like this around his friends. He's got these
card playing buddies that he plays cards with, and if
somebody sets a card on the table face up by accident,

(28:28):
they have to get up and circle their chair three
times in order to avoid bad luck. Um. So he's
you know again, this is not I think people might
be I want to say, this is like O C. D.
I don't know. Maybe I'm not going to diagnose him,
but these are all like superstitions that exist at the time,
and he's just this is not an uncommon thing with
people who like grow up in desperate situations where they

(28:49):
get super paranoid about not wanting to do anything that
can make ship go wrong for them, because they understand
how fragile successes um and how shitty it is when
you're dirt poor. I get it, you know, not that
it's good, but I understand what's going on in his
head here. I think. So while he's keeping a tight
eye on his wife and kids, he escalates his relationship
with Dietrich. She later claimed that she more or less

(29:12):
directed their affair as the more experienced partner. Quote what
pleased me most was he wasn't vain or arrogant, Far
from it. He was insecure as an actor, worried about
his talent or what he felt was a lack of it.
As a man. He was a little insecure and vulnerable.
I was able to help in both respects. We had
a small affair, a small friendship, which we both enjoyed.

(29:32):
Now that's to her again, marleya Dietrich, huge star. Uh.
He it's a bigger thing for him, and it's definitely
a bigger thing for his wife, for whom this is devastating, right,
Mereley just like, yeah, you know is he was he
was young. He needed somebody to show him the ropes
and like make him feel better about himself. I did that.
It's whatever. Then I wanted Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed that

(29:54):
he didn't know how to talk back to me. Yeah.
I was a little wife. How cute months pregnant, she's
fat four children? Yes, but that's really interesting that. I
mean it might I'm curious to how this ends because
I feel like it's foreboding, like she clearly he was

(30:18):
clearly obsessed with Well, that's an interesting part here. So
John Wayne was actually in Mexico partying with Dietrich while
his wife Josie delivers their fourth child and second daughter,
Melinda Um. So their relationship continued for some time, and
while Wayne definitely got along better with Dietrich than he

(30:38):
did with his wife, it was also a tempestuous relationship.
And I'm going to read a real rough quote from
the true life of John Wayne here. Duke handled her
the way he handled every woman in his life. When
she provoked him, he punched her, and it didn't matter
if it was in public. On location for the Spoilers
in Lake Arrowhead, California, Duke and Marlene were rehearsing a

(30:59):
scene for the film. Duke suggested one way to play
the scene, and Marlen suggested another. Duke pressed his point
and Marlene finally shot back, that's a dumb idea. Duke's
face turned to stone and his eyes burned with suppressed rage.
As the camera was about to roll, Duke angrily retied
his bandanna, which he'd loosened between takes. Uh. Duke tied

(31:19):
a bigger than normal not and Marlen saw it and
told him, you don't even know how to tie a bandana. Suddenly,
Duke exploded. He swung a huge fist in a roundhouse
right and hit Marlen right in the face. She went flying,
landing hard in the rough dirt. Marlene lay sprawled on
the ground for a moment, gathering her senses. She didn't
cry now, no, no, she was on the ground and

(31:43):
straight up. When she came to she lit a cigarette.
That's well, it's actually more uncomfortable than that, Francesca, because
according to Jensen, whose source here is the actress Margaret Lindsay,
who is there on set when this happens, she looks
up at him with a tense arousal, gets up and
gives him what is described by this other actress as

(32:04):
a love punch, and then they start making out. So
I don't know, I don't know. I don't know what
you want to do with this information? How do you
want to parse that all out? But that's what someone
else who was there says, went down. I've been waiting
for you to do that since the moment I met you.
He will, he will be repeatedly physically abusive to people,

(32:26):
to women specifically, throughout his life. It is unclear to
me if that's what's going on here or if they
just had kind of a thing where that I don't
I really don't know, Like I don't know what's going
on with these two. Um. I mean it's interesting though,
because she as even though she did that, you got
to think about being a star like her in that

(32:48):
time you're on set, this guy who you're sleeping with,
who's younger, more inexperienced, hits you. What are you gonna do,
like cry or be mad wherever that shows so much
vulne ability, You're gonna get up and be like, No,
I liked it. It's exactly whatever. You know. That is
much more a position of strength when you've got to
protect your image, that's right, right, And that's a huge,

(33:11):
probably part of what's like. I I mean, I don't
know these people obviously, Um, but that seems really plausible
to me. Um yeah, fucking embarrassing otherwise. And again, a
number of people through the years and other circumstances see
John Wayne hit women in public, like with his fists.
Not that like a slap is okay either, but like
specifically like punching them. Um, it's just like a thing

(33:35):
John Wayne does, like his, like his, like his mentor
John Ford. Um, cool dudes, learned it from the best.
So yeah, it is also Yeah, so Duke's relationship with
Marlene fell apart for the same reason so many of
his relationships did. He started fucking a teenage girl in Mexico.
Um yeah, so that's why this doesn't work out. She

(33:58):
may have been working as a prostitute it at the time.
Her exact background is kind of unclear. Some sources will
say her mother ran a brothel that was very popular
with the actors and that's where John Wayne meets her. Um,
but we know that he definitely at age thirty four.
I think starts fucking at the oldest She's like seventeen

(34:19):
at this point. Um. Her name is Esperanza Bauer. She
goes by Chatta. UM. Biographer Randy Roberts writes in his
book John Wayne American Quote, Chata's life before nineteen forty
one is a mystery. She was never accepted in Hollywood,
and rumors circulated at the time that she met John
Wayne that she was working as a high priced call

(34:40):
girl and a bit actress in the Mexican film industry.
Pillar Wayne later wrote that Chatta was born in the
slums of Mexico City and became a prostitute to escape poverty.
Others said that when Chatta and Duke met, she was
married to a Mexican student named Eugenio Morrison. We really
don't know what her background is, but we know she
is a teenager and possibly a sex worker. Hard to say, Um, Roberts. Chata, Yeah,

(35:08):
and maybe even the worst, which is not a sex
worker but the daughter of something a traffic was not
actually working. And then it's hard. Yeah, we really do
not know the precise details here other than that it's
for sure gross, right, it's for sure gross. It's for
sure bad stuff. Um, it's just the exact dimensions of

(35:31):
like what precisely was going on is kind of unclear,
but it's for sure bad. And I should note here
that like Roberts's book is way classier and it's description
of Chata the Jensen's book. Sure, it's called What American
John Made American? Well gee, I mean because Jensen is
like the most negative book about John Wayne. But it's
also written by a dude who was writing at least

(35:53):
in a pretty gross time, and I think was kind
of gross himself because he describes Chata as quote, an
underaged prostitute with a spoking body and amazing good looks.
I call the ship Jensen what the funk, dude? And
that's her biography. If you are describing someone as an
underaged prostitute, the whatever comes next should never include the

(36:14):
phrase smoking body. Never you have just stated you're talking
about a child. Richard Jensen, God, what a again? John
Wayne biographer is probably only moderately less terrible than John Wayne.
No exactly, he's only a few gradations better on the

(36:35):
me too creep predator scale. And again, I also I
am unclear as to how much we should like. There's
a lot of people who are arguing someone's underage, you
should always say sex trafficking victim rather than prostitute. But also,
this is a real different time, and I don't know
the extent to which she has agency in her life,

(36:56):
and seventeen is means a different thing in nineteen thirty
nine than it does today in some ways, Like I
have no idea what's going on. I have no idea
whether she's a victim of her mom or if she
is pursuing a rich guy to get out of like
Mexico and into the United States, and like like, who,
I don't know, what's I mean from brothel to Hollywood,
Like I'll take the deal. Because she's also trying to

(37:19):
get a career in Hollywood, which John Wayne attempts to
help her with. So like, there's there's stuff going on here.
It's certainly horrific behavior on John Wayne's part, you know
what I mean? John Wayne falls in love. He says, um,
he will for years call her his true love even
after they have split up. And he punches Oh, he

(37:40):
punches her a lot. He punches her a lot. Um,
So whatever is going on in her background, Wayne falls
in love immediately He moves her to California, where he
has her tell people she's twenty four years old. Um,
so he knows this is again we just said, like
these are somewhat different times and some of this stuff
is viewed differently. But john Wayne knows this is gross

(38:03):
enough that he has to age her up, you know, Like,
so again that different yeah even for Hollywood people like
that's kind of young John. Um, he starts trying one
of the things that's important to him. And again, we
don't know how much it is that she wanted a
career in movies. There's an argument to be made that

(38:23):
he wanted her to be seen as having a career,
so it doesn't look like he just trafficked a girl
from Mexico into Hollywood. Um. So, whatever is going on
here again? Super messy? Uh, super messed up. Um. Marlena
Dietrich when she finds out that what he's doing that
he's that he set this girl up with an apartment

(38:46):
in Hollywood and brought her into the country, she dumps him.
She's like, no, no, no, like that's that's fucking weird.
John So, Um, I don't know. Good for Marlene. I
guess she's fine. He's still married to Josie at this
point though, and if she wasn't happy with Marlene Dietrich,
she's really not happy with with this. Um not psyched

(39:09):
about what what John is doing. Um. Now her parents
are both high society Catholics, and so he's called upon
regularly to show up at events and functions. Um. And
you know he's surly because he'd rather be fucking someone
who is at the oldest now nineteen, right, they've been
together a couple of points, So he just acts like
a jick the parties. He's goes the events to cruise

(39:32):
for like young Catholic girls. He goes to the events
so that everyone knows how much he doesn't want to
be there, Like he sulks because he'd rather be with
his like teenage mistress in the apartment that he makes
the studio pay for her in Hollywood. Um. One of
the family friends was like and they did. Um. Yeah,
So he's like, not only is he cheating on his
wife with a teenager, but he has to like make

(39:54):
sure everybody knows how unfair he thinks it is that
he has to show up at parties where adults are Um.
Cool guy, John Wayne, Um, what a dude. So Hollywood
is helping bank roll sort of the because he's too
big of a cash cow for them to like making
them a lot of money. Yeah, this is the early forties.

(40:17):
He moves chat at a Hollywood in the spring of
forty three. Some will argue that it was like part
of what he was doing by having the studio pay
for her apartment and pay for her to like they
would give her like money every month, that it was
partly like a tax dodge, like that's how he received
some of his salaries so that it wasn't taxed. I
don't know how to evaluate the truth of that, but
it does sound like some movie star shit, like not

(40:39):
only are you like keeping a secret teenage mistress, but
you're doing it as a tax dodge, you know, like
everyone's on board. Yeah, that's that does sound very Hollywood
and in the nows too, like that's not just a
forties thing. Um. So the two start seeing each other
probably in forty one. I think like forty three is
when she moves to Hollywood. That it's also the year

(41:01):
one that the United States, helped long by our buddies
in Japan, decides to give this whole World War two
thing a try, right, Um, So this is our big
old patriotic war. Right, every everybody's got to go volunteer
to fight. It is all but unthinkable for young leading
men in the prime of their life action movie stars. Right,
You've got this war where absolutely every man who can

(41:21):
is doing something. It's considered obscene by a lot of
people that somebody capable of doing action like in the film,
somebody like being a war hero in movies, wouldn't go
volunteer to fight to serve in some way, Right. Jimmy
Stewart tries to join the Army. He gets rejected as
being under He has just one, like, I think, an
Academy award. This is right after It's a wonderful life.

(41:43):
He's one of the biggest stars in the world. He
gets rejected for being underweight, so he hires a personal
trainer so he can bulke up, and he joins the
Army Air Corps and he flies twenty bomber missions over Europe,
like the most one of the most dangerous jobs of
the entire wars. You me, Stewart. He retires as a general, didn't, Yeah,

(42:05):
Jimmy Stewart bombs like Europe repeatedly, Like he has an
incredibly dangerous job. They didn't need all those bombs some
of them, yes, but yeah, but it's also like, undeniably,
as one of the biggest stars in the world, he
takes a job where like a huge percentage of men
who do that job die doing it, like it is

(42:25):
incredibly dangerous um And there's a lot of famous actors
who do similar things. Clark Gable, who was over forty
at the point and was old enough that he could
have gotten out of serving, joins the Air Force. Some
will say he was suicidal because his wife had just died,
but he flew. He also flies bomber missions. As an
aerial gunner. Gable is like crammed into a gun in

(42:46):
the belly of a bomber, like shooting at fighter planes.
So even though it's not like all these movie stars
you know, were once action heroes or the detectives or
in real life, they become them because it's sort of
still seen as you know, you know, serving your country
and your role model. Even though like some a lot
of these guys go on to be politically problematic, but

(43:07):
they're all human enough to look at the Nazis and
be like, I should we probably do something about that,
where we probably got to do something about that, right, right, right,
or just even even like the idea that you would
attempt to physically train to be able to like like
Jimmy could have just like you know, tried to put
on I just can't do it, you know, off yet

(43:30):
he committed Oh my god, that yeah, alright. So and
Henry Fonda, who could have gotten out of the service
because he had three kids and initially they weren't drafting
like Father's right, they were trying to keep families together.
They were mainly drafting singleman. Fonda could have gotten a deferment. Instead,
he enlists in the Army Air Corps and again, like
serves his country at war. Now, a lot of big

(43:52):
stars did not join the military. Gary Cooper doesn't join,
Bing Crosby, James Cagney. But they're also way over forty
I think at this point, like they're old enough that like,
well I just can't you know, I'm an old man.
I'm just gonna slow everybody down, right, which fair enough.
You probably shouldn't be getting into that stuff. If you're
Bing Crosby and you have been chain smoking cigarettes since
age eight, you might not be helpful. Um, But John

(44:17):
Wayne was young enough to serve. He's in his mid
thirties at this point, right, he is the prime of
his life. He is a big strong man. Initially though,
he qualifies for a deferment, and he gets a deferment
because he has a wife and kids. Right, I got
six kids. Keep saying, good old, good old Josie. I
gotta stay with Josie and the kids. You know, I
gotta keep him. I gotta keep him, you know, I gotta.

(44:38):
I want to go out there and fight the crowds.
Don't get me wrong, but this family. I'm so dedicated
to my family. I've got yeah, yeah, I've got a
wife to sleep around on. I have kids to ignore. Um.
So he gets a deferment um, and his studio uses
his family as an excuse for the fat that he's

(45:00):
not serving with because the press asked, right, John Wayne's
a big star, He's not what what are you doing
in the war? John Wayne? That everyone else is a
part of um. This exerpt from an article in Modern
Screen is a good example of how they justified this quote.
A man of thirty five heading to a family of
six has to think twice before leaving. Just the same,
Big John Wayne is restless because, like I said, he's

(45:20):
a man's man who thinks straight and believes in action.
It's a dilemma for a family man and an American
gentleman who wants to make a personal appearance in the
big scrap. So that's how they frame it as, like, Oh,
he really wants to get in there. But ah, he's
just got it. He's got his family. Oh he loved
to make a cameo, but he's he's a teenager that

(45:41):
he traffics into the United States. You know, I'm not
sure if you've heard of the Alcoholics Yacht Club. Very
important work that they're doing out there in Mexico. Really
the most important branch of the Navy is the Alcoholic
Yacht Club. Yeah, so he would love to Oh my god,
he'd so love to be there to help your little war. Ever. Yeah,

(46:02):
Now it's very funny too because while he's making these
claims and forty two and forty three, he has already
moved Chata into Hollywood and asked his wife for a divorce.
They are separated. When all of it, when he's claiming
all of this ship to the press, now, hang on,
not yet, not yet, honey, don't sign the papers don't
not quite yet, not quite yet man now, although actually

(46:23):
I should say he really does want it. Um, she
refuses to divorce him for a while because you know,
again she's incredibly Catholic. Uh. And his mentor, patron, John Ford,
gives him hell to for trying to divorce her because
he's Catholic. Right, Ford, who again beats his wife relentlessly,
believes that John Wayne should stay married because that's what

(46:44):
God wants and just keep cheating on his wife, you know,
I mean that's the john Ford but also trapped them
John Come on, yeah, so that's what a fucking like.
So good on Clyde and Molly. I just want to
say that, you know, early pioneers a lot of things,
trying to farm in the desert but also getting a divorce,

(47:06):
and one of those two things was excecting, abusive, really
very revolutionary. That Molly was the one doing the abusing
a plus like incredible work. Um. So it is worth
emphasizing that John Wayne, while he dodged the draft in
World War Two, justified it by needing to take care

(47:26):
of his family. While he's doing this, he is living
away from his wife in luxury at the Chateau Marmont
and fucking a girl who is at most nineteen who
he possibly illegally trafficked into the United States. That part's questionable,
but um yeah, it's cold so um brand for hollow

(47:50):
Christian masculinity, like you know, emblem that he is, he
doesn't actually and kind of the shift of like oh
no, no no, no, that's the old way is to actually
put your anywhere your mouth is or do something like
be a hero. This is like yeah, like is playing
from this playbook, you know exactly. I'm just like thinking,

(48:11):
like what if like Jenna Bush was sent to Iraq?
Loell like Jenna Bush, I mean is co hosting Good
Morning America. You know what I'm saying. I I think
we should send all of the children of elected leaders
into war zones. I don't care which ones they don't
need to be supported or just send them just mail
them there, you know what, like in a shipping crate.

(48:34):
It's the Today Show. But yes they should and they
should all be sent there. I mean retroactively, you could
still go to Iraq, I like, help rebuild bro Well,
I don't think I don't look, I don't think the
iraqis need Jenna Bush's help. Um, but you know, um,
she could take somebody's place in a city getting shelled
right now, Um, just move them into your house, Jenna,

(48:57):
Come on, indeed, do something. So Ford chastises John Wayne
for quote this is how he talks about John Wayne's teenage. Uh.
I don't know what term to use here, but he
says that she playing with Mexican jumping beans because again,
everyone's very racist, very like these are like this is

(49:17):
for nineteen forty three, you know, like um. But he
also calls him a damn fool for breaking up his marriage.
According to biographer Roberts, Wayne wrote back that the marriage
is over and he quote does not give a four
letter word if I could see my kids. I don't
give a ship if she takes the kids. Awesome, what

(49:39):
a hero. So there are several things John Ford never
forgave John Wayne for and this is one of them.
When the war started forward to his credit, well, I
don't know if this is to his credit before joins
the OSS, which is the precursor to the c i A.
And he gets the rank of commander and he gets
this to make like propaganda movies. Right, That's what Reagan
does during the war, right, lot of guys who don't

(50:00):
want to go fight because not everybody does the Jimmy
Stewart thing, still join the military and they make propaganda
reels about how not to get v D or whatever. Um, John,
So that's John for John stuff. In those days there
was some good stuff, some good v D. You mean, yeah,
oh my god, the old time syphilis. This new ship

(50:21):
cannot compete. No, the itch isn't the same. Not just
doesn't hold a candle. You kids don't even know what
it's like to have your p burn. Unbelievable zoomers. Okay,
so um. Biographer Scott i'man basically said so again. Ford

(50:43):
joins the OSS and starts calling John Wayne a coward
for failing to serve um and tries to push him
to join. Now, there's a couple of different versions of
what Wayne wants to do in the OSS. Biographer Scott
i'man frames it as if John Wayne wanted to get
like a special ops gig suited for an action star.
So when i'man's telling, he crafts his application to the
ouss to make him look like an international man of mystery.

(51:06):
Quote swimming above average, small boat sailing, average football played
college ball at the University of Southern California. Squashing tennis, fair,
deep sea fishing, seven marlin in two years, hunting good field, shot,
horseback riding, have done falls and posse riding in pictures.
Not as easy as it sounds. So that's that's the way,
like I'm in as like he wants to try to
get a job doing like, you know, secret agent kind

(51:29):
of shit. Um, squashing tennis, that's fair. It's basically throwing
a grenade, you know. Fair. So Ford introduces John Wayne
to wild Bill Donovan, who's the head of the OSS
and like will become the founder of the c I
a UM, and Donovan suggests that Wayne might be good
for what they call small boat work, which is running

(51:52):
the German blockade to deliver weapons to partisans, which would
be a pretty cool thing to do in World War two.
If he really wants to get him a bit role
in the war in the war, well, and if he'd
done this, that's dope. Like that's literally, um fucking uh.
What's his name's character in Casablanca? Um? Yeah, um Bogart,

(52:16):
that's what he's doing. He's like running guns to two
rebels in like occupied Europe, and ship. So i'man says
like that's what John Wayne is trying to do. Wild
bills like, oh yeah, you'd be perfect for this. John
Wayne's like, I would love to run guns past the
Nazi blockade. I just gotta finish three more movies, Like,
give me three more movies, but then I'm gonna I'm
gonna be ready to get in. You know, I'm ready

(52:37):
to get in. And friends of his at the time
will note that he kind of always tells people I
just gotta do one more movie. I gotta do two
more movies and then I'm getting into the war effort.
Don't worry, guys, I'm almost there. I'll be right behind you.
This is like Trump on January six, Just like you guys,
go right there. There are versions of this story. One
version is that he films his three pictures and he

(53:00):
holls this officer at the OSS that Donovan had set
him up with, and that guy was like, dude, we
sent you a letter, you know, did you not get it?
We already filled that position. So john gets worried. He's like,
oh no, I'm gonna miss my chance to be in
the os S And he sends John Ford a letter
which states, dear Pappy, have you any suggestions on how
I should get in? Can I get assigned to your outfit?

(53:21):
And if I could, would you want me? How about
the Marines? You have Army and Navuman under you? Have
you any Marines? Or how about a CB or what
would you suggest? I just hate to ask favors, but
for Christ's sake, you can suggest, can't you. Now. I'man's
take here seems to be that John Wayne was perhaps
unwilling to fight, but or willing to serve, but not
as like a simple soldier. Whatever he was going to do,

(53:42):
he wanted it to be like a special position, one
that matched his opinion of himself, and something that would
exclude him from the standard military chain of command. So,
like Jimmy Stewart, Jean Autrey, Clark Gable, these guys are
all fighting as normal soldiers more or less, John Wayne
does not want to do that. Scott i'man writes, quote,
It's probable that Wayne was emotionally committed to working under

(54:04):
Ford's command, was embarrassed about Donovan shying away from him
at the height of the war, and simply wasn't willing
to enlist and take his chances. Certainly he had an
image of himself as an officer under Ford, but as
he would say, I would have had to go in
as a private. I took a dim view of that.
So the reality is unclean. And again, some people will

(54:24):
say initially John Wayne was trying to get this gig
running guns. Others will say he only just wanted to
be in Ford's unit making movies like he never wanted
to get close to the danger. Hard to say. Uh.
The author of the BuzzFeed right up, I quoted earlier
ads quote. The truth of Wayne's hesitation was logical, if unspeakable.
He'd worked for a decade to claw his way out
of the quickies. If he left Hollywood, then, even to

(54:45):
serve his country, he might not ever regain his momentum.
So he stayed put, made a dozen films, two of
which dealt with the war, and allowed the press to
rationalize his lack of service. He doesn't want to suck
his career up right now, or his hair, and that's
the dominant theory now. Richard Jensen has a third theory,

(55:06):
which a list at least explains why Wayne was not
accepted for the OSS. He argues that while John Ford
was giving John Wayne ship for not serving and being like,
why are you being in a coward? Why aren't you
willing to like man up and and take part in
this war. While he's doing that, Ford is also telling
wild Bill Donovan, don't hire this guy, don't let him in,
don't don't bring this guy like he'd done before. You know, Um,

(55:28):
he does this like about roles in Hollywood. So friends,
that's totally tracks. That's absolutely the guy John Ford is
right because he's already fallen out with him by this point.
So well, they're in and out a bunch, like they
they're close, Like Wayne will take care of him when
he's sick and dying. They have a codependent kind of thing, right,
Like it's totally a codependent relationship because like Ford will

(55:51):
want nothing to do with him and then want him
back and kind of yeah, they kissed that one time,
but they were drunk and they were drunk and it
was cold, so you know, john Ford, uh kind of
sucking and he does this like when he's not when
he's like ship shutting down Wayne's ability to get roles
early on in his career. He's also constantly being like, no,

(56:14):
you're not talented, so nobody's gonna want you to act
in their movies. Like your shitty at acting, You look
like crap, you're fat. You know, he's like the worst. Yeah,
and of course John Wayne loves him forever and takes
care of him when he's sick and dying. But yeah,
so friends speculated like this isn't Jensen who invinced the speculation.
People who are close to both of them speculate that

(56:34):
Ford stops John Wayne from getting a job as the oss.
Some will say it's revenge for what he did with Chattah,
that he likes divorcing his wife. You know that Ford
is just angry that he's getting a divorce because he's
super catholic. Uh. Jensen notes that others speculated Ford didn't
want John Wayne to get a chance to quote prove
he was Ford's equal, so he just didn't want him to,

(56:55):
like he wanted him to kind of look like ship
for not being in the war, because otherwise he might
look good it and then that's bad for Forward because
it makes Ford less powerful in the relationship. I don't
see why both can't be true. I think it seems
like both or true. And he wanted Wayne to think
he was. He wanted him in the war, and Wayne
didn't even want to go. He sure didn't. That seems

(57:16):
really clear that John Wayne did not want to go
to fucking war. Um. And I I mean, look, I
don't blame him, but yes it is. I don't. I
don't cling to this kind of masculinity. Yeah, so I
don't have the same, but it does seem like a
bigal oversight for those who are waving Wayne flags at rallies. Still, Yeah,

(57:39):
it's it's that's exactly like right, and it's going to
get grocer later. Like obviously, as a general rule, I
am pro draft dodging. I will say World War two
is the one war where you're kind of questionable if
you're dodging it because like some ship didn't need to
get done, you know. Um. But generally speaking, I'm pro
draft dodging, but not when you become like super pro

(58:03):
war forever after that, then then you're being scummy if
you draft dodge and are like nobody should have to
fight in a war. That's fine, that's perfectly consistent. That
is not where John Wayne's going to go, right, And
your entire persona is crafted around sort of this American
hero worship and you rely on that and you're winning
these you know, battles on the frontier, you're forming a nation.

(58:26):
You are literally playing soldiers fighting in the Battle of Iwajima.
You know, that's like one of your iconic films. And
like you, you didn't even wouldn't even make didn't even
find out a way to make movies for the government
during the war. Like right, Um, let alone do the ship.
And by the way, Jimmy Stewart never a big action star,
but fucking put up when it was time to put up.

(58:50):
Put his fucking money where his mouth was. Um. Anyway,
you know who else puts their money where their mouth is?
Products and services? Who sup with this podcast? Who also
helped carry out the bombing of Fortress Europe? Good on them?
That's the that's the one promise that our sponsors make

(59:11):
is that they have bombed German cities. Um, absolutely uh
from it's the Italians problems with you know what I mean,
they were already it was over, Yeah, dropping pasta on them,
just way too much. Bombing of Napoli. Yeah, it was
a lot of pretty cities get pretty fucked up here. Look,

(59:32):
it's it's a messy war. Um so ads we're back
so um so good ship. It's good stuff. John Wayne
does like volunteer spends like three weeks visiting troops fighting

(59:54):
in Guam. Like he does a little tour. He does
some USO shit, but not not much. Sky i'man who
is like a very positive biographer really likes John Wayne
even notes that, like he didn't really do much in
World War Two by the standards of other guys, even
other guys who didn't join the military, he did less
than them. He just visited troops and like flipped his

(01:00:16):
pistol around a few times. And he doesn't visit a
much like Bob Hope, right, who sucks bad person. There's
a lot of like horrible regressive politics. But Bob Hope
cannot serve in this period and like spends like his
whole all of his time going to field hospitals and
doing shows. Like there are guys who don't serve but
still like put a huge amount of time into like

(01:00:37):
keeping morale up for troops. John Wayne does a bit
of that, but he he doesn't really want to take
a break from his career to even do that. Um,
he would visit USO hospitals to talk to wounded soldiers,
who would often ask him, why aren't you in this war,
Duke um, and he would he would be like, I
have an old football injury. I knew he was back

(01:00:59):
up boy. You know you ever heard a body surfing? Yeah,
and we used to do in the Old West. Like
every single soldier who landed at Normandy hadn't fucked themselves
up playing football as a kid, right, Like they didn't
have pads back then. All of them were dead shoulder
and back injuries. No, you are and fodder. You need
to go now. Yeah, it's fine if you're back hurts,

(01:01:21):
it'll be over suon Yeah god, um so he yeah.
He sometimes would say that President Roosevelt had asked him
to keep morale up by making more movies. This is
super untrue, but he doesn't make a lot of movies. Um.
And obviously this works out great for him career wise
because all of the other leading men who might take
roles for him are off fighting and in some cases dying. Um.

(01:01:45):
You know, bily brilliant strategy. Have you seen gone with
the Wind? I have you know the kid, the like
fresh faced young kid who like marries Scarlett early in
the movie and becomes uh like goes off to die
and dies in the Confederate arm Yes, he actually dies
fighting in World War two, Like he dies in combat. Yeah. Um,

(01:02:08):
so this is again a lot of times you have
like soldier like especially nowadays and when Vietnam comes around,
like there will be moments and stuff and in Korea,
like with Elvis, where it's very performative. This is not
performative for most of the celebrities who join in World
War Two. Clark Gable people, Yeah, Gable Gable did Gable

(01:02:30):
weight ship. I'm mixing him up with the other one. Um,
you said Cooper didn't. Yeah, Cooper did not. Clark Gable does.
Clark Gable is like a fucking a gunner, like on
a on a bomber plane. Um, which is one of
the most dangerous jobs in the whole war. Um. You're
like hanging in like a glass cockpit on the bottom
of a plane, exposed to gunfire with no armor and

(01:02:53):
if you get shot, you just get the air sucked
out of you and pulled to the ground. It's a horror.
Butler did that. Fuck Yeah, he fucking yeah, he sure did.
Look he's not He's pretty right. Wing himself, but definitely hot,
like we could we could be fair about that, comparing

(01:03:13):
pieces of trap. I mean, like, that's what this show is.
It's though. It is though funny that Rhett Butler goes
to war and like survives and the kid who dies
and gone with the wind also dies finding um loops
little on the nose, Hollywood. Um so uh. If you're

(01:03:34):
surprised that the man who dodged the draft in World
War Two, which is the only war in which that's
arguably unethical, goes on to become a right wing icon,
you should not be. What's interesting is that John Wayne
himself would spend the rest of his life outraged by
his own failure to serve. Whether it was venal profit
seeking or simple cowardice, he saw it as the ultimate

(01:03:55):
strike against his MACHINESMO and Ford never lets him forget it.
Oh God. Perhaps the first expression of this comes in
nineteen forty four, when he helps to create the Motion
Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals or m
p A. Now with a name like that, you know,
some fucked up culture war bullshit is about to drop,
and it sure did. See brown people will be killed

(01:04:18):
in the in these films. Yeah, I mean it's more that,
like these guys are hardcore anti communist, which if you're
an anti communist in the US World War Two, you
kind of got to sit out a little bit, like
you gotta kind of keep quiet because the Soviet unions
are ally you can't kind of you cannot be as
unhinged in your attacks against communism for four years or so, um,

(01:04:40):
because we we kind of need them to do all
of that, because we need like twenty million of them
are so to die fighting. Um. So nineteen forty four,
they start this anti communist organization kind of near the
end of the war, and John Wayne had not been
political earlier in his career. He would later claim to

(01:05:00):
have even had a socialist period. I don't know how true.
I think that is. It's kind of a right wing
thing to claim he used to be a socialist in
college then he saw the light. I think he's one
of the first guys to do that. Absolutely. This is yeah,
that is such a playbook. Yeah. His friend Henry Fonda
later recalled quote, the Duke couldn't even spell politics in
the thirties, So I think it's probably he just did

(01:05:23):
not give a shit um. But in the early forties, again,
he's got to do something to feel like a man.
He's got to do something to like shore up his
credentials as a tough guy, and being anti communists seems
like the best bet. So he gets elected head of
the Screen Actors Guild in the early forties. Um. And
he claims that becoming the head of a union is
the first time he starts to notice the deadly trend

(01:05:45):
of on wrestling socialism. Yeah, so that's so perfect. That's
also just so peak, like right wing icon idiot. Oh yeah,
it's it's beautiful. Thanks to this union, I realized unions
are too terrible. Yeah, except for this one and the police.

(01:06:05):
Once you get union, So, once you get sensitized to it,
he told an interviewer, you'd begin to be aware of
cracks at our president, the flag patriotism. He described the
attitude of his colleagues towards traditional Americana as quote a
kind of sneering. Now this is up, you suck an asshole.
This is all ship, he would claim later after he

(01:06:26):
became a political figure. UM film critic and his story
and Emmanuel Leave believes that guilt over his failure to
serve in World War Two drove Wayne to right wing politics.
There's ample evidence to suggest this. Friends of his, like
Mary Saint John often gave telling anecdotes quote he was
not the kind of man to dwell on it or
talk about it, but you knew he did. You could

(01:06:47):
see it in his face. Whenever anyone asked him about
his war record, he wouldn't tell them that he had
not served, and it made him feel like a hypocrite.
So that's so perfect. Of course, you're gonna make up
for your your feeling that you didn't defend your country
by you utilizing the most bullshit prop of so called Americanism,

(01:07:08):
which is defending yourself against communism. Yeah, and and oh
it's so and it's so perfect, and it is like
the parallels again to today two Trump's little bones burs.
I hate to bring his name up again, but just
it's so clear. And the people who are the most
vitriolic are also folks who would never in their fucking
lives fight for any cause. Yeah, it's the same ship

(01:07:32):
with like George Bush, you know, getting getting a cushy
family excuse not to actually fight in Vietnam. Um, you know,
it's it's it's it's this but like super willing to
send other people to fight, and what matters is the image.
It doesn't matter, Like what you do doesn't matter. It's
just like why you can you can pay for your

(01:07:54):
daughter to have an abortion and also support ending the
right uh to to to reproductive choice. Because it's not
what you do that matters. It's what you say you
know in public, and it's whether or not you have
the wear the right hat. It's like Ben Shapiro with
his cowboy hat and his big black truck. You never
towed Ben Shapiro. You don't know how to toe, you

(01:08:16):
know how to set a fucking tow hitch, Like, by god,
you would panic if you had to change lanes with
a trailer, Like but you got that characterization. Yeah, Ben
haul like a fucking tin foot, little bit, little baby
trailer just just once been show me you know how

(01:08:37):
to use a truck? Literally? Tiny boat work? What is it?
Small boats? Small boat work? Couldn't do small fishing for Marlin.
Goddamn it. Go run some guns, John Wayne, So leave manual.
Leave the fucking film. Criticism claims that like this sort
of shame is what drives Wayne to the m p

(01:08:58):
A in nineteen. Like blockbuster war movies, doing this was
a prominent and easily publicized way to frame himself as
a warrior struggling against the great evil, when he had
actually failed to do anything about the real great evil
of the time. UM. He served as the president of
the organization starting in nineteen forty nine, now the year before,
at age forty one, John Wayne was cast in a

(01:09:20):
film called Red River. This would be the first movie
to feature Wayne as he is now most famous to
millions of Americans as a gruff, hard edged, late middle
aged cowboy because again he's aged like he looks like
he's in his fifties in this because but also kind
of the perfect like American hero um, sort of unwitting,
like I don't want to be here, um, like protagonist,

(01:09:44):
which is something that we love. We love a guy
he's about to retire, but he gets drawn out of
retirement because he's got a fucking kid. Gas. Yeah, it's
like you're sucking John McClain. He's balding and divorced and
he's like exhausted, but then he's got to go murder
some Germans. You know, we love that ship, Bruce Will.
This did this perfectly. Yeah, he really did. He did
everything right in his in his career politics. Probably I've

(01:10:08):
never wanted to know what Bruce Willis beliefs about politics.
It seems like that wouldn't make me happy. It's also
changed in the last like ten years. I feel like,
whereas like right wingers, we would think we're more right
wing in Hollywood like ten years ago, or just like, hey,
that guy's pretty good. You know, he's fine. Yeah, it's
it's it's the Arnold Schwarzenegger thing where it's like you've
suddenly gone from being like an arch conservative to one

(01:10:31):
of the least crazy people talking about politics in America
because everything has lurched so far to the right. It's
it's great, it's fine, it's not going to cause any problems. Um.
So it's this John Wayne, this kind of tough older cowboy. Um,
this old hand who he's like one of the terms
he's he's a begrudging tutor for younger cowboys. Right, that's

(01:10:53):
a big part of his appeal in these movies. He's
taking some fresh faced young book under his wing. This
is the John Wayne. He's a star are at this point?
This is the John Wayne that becomes an icon, right,
Like this is the John Wayne whose face is still
plastered all over fucking merch tables at gun shows to
this day. So his his career torpedoes forward at the

(01:11:13):
same time as his anti communist activism lurches forward. He
serves three turns as president of the the the m
p A until nineteen fifty two. Now, since this was
the height of the Second Red Scare, many of John
Wayne's friends and many of the studio executives in particular,
warned him that, like, hey, you might not want to
get into politics this much. It could kill you with

(01:11:34):
the box office. Americans, whatever we feel about communists, may
not want to see John Wayne, cowboy hero wearing a
suit talking to Congress about like your colleagues being socialists.
Um so uh, John Wayne claimed, like it's one of
those things. The idea that like this is probably not true.

(01:11:56):
The idea that like he got a lot of pushback
saying he shouldn't get into right way politics is probably
a lie because John Wayne is the only one who
claims it, and he only ever brings this up to
point out that but even then, I became the biggest
box office draw in Hollywood. After you know I started
doing all this stuff. Like That's how he frames it
as like they didn't want me to start being anti communists,

(01:12:17):
but once I did, that just made me more popular.
Um yeah, once again trying to cancel me. First they
took Jenny, then they take my anti communist activism. He is,
by the way, married to Chattah and has divorced Jenny
at this point. Whether or not, like his kids today
will claim, I should note that he was a good

(01:12:38):
dad and like stayed in their lives. I don't know
what the cases some biographers have claimed other things, but
his kids are pretty positive about I mean maybe I
don't know. I'm not gonna tell them what their lives
were like. Um, he's certainly like I don't think they
wanted for anything right, Like he didn't like like they

(01:12:58):
benefited from the Wayne money. It's scene like so um so.
Eugene Levy describes how he generally framed this to the press.
Wayne said that those who warned him must have meant
it would ruin me with the Moscow fan clubs, because
when I became president of the Alliance, I was thirty
second on the box office polls. But last year i'd
skin it up near the top. It's very familiar right

(01:13:21):
wing framing. Right, they tried to cancel me, but I
just it just made me more popular all that ship.
He's the perfect figurehead for not World War Two, arguably
the most righteous American war, but the Cold War the
most exactly like unrighteous, like pillaging you know, Third World

(01:13:41):
countries or Global South countries under phantom threats. I'm not
saying it didn't get real at a certain point, but
like it was such a propaganda war because we have
this one war that is unquestionably necessary, and he's like, nah,
that ain't me. But then we started invading these tiny
little entrees and he's like, oh yeah, yeah, fun m up,

(01:14:02):
fuck um up, um yeah, it's cool. He he innvinced
being James Woods in a way. So the part of
the second Red Scare that John Wayne was personally involved
in was the backlash to the pro Soviet movies that
he made in the early nineteen forties. Members of the
House un American Activities Committee HUAC were livid that studios

(01:14:26):
like MGM had made films celebrating the Russian war effort. Suddenly,
Hollywood stars were being called up to inform on their
fellow celebs for left wing sympathies leave you writes quote.
It got to the point where Lela Rodgers, Jinger's mother
and vice president at r KO, was asked to examine
all screenplays for questionable content. She was proud to declare
that she had found a line in the Tinder Comrade

(01:14:48):
which stated share and share alike, that's the meaning of democracy.
Dalton Trumbo, who wrote the screenplay, later became one of
the Hollywood Ten. The friendly witnesses of HUAC included many
Hollywood celebrit such as Gary Cooper, who reportedly condemned communism
because it was not on the level whatever that meant,
or Adolph Minju, whose credo was that communism could be

(01:15:09):
expressed by players by a look, by an inflection, by
a change in voice. So what that's what? Literally, like
Trumbo gets canceled for ship like that, for saying like
democracy is about sharing. Like that's like the most cancel
culture America's ever got is what does to fucking yeah
exactly on American activities man back by the way, Oh

(01:15:32):
for sure, they're so horny to do this. Ronald Reagan
was one of the guys who named the most names.
He loved getting up in front of Congress and informing
on his colleagues. Now, to to their credit, there were
some very base fucking actors and actresses, including Katherine Heppard
refuses to talk to the community. She's like the fun like,
you can't make me do ship. I don't give a fuck,

(01:15:53):
Katherine Heppern, What are you gonna do? Cancel Katherine Hepburn. No,
you're fucking not um, And they don't. Uh uh. John Wayne,
who is an avowed anti communist, does nothing, so he
does not get up in front of who act This
is not a principled stance. His biographer Iman claims that
this was in part that because like well he wasn't

(01:16:13):
really that judgmental about people, he wouldn't have wanted to
cancel his colleagues because if he liked you, he didn't
care about your politics. You know these buddies with Orson Wells,
who was pretty left wing. Um. That's one justification for
why he doesn't get up in front of whoac UM.
Blacklisted screenwriter Howard Coke, who's one of the people who
gets caught up in this, theorizes that it was not

(01:16:35):
John Wayne's decision to stay out, but instead studio meddling
that kept him from testifying. In some cases, the heads
of the studios made deals with the committee not to
put a certain individual on the stand publicly. That was
true not only of so called suspects so what they
like to call the unfriendly witnesses, but also a friendly
witnesses that the studio didn't want to have tainted by
political publicity of any kind. Somebody like Wayne is a

(01:16:58):
good example. How are you going to get pole rushing
in to see him shooting down the apaches when they
start thinking of him as the guy wearing a suit
and tie and saying, what a great job all these
seventy year old politicians with their glasses and bow ties
are doing defending America. Mixed message, So, I mean money
is number one in his life at this point, and yeah,

(01:17:18):
you know, and obviously coward is not going into World
War two, but also potentially just wanting to keep making money.
It is also here's the thing, and this is gonna
sound weird, but it's kind of also a condemnation of
him that he doesn't testify in front of who act
because it shows he doesn't really believe Carrie Grant, who

(01:17:39):
again goes and fights in World War Two, also a
right wing ship head. Carrie Grant's studio goes, don't get
up and testify in front of who ak, it's going
to be bad for your image. But Carrie Grant, again,
this is not a good thing to do. But he
does believe it because he gets up and says fuck
you to the studio and testifies against his colleagues and stuff,
which is and again getting into like murky moral territory.

(01:18:02):
But I guess I'm saying it's more respectable to be
a right wing ship head who believes enough to hurt
your career by it than it is to only be
a right wing ship head when you think it's good
for your career. I guess that's where I'm landing here.
I feel you landing there. I I land more in
the like I'm glad he didn't snitch, And yeah, sure,
yes you needed into communism to fucking booster your career

(01:18:24):
and go speak at some brunches, But good for you.
Good and bad aren't as as meaningful. Here is just
the state that, like Carrie Grant was a guy who
believed in some things, John Wayne didn't. Right that that's
more because like obviously yes, it's good to not testify.
It just is a note of like, how kind of
empty he is? He's still punching women, guys don't. Don't

(01:18:47):
worry And I don't know Carry Grant probably right. I
don't know much about the guys still punching women. Maybe
not Jimmy Stewart, I don't. I want to believe he wouldn't,
But I don't know much about Jimmy Stewart. Um he
did different did was part of the bombing of Korea,
So I don't know. Some some mixed stuff there too.
Um So, yeah, it's weird as Scott, i'man rights. Being

(01:19:11):
seen as anti communist had real benefits for John Wayne
in the Blacklist years that followed quote and so the
Blacklist arab began. There would be more hearings in nineteen fifty.
The result was that dozens were jailed, hundreds lost their jobs,
hundreds more left the country, some died. Every motion picture
union from the Screen Actors Guild to the Screen Director's
Guild ultimately capitulated to the Blacklist. All this would be

(01:19:33):
called by one writer, echoing Daniel Dafoe, the Plague Years.
Dalton Trumbo had another name for it. The time of
the Toad. During this period, the right wing press regularly
ganged up on performers who had committed the terrible sin
of not serving in the military during World War Two.
The hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler accused Danny Kay of not
giving exactly his all during the war, and then added

(01:19:55):
the seasoning of anti Semitism by mentioning Kay's real name, Kaminsky.
Peglar neglected to mention that many conservatives hadn't served John
Wayne among them. By the way, don't come from my boy,
Danny Kay. Don't you fucking come from my boy Danny Kay,
Danny Kay Pegler? What the why are you pulling love God?
Pulling out the anti semitism for peace, for not going

(01:20:20):
and fighting in World War Two? Like what are you?
What are you talking about here? Yeah, it's it's awesome.
So again, and this is part of the point that
people will make is that by being super pro anti communist,
very right wing, he deflects a lot of criticism for
the fact that he doesn't do anything in the war. Yep, Um, well,

(01:20:41):
he gets the past because he's someone needs there Christian
masculine identity. I mean, that's like he's more of an emblem.
He's a symbol. Yeah yeah, he's like Batman, but worse,
a lot worse than bad. If Batman sees the bad
signals like uh, I gotta gotta sees the batstick. Delasi's
like cuddling with the teenager he trafficked into the United States,

(01:21:03):
and it's like, can someone else deal with that? Um
so with his colleagues blacklisted, John Wayne stars in an
increasing series of right wing films, including nineteen fifty two
Is Big Jim McClain, in which he played a heroic
Huac investigator. In nineteen fifty four, he was cast in
what would probably become the most shameful role of his career. Francesca,

(01:21:26):
are you ready for this? This is my favorite John
Wayne role. Genghis Khan. Hell yeah, just another white guy
taking an Asian actor's role. It's amazing. Somebody's like, who
are we going to get to pay Genghis Khan? You

(01:21:46):
know who looks like a Mongolian warlord? John Wayne? John
Wayne middle now kind of fat John Wayne. It's he
looks so silly in this. It's amazing. It's almost beyond parody.
How like racist this movie is. It's like, if you

(01:22:07):
were joking about racism in this period, you would like
make up John Wayne being Genghis Khan is like a gag.
But no, they really did it. Hell yeah they did.
Look at that Look at that mustache, those blue eyes. Unbelievable.
Everyone needs to look this up right now. And I
think we need to watch this high. Yeah, it's incredible that. Like,

(01:22:29):
obviously the most famous white guy who racistly plays an
Asian in this period is Mickey Rooney. But boy boy,
howdy is John Wayne nipping at his fucking heels in
terms of racist casting here? But also like Genghis is
the good guy? What because like n W, it's generally

(01:22:50):
the hero. It's more just that like he's impressive, right,
I think that's probably like I've I watched this years
ago as a kid, just because I heard about it. Like,
I think it's more of just like an historical epic.
You're not trying to like, I don't know. Um. Also,
here's another fun fact. The more the role was originally
written from Marlon Brando, Oh you would rather see Brando

(01:23:14):
is Genghis. Imagine Brando is Geges. This is so funny
to be that's really funny. I mean maybe old Brando,
like really old Brandon. I could see ye. Fat Brando
is gegus cot. Fat Brando not having to walk anywhere,
just being like a horse. You're just sitting on a
horse the whole time, not moving kill him, like I

(01:23:39):
get that, just stroking a long sort of spy white beard. Uh,
that might have made sense. This is documentary about the
making of The Isle of Dr Moreau, which is also
an incredible Marlon Brando documentary. Among other things, he decides
that his character is secretly a dolphin and wears a
bucket on his head the whole movie, but never explains

(01:24:00):
it to anyone. It fucking rules Marlon Brando's like late career.
Brando is the greatest Hollywood actor there has ever been. Yeah,
it's amazing. It's just like when everyone wants your career
to stay alive except for you. Yeah, it's very funny.
Nobody hated Hollywood more than Marlon Brando, a man who

(01:24:21):
only ever made his money as an actor. It's also
he's going to be the hero of well, one of
the heroes of our third episodes Good good Times Anyway.
The Conqueror. John Wayne as Genghis Khan not a good movie,
as this exerpt from the Guardians Film blog makes clear.
The film opens with Timushin as Genghis was originally known,
intercepting a wedding procession of markets. No, not merecats. The

(01:24:45):
market lord has a tartar bride or tie Jane Hayward,
but not for long. I feel this tartar woman is
for me. In tones, timushin my blood says, take her.
Few actors can make lines like this sound good, and
John Wayne wasn't one of them. Writer Oscar Millard wanted
to give the screenplay an archaic flourish, mindful of the
fact that my story was nothing more than a tarted

(01:25:06):
up Western I thought this would give it a certain
cash a and I left no lily unpainted, he said
in nine. It was a mistake I have never repeated.
Poor old John Wayne has to prance about saying things
things such as I greet you my mother, where normal
people would say hello mom. This might be why he
looks so miserable in every scene. You've got to do
something about these lines, he told Millard during filming. I

(01:25:27):
can't read them. It was too late. So one of
the worst movies of all time. Very cringe but Francesca,
here's the good part. Do you believe in karma? Uh?
A little bit, a little bit. This is this is
a very calmer moment because while they're filming this movie,

(01:25:48):
they're they're in like Nevada in the desert, like making
this thing because I guess that's our best equivalent to mongolia. Um.
While they're making this, they are a hundred miles away
from an attack mcbomb testing site. Uh. So they go
to the government They're like, hey, we got John Wayne
out here filming a movie. Is it safe to be
this close to nuclear bombs going off? And the Government's like, oh, absolutely, no,

(01:26:11):
you guys are fine. It's totally far away, not going
to be a problem, not gonna be a problem. So
it was a problem. The entire cast and crew of
The Conqueror get massive doses of radiation, like like they like,
they're right next to nuclear bombs going off for days,
you know, weeks as they film this. Don't worry, keep going,

(01:26:35):
it's gonna be good for the lighting. Yes, your burns
look incredible, honey, that's great. So what was the Union
doing at this point? Jesus, Yeah, it's been too gutted.
They can't complain about geting nuked, or they'll get called
out as being socialist. It's very funny that John Wayne

(01:26:56):
gets nuked by the US government and spoilers. It's what
kills him. That's extremely funny. It's the funniest thing that
could possibly have happened. He gets he gets fucking nuked
and irradiated while pretending to be Genghis Khan. That rules.
That's incredibly funny. That is kind of like the spirit
of Genghis Khan. It is Genghis Khan was smiling down

(01:27:17):
from heaven like, yes, this is what I want. That
is amazing. Wow, And so okay, how much radiation are
we talking a funkload? Francesca? Wait so again. Recently it's
become a story that like a bunch of Russian soldiers
probably got radiation set because they dug trenches in Chernobyl. Right, Chernobyl.

(01:27:37):
A lot of radiation also a lot less than there
was decades ago when it was new. These guys are
standing downwind of nuclear bombs as they go off, a
lot of radiation um the cast and crew of the Conqueror,
as well as a startling number of Americans like them.
Because the US government nukes a lot of Americans, citizen's.

(01:28:00):
They get known as down Winders in the decades to
come because they all get cancer. Um. By nineteen eighty one,
this is film in fifty four, By nine ninety six
of the two cast and crew on the set had
developed cancer. Forty six of them, including John Wayne, had died. Um.
It's pretty cool. Within what time period again, thirty years,

(01:28:25):
a little less than thirty years, half of them have
cancer and a quarter of them are dead from cancer. Um,
including John Wayne. He gets a couple of cancers right
first in nineteen sixty four, so ten years later it's
lung cancer. So maybe it was a smoking I'm sure
the nukes didn't help. He finally dies of like a
horrible stomach cancer. So he probably dies in part at

(01:28:48):
least as a result of getting nuked on the set
of The Conqueror. Of all the sets, you know what
I mean, it wasn't going to be a good one.
It had to be the Gang Khan. It is extremely fun,
though it is at least see. The one redeeming thing
I think about this is I don't it doesn't sound
like he did like a pigeon like accent, like some

(01:29:09):
sort of I don't mean stereotypical. I think he does. Ye,
so yeah, I guess that's better. I don't know that
I want to like I I don't certainly want to
be saying what's better or worse. It all seems pretty
rough to me. No, I think we all agree everyone
on that set deserve to get nooked. I mean that
was fine that this happened. It's totally fine. Um, good stuff. Um,

(01:29:34):
and that's gonna that's gonna be our part two. Francesco,
We're gonna have you back for part three, but for
right now, you want to plug your plug doblesh my god,
you guys check out the Bituation Room podcast. I promise. Well,
I don't know. Maybe we'll just watch Genghis Khan on
our next episode. We might, babe, who knows. I'm excited

(01:29:56):
for the third chapter and all the they find in
his stomach. Oh yeah, app all the meat in his guts.
All right, Well that's gonna do us uh and everyone else,
you know, until until next time. Uh stand directly next
to a nuclear blast while the government says it's fine.
Because you're John Wayne. You know the government is never

(01:30:16):
gonna lie to you. Oh my god, behind The Bastards
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