0:01

Oh boy, Welcome back,

0:03

Pardner to Behind the

0:06

Bastards the Cowboy podcast

0:10

talking about John Wayne who

0:12

is about to get his first he's just

0:15

had his first role on screen. Um,

0:18

and he's about to get his first cowboy

0:21

job. So he's

0:23

he's he's he gets on a gig

0:25

on a film as a as a prop

0:27

boy. Yet again with his dude role.

0:29

Walsh, this director and his apparently

0:32

the thing that gets him his first cowboy job

0:35

is Walsh catches a glimpse of Marian

0:37

while he's carrying furniture across the sound

0:40

stage. He's again he's huge and very

0:42

strong. So he has this like reputation for

0:44

people just like pick up a couch when that needs

0:46

to be moved and just like walk it as on

0:49

his own, like across the stage or something. And

0:51

so Roll sees this

0:53

big showed of a dude just kind

0:56

of man handling furniture. Um,

0:58

and he feels that like Marian has

1:01

a warm and wholesome expression on his face.

1:04

Uh. Quote. I stopped and watched. I

1:06

noticed the fine physique of the boy, his careless

1:08

strength and the grace of his movement. Um.

1:12

Now is this another forward situation

1:18

for sure? But are we grooming

1:20

hashtag Disney grooming. I

1:23

mean, I think what you've got here is

1:25

a dude whose job it is. Like any

1:27

director, this obviously

1:29

gets problematic a lot of the time, but as

1:31

a director you should be able to let you should

1:33

be looking and appreciating the way people

1:35

move and look. That is part of like your

1:37

gig is to be like, oh, I like the way

1:39

that motherfucker moves. Just appreciate the human

1:42

form. Yeah, there's a creepy

1:44

way for that, but in this case it doesn't seem to be

1:46

creepy. Although I should state John

1:49

Wayne's opinion is that this

1:51

is not the first time Walsh saw him

1:53

and decided like he looked good. John

1:56

Wayne's later opinion is that Walsh saw

1:58

him at a Fox Company nick when he was

2:00

super hungover and engaged in a

2:02

walking contest, which he barely

2:04

won because everybody was still pretty drunk. Um.

2:08

Whatever the case, why did

2:10

he always has to make these back stories of

2:12

like no, actually, like I beat him at arm wrestling.

2:14

That's how we first met. I checked his ass

2:16

and then you give me a part and I was like, this part sucks.

2:19

It is one of those things. He's a liar,

2:21

so I wouldn't be surprised about that, although I

2:24

don't feel like barely one a walking

2:26

contest while drunk is particularly

2:28

cool either. That's true. That's

2:30

true, so who knows. Um,

2:33

but his story is very much tall

2:36

privilege. You can't be a six

2:38

three brawny man hanging

2:40

around a film set is not

2:43

going to get noticed doing any of the same

2:45

stuff. No, um

2:47

he is. He is again like being a tall white

2:49

guy is the easy mode of life.

2:51

It is. There's so many things

2:54

you can you can get out of just by being

2:56

a tall white dude. It's incredible. Um.

2:59

So Marian he Walsh

3:02

is like, I like to look at this kid. I want to make him a Cowboys

3:04

star. Uh and he he puts

3:06

Marian through screen testing, which

3:08

is like where they put you on camera to decide if

3:10

you actually do look good on camera, and he does so

3:13

they cast him as the star of

3:15

of an upcoming film, um,

3:17

which more than doubles his pay overnight.

3:20

But it's clear, however, that he's

3:23

gonna need a new name. Marian Morrison

3:25

definitely not a cowboy actor name. Duke

3:28

is that's starlet name though, Like that's

3:30

a oh yeah, yeah, Marion

3:33

Morrison. Yeah, absolutely

3:35

a great leading female name, but

3:37

not not good for a cowboy

3:40

actor in the twenties. Still

3:42

not cutting in. They decide not. They

3:44

decide he needs an even better name than Duke Morrison,

3:47

and I'm gonna quote from Scott I'm in here. Roll

3:50

Walsh claimed that he came up with a name Wayne,

3:52

and that she Hand, who's another person

3:55

involved in the film's production, added John, but

3:57

Duke said that the whole thing was she Hands. I Sheehan

4:00

was a fan of Mad Anthony Wayne, the Revolutionary

4:03

War general, because he had been tough and a

4:05

nonconformist. The John seems

4:07

to have been an afterthought, but it worked. Gave

4:09

the two halves of the name the equivalence of two blocks

4:12

of granite that miraculously fit together.

4:15

And one of the things Wayne will later say

4:17

that I think it's true is that it kind of works as

4:19

a single thing you call him like John

4:21

Wayne is a single name on its own,

4:23

Like it's not something you split up in your head. And

4:26

that's part of why it's so it became so

4:28

iconic. Um

4:30

So obviously they picked this name for him, which

4:32

is I think objectively a good decision. You can't argue

4:35

with the results. Um,

4:38

Wayne John's not you'd

4:40

call him Wayne or John's, but you wouldn't call him

4:42

Wayne John's. Yeah, Wayne, Wayne

4:44

John fails. Wayne John can't lift

4:47

a couch. Terrible name. Absolutely

4:49

not. No, No, Wayne

4:51

John is not a chod John Wayne hardcore

4:54

chowed. I love I

4:57

love your interpret like your definition of chowed

4:59

because very different than I think

5:01

what my understanding of the word showed

5:03

is, which is like a short

5:07

dick I have I

5:09

have chosen, I have taken it from the show. I

5:11

think you should leave so as

5:14

I do every single thing I say. Look,

5:17

I love that. So Fox,

5:20

you know, they change this guy's name. Um,

5:22

and when they do their press releases and stuff. In the

5:24

movie he's going to be in the big trail. They

5:26

have to like come up with a backstory

5:29

for him, and they just lie all the time in these right,

5:31

Like they don't give a ship what your actual backstory is.

5:33

Fox is going to make up whatever it seems best. So

5:35

they decided to say that his birth name

5:37

was Wayne Morrison, which

5:40

for whatever reason sounded better for them than the truth.

5:43

Um, and John's fine with this. He doesn't

5:45

fight back. His museum states quote it was

5:47

okay with him. If the people paying his salary

5:49

wanted to spruce up his name, Um,

5:52

which is reasonable as a poor kid. If somebody's

5:54

like, hey, we can make you rich and famous, but you gotta

5:56

pick a different fuck it. I don't give a ship. Call

5:59

me whatever. You can call iced Tea, I don't. Yeah.

6:02

Yeah, so please take

6:04

that name away from she took the only good name

6:06

I had. Give a good name to my

6:08

fucking brother. But that's crazy that you're not only

6:10

invincing like a stage name, but you're like even

6:13

your given name is not tough

6:15

enough. You can't let people know you were

6:17

ever called Marian. You're not going to buy

6:19

that, absolutely not. So

6:22

the Big Trail is not a good

6:24

shoot. Uh, it's it's what

6:26

you might call a problem. Um,

6:28

I don't know, you know you You've you've been on

6:30

some sets, Francesca Um,

6:33

probably more than me, certainly more than may Im. And

6:35

I guess, uh so you tell me

6:37

how normal this all sounds. I mean

6:39

I've uggled them. Yeah, yeah, okay, I guess I've been

6:41

on like a set or two. What's up? Yeah?

6:44

So the cast and crew had to travel out to

6:46

Huma, Arizona, and Duke now

6:49

John Wayne shows up on set

6:51

drunk and he stays that way for days.

6:54

Um, he gets horrible diarrhea instantly,

6:57

he gets sick from the water and he can

6:59

barely function, and he's almost immediately like

7:01

both so sick that he can't walk

7:03

and still drinking. Um,

7:06

so this is his first start

7:08

and this is his first starring. Row shows

7:10

up hammered and then start shooting himself.

7:13

Amazing, incredible, unbelievable.

7:16

Is that where he gets his actual cowboy

7:18

walk known only the lead but sort of the wide

7:20

leg, like I just shot my past. I

7:23

don't want to smear this too much. Yeah.

7:28

Um so ironized Cody, the

7:31

Italian man who pretended to be a Native American

7:33

person, takes care of

7:35

John Wayne during this period when he's got deadly

7:38

diarrhea, and Jensen, the biographer

7:41

claims quote gave him various Indian

7:43

remedies for diarrhea. Now again,

7:45

iron eyed Cody not an indigenous

7:47

person, so God only knows. He's

7:49

just spoon feeding him. Basta. It

7:52

was just just a little molla.

7:56

He is a classic food of the planes.

8:00

Uppa settles the stomach

8:04

every time. It's

8:06

like, well that's some I don't

8:09

understand magic. But thank

8:12

you, Cody. He

8:15

just smacked him. Yeah,

8:18

he's literally just cooking a pizza and enough

8:20

and everybody's like, oh my god, look at his

8:22

hes. Not whiskey

8:27

is not a meal. Um.

8:32

So, after, in Cody's words,

8:34

quote, puking and crapping blood for a week,

8:37

the director of the film, Walsh, is

8:39

forced to shoot the movie around his

8:41

star, who was actively dying

8:43

at this point. He loses like eighteen

8:46

pounds in a couple of weeks. So again,

8:48

despite the fact that he is pooping himself

8:51

to death, he does not quit drinking

8:53

all day every day. Jensen writes

8:55

that this was partly a factor of him wanting

8:57

to show up all of the other drunk people on set.

9:00

Quote, he had to show these self important

9:02

actors that he was as manly as they were.

9:05

He drank like crazy, which prolonged his

9:07

dysentery. Nothing

9:10

more manly than shooting your pants on a

9:12

set. That is that is what shows

9:14

you're tough, pooping yourself

9:16

to death because you drink so much. I

9:18

mean, that's how Johnny Depp got into character for

9:20

Pirates of the Caribbeans. That is actually

9:22

accurate. Yes, um, it is also how Johnny

9:25

Depp got in the character for being Johnny

9:27

Depp. Yes, every

9:29

day, it's just rings and

9:32

shipping his pants. Yeah, exactly,

9:34

That's that's really all he needs. So

9:37

iron eyed Cody recalled that one

9:39

night the drinking got completely out of hand.

9:41

Uh, the Apaches hired to work on the film,

9:44

got really wasted and decided to attack

9:46

the settlers. Um. They raced

9:48

into location set on their horses,

9:50

drunkenly firing arrows into the wagons, the

9:53

town set, and even the tents in which some of the cast

9:55

and crew were sleeping. By the way, I

9:57

have no idea if any of these guys were actually Apache.

9:59

If they're just cast that way, it's probably a

10:01

mix. Like a lot of them are probably like Cody, just

10:03

like Italian dude, Like who knows, Um,

10:06

it is Hollywood in the twenties. Um.

10:08

So Cody wakes John

10:10

Wayne up to warn him that, like, hey, a

10:13

bunch of the crew were shooting arrows at other people.

10:15

Like it's kind of a big mess. As

10:17

it heads up, there's like an arrow fight going

10:19

on on set. Um,

10:21

And he sees that Duke is like too

10:24

drunk to like know what's going on.

10:26

So Cody sees these these actors

10:28

on horses coming and he decides, well,

10:31

I might as well join them. So he gets

10:33

on his horse and just start shooting arrows at the set

10:36

and apparently Duke just keeps lying down and drinking

10:38

the entire time. Um, so

10:40

that's fun. That sounds like a fun filming

10:42

set to do. Oh

10:45

the Golden years of Hollywood. Like this guy

10:47

can't even get up, No he's

10:49

not. Like half

10:52

the set is like drunk and pretending

10:54

to be indigenous and shooting arrows

10:56

at the other half of the set. Uh.

10:59

And then the star are is drunken, shifting

11:01

his pants on on the floor. Just

11:04

grown up cowboys and Indians. Yeah,

11:07

grown up seems like too strong a

11:09

term. Yeah. Um

11:12

it's a bunch of seven year olds with access to

11:14

liquor and real arrows. Yeah.

11:16

Yeah, So the studio is

11:18

not psyched with their big star. This is not

11:20

a great first performance. You know, even

11:22

in the thirties, you wanted a guy who, for

11:24

example, could hold off on the being an alcoholic

11:27

long enough to make the movie. Um.

11:30

Wayne does eventually dry out enough to become

11:33

functional, and it's because another

11:35

actor sits down to drink with him,

11:37

and instead of giving him normal whiskey gives him

11:39

what moonshine, basically peer

11:41

ever Clear, and so John

11:44

Wayne drinks like essentially hundred

11:46

and eighty proof Ever Clear with a stomach

11:48

bug, which makes him so sick that he

11:50

stops drinking for a while. Is

11:55

there anything alcohol can't do? You

11:57

just have the jangle keys in front

11:59

of face, but like yeah, like worse

12:01

alcohol for him. Yeah.

12:05

So the Big Trail flops not it

12:07

doesn't do super well. Although people

12:09

today will claim it was a really good movie. It

12:11

just isn't like a huge hit at the time kind

12:13

of is not seen as very

12:15

successful. But it's people will argue

12:17

it's it's a pretty good movie. Um, those

12:20

people are fucking lying. Like, I don't know, it

12:22

seems maybe it was good, Like who knows. I would

12:25

watch the behind the scenes once again, Sure

12:27

I would much Yeah, Like

12:30

like the documentary about the making of The Isle

12:32

of dr Moreau, Like I

12:34

haven't seen it, but believe it's

12:37

it's The director initial

12:39

director of the film was a wizard who went

12:41

crazy and got fired and decided

12:44

to live in the jungle and sneak onto set

12:46

in costume every day while they were trying to make

12:48

the movie. It's it's

12:50

fucking awesome. It's such a fun story.

12:54

Say it, okay, Um, can I just put

12:56

it? Didn't say that ironized Cody's real

12:58

name? Yeah? Well, Espera

13:01

Oscar DECORTI also

13:05

like a really effeminate name, Espada. Yeah,

13:09

so no wonder he and Marian got along. Um

13:12

no, it's it's very funny. I do like the image

13:15

of him like feeding lasagna to John

13:17

Wayne and pretending it's like an ancient Apache

13:19

remedy for I

13:21

can't figure out what he's doing, and

13:24

all of the other Italians and costume

13:26

are like, yeah, no, that's an ancient remedy.

13:30

Oh, Hollywood was pretty

13:32

racist. Um

13:36

still is so the Big Trail. You

13:39

know, it doesn't kill his career entirely,

13:41

because a lot of people do see it as a pretty decent movie.

13:43

Um, but it doesn't. It does, like poorly

13:46

enough that he spends most of the next decade

13:49

kind of just hanging in there as an actor. He's

13:51

he's moved up solidly from prop

13:53

Boy, but he's also kind of a side

13:55

character. He's like Ronald Reagan, right, he's

13:58

not unknown. But no in

14:00

this period really considers themselves a John

14:02

Wayne fan. You know, like they've

14:04

got a career. They're doing okay, but they're also

14:07

not like they're never like top build usually,

14:09

right, they're not they're not going to move a lot of butts

14:11

into seats. Um

14:14

and Westerns are pretty much

14:16

all this out there. Correct, There's

14:18

a lot. No, there's a lot of gangster movies. There's

14:20

a lot of romance flicks. There's some like war

14:23

pictures and stuff like. But westerns

14:25

are they're like the Marvel movies of the

14:27

day broadly speaking, right, Like they're the

14:29

most number one what tends to get

14:31

like not like they're kind

14:33

of the most consistent way people

14:35

are making a bunch of money. They're like superhero films

14:38

broader than Marvel because there's cheap ones

14:40

too, because you can make them pretty cheap sometimes.

14:42

And this is the Fast and the Furious franchise.

14:45

Yeah, I

14:47

don't know, right, Like in these

14:51

are a lot of your action films, right, this is what

14:53

puts butts in seats. These are the popcorn flicks.

14:56

Right. And John Wayne kind of for a decade

14:58

is sort of a side character and those sort

15:00

of movies. Right, He's rarely gonna be a

15:02

particularly big because he's not a big draw.

15:05

You know. This changes in nineteen

15:07

thirty nine when John gets finally

15:10

cast in a john Ford Cowboy

15:12

film called Stagecoach. If

15:15

you have ever whenever you are watching

15:17

like a movie or a TV show that

15:19

mentions John Wayne or cowboy movies,

15:22

you will see the same clip from the movie

15:24

Stage Coach. And it is John Wayne with

15:27

a lever action gun that he flips

15:29

over and over in his hand as he fires

15:31

while walking onto screen, and it like

15:33

slowly zooms on in us face. It

15:36

is one of the most iconic scenes in

15:38

Western cinema. Among other

15:40

things, it's entirely why

15:42

Terminator to the action

15:44

scenes initially are shot the way. It's why

15:47

Arnold in that movie gets a lever action shotgun

15:49

that he can flip around and fire. It's

15:51

this really iconic moment that makes

15:54

its way into a bunch of modern pop culture

15:56

right um, And that is the moment,

15:58

that moment when John Wayne walks on scene

16:01

in Stagecoach that makes him

16:03

as a star. And I'm gonna

16:05

quote from a BuzzFeed right up by Anna

16:07

Helen Peterson. Stagecoach

16:10

was intended as an ensemble picture. Wayne doesn't

16:12

even show up until fifteen minutes into the film,

16:15

but When he does, It's with a Heroes intro. Wayne

16:17

twirls his rifle as if it were a pistol

16:20

as the camera zooms into a glorious close

16:22

up of Wayne's face. It's become one of the

16:24

most iconic scenes in classic cinema,

16:26

and Wayne's way out of Quickie Western purgatory.

16:29

Gradually, Wayne became something of a leading

16:31

man. He was in Ford's next picture, The Long

16:33

Voyage Home as a Swedish fisherman, and

16:35

played a Navy officer opposite Marlene

16:37

Dietrich in Seven Centers. Wayne's

16:39

westernness was treated as a matter of fact. He

16:41

was, in photoplays words, the typical

16:43

Western American, open faced and open

16:46

minded, but the press also emphasized

16:48

that he enjoyed the finer things. Wayne dressed

16:50

with meticulous care like any well capped

16:52

businessman, looks divine and tucks

16:54

her tails, and doesn't wean a guitar or sing

16:57

sad pieces about Western skies either.

16:59

He lived in an exquisitely furnished home and the

17:01

swinkiest section of Hollywood, and has no yin

17:04

for horses off screen, so

17:06

he becomes huge after

17:09

this right stagecoach makes him into a

17:11

leading man and he kind of immediately

17:13

takes off in Hollywood. Part of it is that he's been

17:15

in film twenty years at this point, he's

17:18

in his he's like forty, Um,

17:20

he's old enough to get he's one of these guys

17:22

who doesn't look right until he gets kind of grizzled.

17:25

Um. And so he gets very

17:28

popular for that. And he doesn't just get cast

17:30

as the stead in westerns um.

17:32

And he's kind of the first cowboy

17:35

actor who's more actor than cowboy,

17:37

because the previous generation, guys

17:39

like John Mix, are real cowboys,

17:42

you know, like that's how they learned. Wayne

17:47

isn't really like he's he's got some

17:49

of that in his background, right, Like he has some

17:51

claim to it, but it's he's kind of you

17:53

know, he's a fancy dandy boy. You know, he

17:55

wants to he's just having a good time being

17:57

a rich guy. Yeah, and and he grew up

17:59

poor, so it's like, yeah, he's

18:01

gonna want to not

18:03

ride a horse to a crop set right.

18:06

Right. It's often framed as like he hated horses, and he's

18:08

like, no, he just had to do that as a kid. He probably

18:10

doesn't want to do it anymore. Like he's too

18:12

many horses. But that's really interesting that

18:15

like it takes especially in the Westerns,

18:17

and maybe in this time that like

18:19

having an older hero was

18:22

much more compelling than like, you

18:25

know, you know, the Tom Hollins of today,

18:27

like a little baby face Spider Man. You're

18:29

like, no, you want a grizzled

18:32

guy was killed many, many, many

18:34

people. You want a guy who's like, looks

18:36

like he's kind of seen some ship, who can who

18:39

can play that off a little bit, And

18:41

he doesn't. Even this isn't really the height of his

18:43

career because he's still kind of young at this point.

18:46

Um, but yeah, this is the first time he

18:48

gets his big snakes. He's old

18:50

enough to you know, to look like

18:52

he's been through some stuff. Um.

18:55

Now, there's one last PostScript to the story

18:57

of Stagecoach. While it ignited John

18:59

Wayne's career, by nineteen thirty nine, Tom

19:01

Fix was largely out of work and desperate

19:03

for a good job. He asked John

19:05

Ford for a part on Stage Coach, and

19:08

Mix would allege until his death that John

19:10

Wayne begged Ford not to give Mixed

19:12

the part, sabotaged the guy who

19:14

got him his first job, right, real

19:17

piece of shit, you know, I

19:19

know you're gonna

19:21

get like, oh my god, that's crazy. Yeah, because it was

19:23

supposed to be an ensemble cast or it is an ensemble

19:26

cast everybody.

19:29

Yeah, But you know, if if Mixes in there, maybe

19:32

that's gonna take some shine away from John Wayne.

19:34

He's not gonna because mix is a better

19:36

cowboy actor. Maybe

19:38

that's gonna funk with John

19:41

Wayne's ability to, uh,

19:44

you know shine on set right

19:47

now? Does he learn anything in these in

19:49

these years? Like is he a better alcoholic?

19:52

Number one? He's an incredible alcohol

19:54

You gotta give him credit for that. The King like

19:57

really, honestly, this is a separate

19:59

story. But and I do my podcast on the heroes

20:01

of drunk driving. He's one of the most influential

20:04

drunk drivers they're ever really invented

20:06

a lot of modern drunk driving techniques,

20:09

holding a beer in between his legs, uh,

20:12

screaming at his wife drunkenly from

20:14

in the back seat while he drives, like all of those

20:17

John Wayne originals in the closet

20:19

when nobody

20:21

could piss in a closet like John

20:23

Wayne. Absolutely not. You

20:29

know what else is oscar worthy? These

20:31

ads? And

20:39

we're back, uh, and the Oscar

20:41

for best, ad goes to the

20:44

one about how Mattresses

20:48

no longer uses

20:51

rare earth minerals mind by

20:54

slave labor in the congo to make their beds.

20:56

Not anymore, not anymore. Yeah,

20:58

that was back in That was back

21:00

in the seventeen hundreds when Mattress

21:03

was better known as the East India Trading

21:05

Company. Um, they've moved

21:08

on now they just ship people mattresses. It's

21:10

fine, We've

21:13

forgiven them. Yeah, you

21:15

need to forgive them too. That's the message

21:17

of our Oscar winning Mattress

21:19

ad. So in

21:21

the Ford films Seven Centers, John

21:23

Wayne played opposite Marlena Dietrich

21:25

and she's the real actress

21:28

who inspired the fictional Bridget

21:30

von hammers Mark and Inglorious Bastards.

21:32

So in that movie, she is the German

21:35

actress that Quentin Tarantino insisted

21:37

on strangling on camera for very unclear

21:39

reasons. Um or

21:41

maybe not so unclear reasons. I don't I'm

21:44

not enough of an expert on that. But it's weird, right,

21:46

we gotta agree, it's weird. It's kind of uncomfortable

21:49

that he did that. Yeah,

21:51

yeah, I'm remembering that. That's in the Yes,

21:54

yes, yes, it's like the Yeah he wanted it

21:56

to be his hands on on camera that strangled

21:59

her. Very weird. Um,

22:01

but your feet

22:06

fucking Quintin Tarantino.

22:09

So, Um, she's the real actress

22:12

that that lady is based off of. She's quite

22:14

a star, one of the most famous leading

22:16

ladies ever and certainly in this period.

22:19

Um, kind of top of the fucking female

22:22

you know, actor food chain. Um.

22:25

Now, in real life, Wayne and Dietrich

22:27

started hooking up immediately. Um,

22:30

she is way more experienced than

22:32

him. Um she oh

22:34

yeah, yeah, she is Marlen di

22:37

Dietrich, and he is is an awkward

22:40

boy who spends most of his time drunk with a bunch

22:42

of dudes on a yacht. Um.

22:44

So one of the things that like he obviously

22:47

he gets super into this thing. He's also kind

22:49

of insecure with her and around her

22:51

because she's more experienced than him and more

22:53

famous than him. Um, so a few

22:55

things are going on here. This is kind of a complex

22:58

relationship, although I think from marline she

23:00

just likes fucking hot actors.

23:02

You know, he's the one who starts developing

23:05

some complexes around this. Hey boy,

23:07

boy, lift that couch over there.

23:10

Yeah, Oh absolutely, hang

23:12

on, Let me, pour some oil on your back. Keep

23:15

doing that. No, no, I

23:17

didn't say come yet. So

23:22

obviously he's still married to Josie

23:24

at this point. His his wife, of course, when

23:27

they get married, when and his gife getting married,

23:29

Like their friends from the beginning are like, well, this isn't

23:32

going to last. He is incapable

23:34

of not cheating on you constantly, and you are super

23:36

catholic now heartbreaking, Lee.

23:38

Josie adores her husband. Um,

23:41

John mostly seems to be distracted and frustrated

23:43

by her. She feels like his acting

23:46

like her attitude is I just gotta put up

23:48

with this for a little while. Nobody is in acting

23:50

very long. Eventually it'll he'll

23:52

get too old. It'll be a short feeling for him,

23:55

um, and then he'll figure out something more serious

23:57

to do with his life. Um John

24:00

Wayne kind of views his wife and children the same

24:02

way, right, even

24:06

my whole thing, you know. Um.

24:09

So, he would later complain to friends that he and

24:11

Josie only had sex four times during

24:13

their marriage. Fucking probably

24:16

a lie, but like a gross one. So

24:18

mean dude,

24:21

Um, he's just so angry that like,

24:23

what does that say about you two? Like

24:25

that's obviously doesn't look

24:28

good on you, bron. Maybe she

24:30

would want to suck you more if she didn't feel like

24:32

you were sucking every single other person in town

24:34

because she's not into that ship. Like, maybe maybe

24:36

your behavior is having an impact on the things you

24:38

don't like about your marriage. John Wayne, He's

24:41

not going to into my wife, you

24:43

know what I'm saying, Like those kids four

24:46

nuts. Honestly, that was it, in

24:49

and out, five pomps, four nuts.

24:51

I mean really not

24:54

even that hot, Like my wife's not as hot

24:56

as Marlen. Wow, you are just

24:58

quoting directly from his o biography.

25:01

The story of It showed the

25:03

tale of John Way. Uh

25:06

so he's initially, some people

25:08

will say, was kind of morally conflicted about

25:10

all the sleeping around he was doing. But

25:13

by the time he's an actual star, it becomes

25:15

just like totally Uh

25:19

it becomes just like so routine to him

25:21

that he stops trying to hide it. So

25:24

everyone in Hollywood knows that John

25:26

Wayne and Marlene Dietrich are sleeping with

25:28

each other. Um they do not even

25:31

like they They're out in public together at events

25:33

while Josie is eight months pregnant, which

25:37

doesn't do She's not happy you know that's

25:39

not great. That's not a great position to put someone

25:42

in. Um.

25:44

So she confronts him over it. But she's also

25:46

too Catholic to divorce him, right, Like,

25:48

you don't do that. So she's yeah,

25:51

it's it's growny um

25:53

like his parents got divorced. Yeah, because

25:56

pars and he it's interesting years earlier or

25:58

whatever that he doesn't push divorce

26:00

U because he could have. And Jensen,

26:03

one of his biographers, suspects that

26:05

this is because he's still too possessive

26:07

and insecure about her. Um. And

26:09

I'm gonna he's actually the piece of ship in the relationship.

26:11

Oh for sure, Absolutely,

26:14

he's the piece of ship in this relationship. I

26:16

don't know much about Josie, but I know that John

26:18

Wayne is the bad guy in this relationship.

26:21

Um. I'm going to read a quote about him

26:23

as a as a husband and a father from

26:26

from Jensen's book. He demanded

26:28

his children profess their love to him on a daily basis.

26:31

Barely Able to sleep, Duke awoke every day

26:33

before dawn and demanded the entire house rise

26:35

with him, even if it was a day off for family

26:38

and friends. He had a litany of rules based upon

26:40

superstitions, which were a result of the childhood

26:42

of poverty and emotional abuse by his mother.

26:45

Ever, convinced that he was destined for ruined,

26:47

Duke consisted that the superstitions be followed

26:49

or his life would collapse into abject failure.

26:52

So he he he

26:54

makes bizarre rules for his family. He

26:57

screams at them if they put hats on beds.

26:59

Can't do that around John. If you

27:02

if you spill salt, you have to toss it over

27:04

your shoulder, which is not an uncommon thing

27:06

in this day. Umbrella's can only

27:08

be opened outside. No one can

27:10

hand him a salt shaker. You don't

27:12

hand John Wayne a salt shaker. You

27:16

know what's really funny about that is that I

27:20

like, I lived in Latin America for a while and

27:23

the same thing, Like I mean, just

27:25

the superstistent you put the salt on the

27:27

table, then you can pick it up. Yeah,

27:29

there's like a lot like this is not he didn't

27:32

invent this. It's not like only to him. Maybe

27:34

the no hats on beds thing. I haven't heard that before.

27:36

That's kind of weird. But is he like, you know, you

27:39

know, look me in the eyes when we toast

27:41

otherwise seven years bad luck. You

27:43

know that one's true? Yea, like

27:45

seven years of bad sex or whatever it is, even

27:48

though I've only done it with your mom four times,

27:50

four times at the dinner

27:53

table after screaming about salt. Uh.

27:58

But what does it mean, professor? Love like

28:00

just every day. Yeah, you gotta tell dad

28:02

that he's a good dad before he goes out to

28:04

fun Marlene Dietrich on

28:07

Rodeo drive out in public. He

28:10

doesn't start it like it can't be him to say

28:12

I love you first. That is unclear.

28:15

But he does not strike me as I say I love

28:17

you first kind of dude. I don't know. Maybe so.

28:20

Uh. He's also like this around his friends.

28:22

He's got these card playing buddies that he plays

28:25

cards with, and if somebody sets a card on the table

28:27

face up by accident, they have to get

28:29

up and circle their chair three times in

28:31

order to avoid bad luck. Um.

28:33

So he's you know again, this is not

28:35

I think people might be I want

28:38

to say, this is like O C. D. I don't know. Maybe I'm

28:40

not going to diagnose him, but these are all like superstitions

28:43

that exist at the time, and he's just this

28:45

is not an uncommon thing with people who like grow

28:47

up in desperate situations where they get

28:49

super paranoid about not

28:52

wanting to do anything that can make ship go wrong

28:54

for them, because they understand how fragile successes

28:57

um and how shitty it is when you're dirt poor.

29:00

I get it, you know, not that it's good, but I understand

29:02

what's going on in his head here. I think. So

29:05

while he's keeping a tight eye on his wife and kids,

29:07

he escalates his relationship with Dietrich. She

29:10

later claimed that she more or less directed

29:12

their affair as the more experienced partner.

29:15

Quote what pleased me most was he wasn't

29:17

vain or arrogant, Far from it. He was

29:19

insecure as an actor, worried about his talent

29:22

or what he felt was a lack of it. As a man.

29:24

He was a little insecure and vulnerable. I

29:26

was able to help in both respects. We

29:28

had a small affair, a small friendship, which

29:30

we both enjoyed. Now that's

29:32

to her again, marleya Dietrich, huge star.

29:36

Uh. He it's a bigger thing

29:38

for him, and it's definitely a bigger

29:40

thing for his wife, for whom this is devastating,

29:42

right, Mereley just like, yeah, you know is he was

29:44

he was young. He needed somebody to show him the ropes

29:46

and like make him feel better about himself. I did that. It's

29:48

whatever. Then I wanted Yeah,

29:52

yeah, I enjoyed that he didn't

29:55

know how to talk back to me. Yeah.

29:58

I was a little wife. How

30:00

cute months pregnant,

30:02

she's fat four children?

30:04

Yes, but

30:07

that's really interesting that. I

30:10

mean it might I'm curious to

30:12

how this ends because I feel like it's

30:15

foreboding, like she clearly

30:17

he was clearly obsessed with Well,

30:21

that's an interesting part here. So John

30:24

Wayne was actually in Mexico partying with

30:26

Dietrich while his wife Josie delivers

30:28

their fourth child and second daughter, Melinda

30:31

Um. So their

30:33

relationship continued for some time, and while

30:35

Wayne definitely got along better

30:38

with Dietrich than he did with his wife, it

30:40

was also a tempestuous relationship.

30:42

And I'm going to read a real rough quote

30:44

from the true life of John Wayne here. Duke

30:47

handled her the way he handled every woman

30:49

in his life. When she provoked him, he

30:51

punched her, and it didn't matter if it was in public.

30:54

On location for the Spoilers in Lake Arrowhead,

30:57

California, Duke and Marlene were rehearsing

30:59

a scene for the film. Duke suggested

31:02

one way to play the scene, and Marlen suggested

31:04

another. Duke pressed his point and Marlene

31:06

finally shot back, that's a dumb idea.

31:09

Duke's face turned to stone and his eyes

31:11

burned with suppressed rage. As the

31:13

camera was about to roll, Duke angrily retied

31:16

his bandanna, which he'd loosened between takes.

31:19

Uh. Duke tied a bigger than normal not and

31:21

Marlen saw it and told him, you don't

31:23

even know how to tie a bandana. Suddenly,

31:25

Duke exploded. He swung a huge

31:28

fist in a roundhouse right and hit Marlen right

31:30

in the face. She went flying, landing

31:32

hard in the rough dirt. Marlene lay

31:34

sprawled on the ground for a moment, gathering

31:37

her senses. She didn't cry

31:40

now, no, no, she was

31:42

on the ground and straight up. When

31:44

she came to she lit a cigarette. That's well,

31:47

it's actually more uncomfortable

31:49

than that, Francesca, because according

31:52

to Jensen, whose source here is

31:54

the actress Margaret Lindsay, who is there

31:56

on set when this happens, she looks

31:59

up at him with a tense arousal, gets

32:01

up and gives him what is described by this other

32:04

actress as a love punch, and then they start making

32:06

out. So I don't know, I

32:08

don't know. I don't know what you want to do with this information?

32:10

How do you want to parse that all out? But that's

32:13

what someone else who was there says, went down.

32:16

I've been waiting for you to do that since the moment

32:18

I met you. He

32:23

will, he will be repeatedly physically abusive

32:25

to people, to women specifically,

32:27

throughout his life. It is unclear

32:30

to me if that's what's going on here or

32:32

if they just had kind of a thing where

32:34

that I don't I really don't know, Like

32:36

I don't know what's going on with these two. Um.

32:40

I mean it's interesting though, because

32:42

she as even though she did that, you got

32:44

to think about being a star

32:47

like her in that time you're

32:49

on set, this guy who you're sleeping with,

32:51

who's younger, more inexperienced,

32:54

hits you. What are you gonna do, like

32:56

cry or be mad wherever that shows

32:58

so much vulne ability, You're

33:00

gonna get up and be like, No, I liked it. It's exactly

33:03

whatever. You know. That

33:06

is much more a position of strength when you've got

33:08

to protect your image, that's right,

33:10

right, And that's a huge, probably part

33:12

of what's like. I I mean, I don't know these people obviously,

33:15

Um, but that seems really plausible to

33:17

me. Um yeah, fucking

33:20

embarrassing otherwise. And again,

33:22

a number of people through the years and other circumstances

33:25

see John Wayne hit women in public, like

33:28

with his fists. Not that like a slap

33:30

is okay either, but like specifically like

33:32

punching them. Um, it's just like

33:35

a thing John Wayne does, like

33:37

his, like his, like his mentor John Ford.

33:39

Um, cool dudes,

33:42

learned it from the best. So yeah,

33:45

it is also Yeah, so Duke's relationship

33:48

with Marlene fell apart for the same reason so many

33:50

of his relationships did. He started fucking

33:52

a teenage girl in Mexico. Um

33:55

yeah, so that's why this doesn't work out.

33:57

She may have been working as a prostitute

34:00

it at the time. Her exact background

34:03

is kind of unclear. Some sources will say her

34:05

mother ran a brothel that was very popular

34:07

with the actors and that's where John

34:09

Wayne meets her. Um, but we

34:12

know that he definitely at age

34:14

thirty four. I think starts

34:16

fucking at the oldest She's

34:18

like seventeen at this point. Um.

34:21

Her name is Esperanza Bauer.

34:23

She goes by Chatta. UM.

34:26

Biographer Randy Roberts writes in

34:28

his book John Wayne American Quote,

34:31

Chata's life before nineteen forty one is a mystery.

34:33

She was never accepted in Hollywood, and rumors

34:35

circulated at the time that she met John Wayne

34:38

that she was working as a high priced call girl

34:40

and a bit actress in the Mexican film industry.

34:43

Pillar Wayne later wrote that Chatta was

34:45

born in the slums of Mexico City and became

34:47

a prostitute to escape poverty. Others

34:49

said that when Chatta and Duke met, she was married

34:51

to a Mexican student named Eugenio Morrison.

34:54

We really don't know what her

34:57

background is, but we know she is a

35:00

teenager and possibly a sex

35:02

worker. Hard to

35:04

say, Um, Roberts.

35:07

Chata, Yeah, and maybe

35:09

even the worst, which is not a sex

35:11

worker but the daughter of something a

35:13

traffic was not

35:15

actually working. And then it's

35:18

hard. Yeah, we

35:20

really do not know the precise details

35:23

here other than that it's for sure gross, right,

35:25

it's for sure gross. It's for sure bad

35:28

stuff. Um, it's just the exact

35:30

dimensions of like what precisely was

35:32

going on is kind of unclear, but it's for

35:34

sure bad. And I should note here that like

35:37

Roberts's book is way classier

35:39

and it's description of Chata the Jensen's

35:41

book. Sure, it's called What

35:43

American John Made American?

35:46

Well gee, I mean because Jensen is like the

35:48

most negative book about John Wayne. But it's also

35:51

written by a dude who was writing at

35:53

least in a pretty gross time, and I think was kind

35:55

of gross himself because he describes Chata as

35:57

quote, an underaged prostitute

35:59

with a spoking body and amazing good

36:01

looks. I

36:04

call the ship Jensen what the funk, dude?

36:06

And that's her biography. If you are

36:08

describing someone as an underaged prostitute,

36:11

the whatever comes next should never include

36:14

the phrase smoking body. Never you

36:17

have just stated you're talking about a

36:19

child. Richard Jensen, God,

36:25

what a again?

36:27

John Wayne biographer is probably only

36:29

moderately less terrible than John Wayne.

36:32

No exactly, he's only a few gradations

36:35

better on the me too creep predator

36:37

scale. And again, I also I am

36:39

unclear as to how much we should like. There's

36:42

a lot of people who are arguing someone's underage,

36:44

you should always say sex trafficking

36:46

victim rather than prostitute.

36:49

But also, this is a real different

36:51

time, and I don't know the extent

36:53

to which she has agency in

36:56

her life, and seventeen is means

36:58

a different thing in nineteen thirty nine than it

37:00

does today in some ways, Like I have no

37:02

idea what's going on. I have no idea whether she's

37:05

a victim of her mom or if she is

37:07

pursuing a rich guy to get out of like

37:10

Mexico and into the United States, and like

37:12

like, who, I don't know, what's I mean from brothel

37:15

to Hollywood, Like I'll take the

37:17

deal. Because she's also trying to get

37:19

a career in Hollywood, which John Wayne attempts

37:22

to help her with. So like, there's there's stuff going

37:24

on here. It's certainly horrific

37:27

behavior on John Wayne's part, you

37:29

know what I mean? John Wayne falls in love.

37:32

He says, um, he will

37:34

for years call her his true love

37:36

even after they have split up. And he

37:38

punches Oh, he punches her a lot.

37:41

He punches her a lot. Um,

37:44

So whatever is going on

37:46

in her background, Wayne falls in love immediately

37:48

He moves her to California, where he has

37:51

her tell people she's twenty four years

37:53

old. Um, so he knows

37:55

this is again we just said, like

37:57

these are somewhat different times and some

37:59

of this stuff is viewed differently. But

38:01

john Wayne knows this is gross enough that he

38:03

has to age her up, you know, Like,

38:06

so again that different yeah

38:08

even for Hollywood people like that's kind

38:10

of young John. Um,

38:15

he starts trying one of the things that's

38:17

important to him. And again, we don't

38:19

know how much it is that she wanted a career

38:21

in movies. There's an argument to be made that

38:23

he wanted her to be seen as having

38:25

a career, so it doesn't look like

38:28

he just trafficked a girl from Mexico into

38:30

Hollywood. Um.

38:33

So, whatever is going on here again?

38:35

Super messy? Uh, super messed

38:38

up. Um. Marlena Dietrich when

38:40

she finds out that what he's doing

38:42

that he's that he set this girl

38:45

up with an apartment in Hollywood and brought her into

38:47

the country, she dumps him. She's like, no,

38:49

no, no, like that's that's fucking weird.

38:52

John So,

38:55

Um, I don't know. Good for Marlene. I

38:57

guess she's fine.

39:00

He's still married to Josie at this point though, and

39:03

if she wasn't happy with Marlene Dietrich,

39:05

she's really not happy with with this. Um

39:09

not psyched about what what John is

39:11

doing. Um. Now her parents are both high society

39:13

Catholics, and so he's called

39:15

upon regularly to show up at events and functions.

39:18

Um. And you know he's surly

39:20

because he'd rather be fucking someone who

39:23

is at the oldest now nineteen, right,

39:25

they've been together a couple of points, So

39:28

he just acts like a jick the

39:30

parties. He's goes the events

39:32

to cruise for like young Catholic girls. He

39:34

goes to the events so that everyone knows how much

39:36

he doesn't want to be there, Like he sulks

39:38

because he'd rather be with his like teenage mistress

39:41

in the apartment that he makes the studio

39:43

pay for her in Hollywood. Um. One

39:45

of the family friends was like and they

39:48

did. Um. Yeah, So

39:50

he's like, not only is he cheating on his

39:52

wife with a teenager, but he has to

39:54

like make sure everybody knows how unfair he

39:56

thinks it is that he has to show up at parties where

39:58

adults are Um.

40:00

Cool guy, John Wayne, Um,

40:03

what a dude. So Hollywood

40:07

is helping bank roll sort of the because

40:09

he's too big of a cash cow for

40:11

them to like making them a

40:13

lot of money. Yeah, this is the early

40:16

forties. He moves chat at

40:18

a Hollywood in the spring of forty three. Some

40:20

will argue that it was like part

40:22

of what he was doing by having the studio pay

40:24

for her apartment and pay for her to like they

40:27

would give her like money every month, that it was partly

40:29

like a tax dodge, like that's how he

40:31

received some of his salaries so that it wasn't

40:33

taxed. I don't know how to evaluate the

40:35

truth of that, but it does sound like some movie

40:37

star shit, like not only

40:39

are you like keeping a secret teenage

40:41

mistress, but you're doing it as a tax dodge,

40:44

you know, like everyone's on

40:46

board. Yeah, that's that does sound

40:48

very Hollywood and in the nows

40:50

too, like that's not just a forties thing. Um.

40:54

So the two start seeing each other probably

40:56

in forty one. I think like forty three is when she moves

40:59

to Hollywood. That it's also the year one

41:01

that the United States, helped long by our buddies

41:04

in Japan, decides to give this whole World

41:06

War two thing a try, right, Um,

41:08

So this is our big old patriotic

41:10

war. Right, every everybody's got to go volunteer

41:13

to fight. It is all but unthinkable

41:15

for young leading men in the prime of their life

41:17

action movie stars. Right, You've got this

41:19

war where absolutely every man who

41:21

can is doing something. It's

41:23

considered obscene by a lot of people

41:25

that somebody capable of doing action

41:28

like in the film, somebody like being a war

41:30

hero in movies, wouldn't go volunteer

41:32

to fight to serve in some way, Right. Jimmy

41:35

Stewart tries to join the Army. He

41:38

gets rejected as being under He has just

41:40

one, like, I think, an Academy award. This is right after

41:42

It's a wonderful life. He's one of the biggest

41:44

stars in the world. He gets rejected for being underweight,

41:47

so he hires a personal trainer

41:49

so he can bulke up, and he joins

41:51

the Army Air Corps and he flies twenty

41:54

bomber missions over Europe, like the

41:56

most one of the most dangerous jobs

41:58

of the entire wars. You me, Stewart. He retires

42:01

as a general, didn't,

42:04

Yeah, Jimmy Stewart bombs

42:06

like Europe repeatedly, Like he

42:09

has an incredibly dangerous job.

42:11

They didn't need all those bombs some

42:14

of them, yes, but

42:16

yeah, but it's also like, undeniably,

42:19

as one of the biggest stars in the world, he takes a job

42:21

where like a huge percentage of men who

42:23

do that job die doing it, like

42:25

it is incredibly dangerous um

42:28

And there's a lot of famous actors

42:30

who do similar things. Clark Gable, who

42:32

was over forty at the point and was old enough

42:34

that he could have gotten out of serving, joins

42:37

the Air Force. Some will say he was suicidal because

42:39

his wife had just died, but he flew. He

42:41

also flies bomber missions. As an aerial

42:43

gunner. Gable is like crammed into

42:45

a gun in the belly of a bomber, like

42:47

shooting at fighter planes. So even

42:49

though it's not like all these movie

42:51

stars you know, were once action

42:54

heroes or the detectives or in

42:56

real life, they become them because it's sort

42:58

of still seen as you

43:00

know, you know, serving your country and

43:02

your role model. Even though like some

43:05

a lot of these guys go on to be politically problematic,

43:07

but they're all human enough to look at the

43:09

Nazis and be like, I should we probably do something about

43:11

that, where we probably got to do something

43:13

about that, right, right, right, or

43:16

just even even like the idea

43:18

that you would attempt to physically train

43:20

to be able to like like Jimmy could have

43:22

just like you know, tried to put on I

43:25

just can't do it, you know, off

43:27

yet he

43:30

committed Oh my god, that

43:32

yeah, alright. So and Henry

43:35

Fonda, who could have gotten out

43:37

of the service because he had three kids and

43:39

initially they weren't drafting like Father's

43:41

right, they were trying to keep families together. They were mainly

43:44

drafting singleman. Fonda could have gotten

43:46

a deferment. Instead, he enlists in the Army

43:48

Air Corps and again, like serves his country

43:50

at war. Now, a lot of big

43:52

stars did not join the military.

43:54

Gary Cooper doesn't join, Bing Crosby,

43:56

James Cagney. But they're also way

43:59

over forty I think at this point, like they're old enough

44:01

that like, well I just can't you know, I'm an

44:03

old man. I'm just gonna slow everybody down, right, which

44:05

fair enough. You probably shouldn't be getting

44:08

into that stuff. If you're Bing Crosby and

44:10

you have been chain smoking cigarettes since age

44:12

eight, you might not be helpful. Um,

44:16

But John Wayne was young enough to serve.

44:18

He's in his mid thirties at this point, right, he is the prime

44:21

of his life. He is a big strong man. Initially

44:24

though, he qualifies for a deferment, and he

44:26

gets a deferment because he has a wife and kids.

44:28

Right, I got six kids.

44:31

Keep saying, good old, good old Josie. I

44:34

gotta stay with Josie and the kids. You

44:36

know, I gotta keep him. I gotta keep him, you

44:38

know, I gotta. I want to go out there and fight

44:40

the crowds. Don't get me wrong, but this

44:42

family. I'm so dedicated to my family.

44:45

I've got yeah,

44:47

yeah, I've got a wife to sleep around on. I

44:49

have kids to ignore. Um.

44:54

So he gets a deferment um, and

44:57

his studio uses his family as an

44:59

excuse for the fat that he's not serving with because

45:01

the press asked, right, John Wayne's a big

45:03

star, He's not what what are you doing in the war?

45:05

John Wayne? That everyone else is a part of um.

45:08

This exerpt from an article in Modern Screen

45:11

is a good example of how they justified this quote.

45:13

A man of thirty five heading to a family of six

45:15

has to think twice before leaving. Just the

45:18

same, Big John Wayne is restless because,

45:20

like I said, he's a man's man who thinks straight

45:22

and believes in action. It's a dilemma for a

45:24

family man and an American gentleman who

45:26

wants to make a personal appearance in the big

45:28

scrap. So that's how they frame it

45:30

as, like, Oh, he really wants to get in there.

45:33

But ah, he's just got it. He's got his family.

45:36

Oh he loved to make a cameo, but

45:38

he's he's a teenager

45:41

that he traffics into the United States.

45:45

You know, I'm not sure if you've heard of the

45:47

Alcoholics Yacht Club. Very

45:49

important work that they're doing out there in

45:52

Mexico. Really the most important

45:54

branch of the Navy is the Alcoholic Yacht Club.

45:56

Yeah, so he would love to Oh

45:58

my god, he'd so love to be there to help your little

46:00

war. Ever. Yeah, Now it's very funny

46:03

too because while he's making these claims and forty

46:05

two and forty three, he has already moved

46:07

Chata into Hollywood and asked his

46:09

wife for a divorce. They are separated.

46:12

When all of it, when he's claiming all of this ship

46:14

to the press, now, hang

46:16

on, not yet, not yet, honey, don't sign

46:18

the papers don't not quite yet, not quite

46:20

yet man now, although

46:23

actually I should say he really does want it.

46:25

Um, she refuses to divorce him for a

46:27

while because you know, again she's incredibly

46:30

Catholic. Uh. And his mentor,

46:33

patron, John Ford, gives him hell

46:35

to for trying to divorce her because

46:37

he's Catholic. Right, Ford, who again beats

46:39

his wife relentlessly, believes

46:42

that John Wayne should stay married because that's

46:44

what God wants and just keep cheating on his wife,

46:46

you know, I mean that's the john Ford but

46:49

also trapped them John

46:51

Come on, yeah,

46:54

so that's what a fucking like. So

46:57

good on Clyde and Molly. I just want to say

46:59

that, you know, early pioneers a

47:01

lot of things, trying to farm in the desert

47:04

but also getting a divorce, and one of those

47:06

two things was excecting, abusive, really very

47:09

revolutionary. That Molly was the one doing

47:12

the abusing a plus like incredible

47:14

work. Um.

47:16

So it is worth emphasizing

47:19

that John Wayne, while he

47:22

dodged the draft in World War Two,

47:24

justified it by needing to take care of

47:26

his family. While he's doing this, he is

47:29

living away from his wife in luxury at the

47:31

Chateau Marmont and fucking a girl who

47:33

is at most nineteen who he possibly

47:35

illegally trafficked into the United States. That

47:37

part's questionable, but um

47:40

yeah, it's

47:43

cold so

47:46

um brand for hollow

47:50

Christian masculinity,

47:52

like you know, emblem that he is,

47:54

he doesn't actually and kind of the shift

47:56

of like oh no, no no, no, that's the old way

47:59

is to actually put your anywhere your mouth is or do something

48:01

like be a hero. This is

48:03

like yeah,

48:06

like is playing from

48:08

this playbook, you know exactly. I'm just

48:10

like thinking, like what if like Jenna

48:13

Bush was sent to Iraq? Loell

48:16

like Jenna Bush, I mean is

48:18

co hosting Good Morning America. You know what I'm

48:20

saying. I I think we should

48:23

send all of the children of elected

48:26

leaders into war zones. I don't care which ones they

48:28

don't need to be supported or just send them just

48:31

mail them there, you know what, like in

48:33

a shipping crate. It's the Today Show.

48:35

But yes they should and they should all be sent there.

48:37

I mean retroactively, you could still go to Iraq,

48:39

I like, help rebuild bro Well,

48:42

I don't think I don't look, I don't

48:45

think the iraqis need Jenna Bush's help.

48:48

Um, but

48:50

you know, um, she could take somebody's

48:52

place in a city getting shelled right now,

48:55

Um, just move them into your house, Jenna,

48:57

Come on, indeed, do something.

49:00

So Ford chastises John

49:02

Wayne for quote this is how he talks

49:04

about John Wayne's teenage. Uh.

49:08

I don't know what term to use here, but he says

49:11

that she playing with Mexican

49:13

jumping beans because again, everyone's very

49:15

racist, very like these are like this

49:17

is for nineteen forty three, you

49:19

know, like um.

49:22

But he also calls him a damn fool for breaking

49:25

up his marriage. According to biographer

49:27

Roberts, Wayne wrote back that the marriage is

49:29

over and he quote does not give

49:31

a four letter word if I could see my kids.

49:35

I don't give a ship if she takes the kids. Awesome,

49:38

what a hero. So there are

49:41

several things John Ford never forgave

49:43

John Wayne for and this is one of them.

49:45

When the war started forward

49:48

to his credit, well, I don't know if this is

49:50

to his credit before joins the OSS,

49:52

which is the precursor to the c i A. And

49:54

he gets the rank of commander and he gets this to make

49:57

like propaganda movies. Right, That's what Reagan does

49:59

during the war, right, lot of guys who don't want to go

50:01

fight because not everybody does the Jimmy Stewart

50:03

thing, still join the military

50:05

and they make propaganda reels about how not to

50:07

get v D or whatever. Um,

50:11

John, So that's John for John

50:13

stuff. In those days there was some good stuff,

50:15

some good v D. You mean, yeah,

50:17

oh my god, the old time

50:19

syphilis. This new ship cannot compete.

50:22

No, the itch isn't the same. Not

50:25

just

50:29

doesn't hold a candle. You kids don't even

50:31

know what it's like to have your p burn. Unbelievable

50:33

zoomers. Okay,

50:36

so um. Biographer

50:39

Scott i'man basically

50:41

said so again. Ford

50:43

joins the OSS and starts calling John

50:45

Wayne a coward for failing to serve

50:48

um and tries to push him to join. Now, there's a couple

50:50

of different versions of what Wayne wants to do in

50:52

the OSS. Biographer Scott

50:54

i'man frames it as if John Wayne wanted to

50:56

get like a special ops gig suited

50:58

for an action star. So when

51:00

i'man's telling, he crafts his application

51:03

to the ouss to make him look like an international

51:05

man of mystery. Quote swimming

51:07

above average, small boat sailing, average

51:09

football played college ball at the University

51:11

of Southern California. Squashing tennis,

51:14

fair, deep sea fishing, seven marlin in

51:16

two years, hunting good field, shot,

51:18

horseback riding, have done falls and posse

51:20

riding in pictures. Not as easy as it sounds.

51:23

So that's that's the way, like I'm in as like he wants

51:26

to try to get a job doing like, you

51:28

know, secret agent kind of shit. Um,

51:31

squashing tennis, that's

51:33

fair. It's basically throwing a grenade,

51:36

you know. Fair. So

51:38

Ford introduces John Wayne to wild

51:41

Bill Donovan, who's the head of the OSS

51:43

and like will become the founder of the c I a UM,

51:46

and Donovan suggests that Wayne might

51:48

be good for what they call small boat

51:50

work, which is running the German blockade

51:53

to deliver weapons to partisans, which would

51:55

be a pretty cool thing to do in World

51:57

War two. If he really wants to

51:59

get him a bit role in the war in the

52:01

war, well, and if he'd done

52:03

this, that's dope. Like that's literally, um

52:05

fucking uh.

52:07

What's his name's character in Casablanca?

52:10

Um? Yeah,

52:13

um Bogart,

52:16

that's what he's doing. He's like running guns to

52:18

two rebels in like occupied Europe,

52:20

and ship. So i'man says like that's

52:23

what John Wayne is trying to do. Wild

52:25

bills like, oh yeah, you'd be perfect for this. John Wayne's

52:27

like, I would love to run guns

52:30

past the Nazi blockade. I just gotta

52:32

finish three more movies, Like, give me

52:34

three more movies, but then I'm gonna I'm gonna be ready to

52:36

get in. You know, I'm ready to get in. And

52:39

friends of his at the time will note that he kind

52:41

of always tells people I just gotta do one more

52:43

movie. I gotta do two more movies and then I'm getting

52:45

into the war effort. Don't worry, guys, I'm

52:47

almost there. I'll be right behind you.

52:49

This is like Trump on January six,

52:52

Just like you guys, go right

52:54

there. There are versions of this story.

52:57

One version is that he films his three

52:59

pictures and he holls this officer

53:01

at the OSS that Donovan had set him up

53:03

with, and that guy was like, dude, we sent you a

53:05

letter, you know, did you not get it? We already filled

53:07

that position. So john gets

53:10

worried. He's like, oh no, I'm gonna miss my chance to be

53:12

in the os S And he sends John Ford a

53:14

letter which states, dear

53:16

Pappy, have you any suggestions on how

53:18

I should get in? Can I get assigned to your

53:20

outfit? And if I could, would you want me? How

53:22

about the Marines? You have Army and Navuman under

53:25

you? Have you any Marines? Or how about a CB or

53:27

what would you suggest? I just hate to ask

53:29

favors, but for Christ's sake, you can suggest,

53:31

can't you. Now. I'man's

53:34

take here seems to be that John Wayne was perhaps

53:36

unwilling to fight, but or willing

53:38

to serve, but not as like a simple soldier.

53:41

Whatever he was going to do, he wanted it to be like a

53:43

special position, one that matched

53:46

his opinion of himself, and something that would

53:48

exclude him from the standard military chain

53:50

of command. So, like Jimmy Stewart,

53:52

Jean Autrey, Clark Gable, these guys are all

53:54

fighting as normal soldiers more or less,

53:56

John Wayne does not want to do that. Scott

53:59

i'man writes, quote, It's probable

54:01

that Wayne was emotionally committed to working

54:04

under Ford's command, was embarrassed about Donovan

54:06

shying away from him at the height of the war, and

54:08

simply wasn't willing to enlist and take his chances.

54:11

Certainly he had an image of himself as an officer

54:13

under Ford, but as he would say, I would

54:15

have had to go in as a private. I took a

54:18

dim view of that. So

54:22

the reality is unclean. And again, some people

54:24

will say initially John Wayne was trying to get this

54:26

gig running guns. Others will say he only

54:28

just wanted to be in Ford's unit making movies

54:30

like he never wanted to get close to the danger. Hard

54:33

to say. Uh. The author of the BuzzFeed

54:35

right up, I quoted earlier ads quote. The

54:37

truth of Wayne's hesitation was logical,

54:39

if unspeakable. He'd worked for a

54:41

decade to claw his way out of the quickies. If

54:44

he left Hollywood, then, even to serve his

54:46

country, he might not ever regain his

54:48

momentum. So he stayed put, made

54:50

a dozen films, two of which dealt with the war,

54:53

and allowed the press to rationalize his

54:55

lack of service. He

54:57

doesn't want to suck his career up right now, or

55:00

his hair, and that's

55:02

the dominant theory now. Richard

55:04

Jensen has a third theory, which a list

55:07

at least explains why Wayne was not accepted

55:09

for the OSS. He argues

55:11

that while John Ford was giving John Wayne

55:13

ship for not serving and being like, why are you being in a

55:15

coward? Why aren't you willing to like man up and

55:17

and take part in this war. While he's

55:19

doing that, Ford is also telling wild

55:21

Bill Donovan, don't hire this guy, don't

55:24

let him in, don't don't bring this guy like he'd

55:26

done before. You know, Um, he

55:28

does this like about roles in Hollywood.

55:31

So friends, that's totally

55:34

tracks. That's absolutely the guy John

55:36

Ford is right because he's already

55:38

fallen out with him by this point. So well,

55:41

they're in and out a bunch, like they they're

55:43

close, Like Wayne will take care of him when he's sick

55:45

and dying. They have a codependent kind of thing, right,

55:48

Like it's totally a codependent relationship

55:50

because like Ford will want nothing to do with

55:52

him and then want him back and kind of yeah,

55:55

they kissed that one time, but they were drunk and

55:57

they were drunk and it

56:01

was cold, so you

56:03

know, john Ford, uh

56:06

kind of sucking and he does this like when he's

56:08

not when he's like ship shutting down Wayne's

56:10

ability to get roles early on in his career. He's

56:12

also constantly being like, no, you're not talented,

56:15

so nobody's gonna want you to act in their movies. Like

56:17

your shitty at acting, You look like crap,

56:19

you're fat. You know, he's like the

56:21

worst. Yeah,

56:24

and of course John Wayne loves him forever and

56:26

takes care of him when he's sick and dying. But

56:28

yeah, so friends speculated like

56:30

this isn't Jensen who invinced the speculation. People

56:32

who are close to both of them speculate that Ford

56:35

stops John Wayne from getting a job as the oss.

56:38

Some will say it's revenge for what he did with Chattah,

56:40

that he likes divorcing his wife. You know that

56:43

Ford is just angry that he's getting a divorce

56:45

because he's super catholic. Uh.

56:47

Jensen notes that others speculated

56:50

Ford didn't want John Wayne to get a chance to quote

56:52

prove he was Ford's equal, so

56:54

he just didn't want him to, like he wanted him

56:56

to kind of look like ship for not being in the war,

56:58

because otherwise he might look good it and then that's

57:00

bad for Forward because it makes

57:02

Ford less powerful in the relationship. I

57:05

don't see why both can't be true. I think

57:07

it seems like both or true. And he wanted Wayne

57:09

to think he was. He wanted him in the war,

57:12

and Wayne didn't even want to go. He

57:14

sure didn't. That seems really

57:16

clear that John Wayne did not want to go to

57:18

fucking war. Um. And

57:21

I I mean, look, I don't

57:23

blame him, but yes it is. I

57:25

don't. I don't cling to

57:28

this kind of masculinity. Yeah,

57:31

so I don't have the same, but it does seem

57:33

like a bigal oversight for those who

57:35

are waving Wayne flags at rallies.

57:38

Still, Yeah, it's

57:40

it's that's exactly like right,

57:42

and it's going to get grocer later. Like obviously,

57:44

as a general rule, I am pro draft dodging.

57:47

I will say World War two is the

57:49

one war where you're kind of questionable

57:51

if you're dodging it because like some ship

57:54

didn't need to get done, you know. Um.

57:57

But generally speaking, I'm pro draft

57:59

dodging, but not when you become

58:02

like super pro war forever after

58:04

that, then then you're being scummy if

58:06

you draft dodge and are like nobody should have to

58:08

fight in a war. That's fine, that's perfectly

58:10

consistent. That is not where John Wayne's going to go,

58:13

right, And your entire persona is crafted

58:15

around sort of this American

58:18

hero worship and you rely

58:20

on that and you're winning these you know,

58:23

battles on the frontier, you're forming

58:25

a nation. You are literally playing

58:27

soldiers fighting in the Battle of Iwajima.

58:29

You know, that's like one of your iconic films.

58:31

And like you, you didn't

58:34

even wouldn't even make didn't even find

58:36

out a way to make movies for the government

58:38

during the war. Like right, Um, let

58:40

alone do the ship. And by the way, Jimmy Stewart

58:43

never a big action star, but

58:46

fucking put up when

58:48

it was time to put up. Put his fucking

58:50

money where his mouth was. Um.

58:53

Anyway, you know who else puts their money

58:55

where their mouth is? Products

58:59

and services? Who sup with this podcast? Who also

59:02

helped carry out the bombing

59:04

of Fortress Europe? Good

59:07

on them? That's the that's the

59:09

one promise that our sponsors make

59:11

is that they have bombed German cities.

59:14

Um, absolutely uh

59:17

from it's the Italians problems

59:19

with you know what I mean, they were already it was over,

59:22

Yeah, dropping pasta on them,

59:25

just way too much. Bombing of Napoli.

59:27

Yeah, it was a lot of pretty

59:29

cities get pretty fucked up here. Look,

59:32

it's it's a messy war. Um

59:36

so ads we're

59:43

back so um

59:46

so good ship. It's good stuff. John

59:48

Wayne does like volunteer

59:51

spends like three weeks visiting troops fighting

59:54

in Guam. Like he does a little tour.

59:56

He does some USO shit, but not

59:58

not much. Sky i'man who is

1:00:00

like a very positive biographer

1:00:03

really likes John Wayne even notes

1:00:05

that, like he didn't really do much in

1:00:07

World War Two by the standards of other guys,

1:00:10

even other guys who didn't join the military, he

1:00:12

did less than them. He just visited

1:00:14

troops and like flipped his pistol around

1:00:17

a few times. And he doesn't visit a much

1:00:19

like Bob Hope, right, who sucks

1:00:21

bad person. There's a lot of like horrible

1:00:23

regressive politics. But Bob Hope cannot

1:00:26

serve in this period and like spends

1:00:28

like his whole all of his time going

1:00:30

to field hospitals and doing shows. Like there are

1:00:32

guys who don't serve but still

1:00:35

like put a huge amount of time into like keeping

1:00:37

morale up for troops. John Wayne does

1:00:39

a bit of that, but he he doesn't really want to

1:00:41

take a break from his career to even do that. Um,

1:00:44

he would visit USO hospitals

1:00:47

to talk to wounded soldiers, who would often ask

1:00:49

him, why aren't you in this war, Duke um,

1:00:52

and he would he would be like, I have an old football

1:00:54

injury. I knew he was back

1:00:59

up boy. You

1:01:01

know you ever heard a body surfing? Yeah,

1:01:04

and we used to do in the Old West. Like

1:01:07

every single soldier who landed

1:01:09

at Normandy hadn't fucked themselves up playing

1:01:11

football as a kid, right, Like they didn't have

1:01:13

pads back then. All of them were dead shoulder

1:01:16

and back injuries. No, you are and

1:01:18

fodder. You need to go now. Yeah, it's

1:01:20

fine if you're back hurts, it'll be over suon

1:01:23

Yeah god, um

1:01:26

so he yeah. He sometimes would say that

1:01:28

President Roosevelt had asked him to keep morale

1:01:30

up by making more movies. This is

1:01:32

super untrue, but he doesn't make a lot of movies.

1:01:35

Um. And obviously this works out great

1:01:37

for him career wise because all of the other leading

1:01:40

men who might take roles for him are off

1:01:42

fighting and in some cases dying. Um.

1:01:45

You know, bily brilliant

1:01:47

strategy. Have you seen gone with the

1:01:49

Wind? I have you know the

1:01:51

kid, the like fresh faced young kid who

1:01:53

like marries Scarlett early in the movie and

1:01:56

becomes uh like goes

1:01:58

off to die and dies in the Confederate arm

1:02:00

Yes, he actually

1:02:02

dies fighting in World War two, Like

1:02:05

he dies in combat. Yeah. Um,

1:02:08

so this is again a

1:02:10

lot of times you have like soldier like

1:02:12

especially nowadays and when

1:02:15

Vietnam comes around, like there will be moments and

1:02:17

stuff and in Korea, like with Elvis,

1:02:19

where it's very performative. This is not

1:02:21

performative for most of the celebrities

1:02:23

who join in World War Two. Clark

1:02:25

Gable people, Yeah,

1:02:28

Gable Gable did Gable

1:02:30

weight ship. I'm

1:02:32

mixing him up with the other one. Um,

1:02:35

you said Cooper didn't. Yeah, Cooper

1:02:37

did not. Clark Gable does. Clark Gable is

1:02:39

like a fucking a gunner, like on

1:02:41

a on a bomber plane. Um,

1:02:43

which is one of the most dangerous jobs

1:02:45

in the whole war. Um. You're like hanging

1:02:47

in like a glass cockpit on the

1:02:49

bottom of a plane, exposed to gunfire

1:02:52

with no armor and if you get shot, you

1:02:54

just get the air sucked out of you and pulled to the

1:02:56

ground. It's a horror. Butler did

1:02:59

that. Fuck Yeah,

1:03:02

he fucking yeah, he sure

1:03:04

did. Look he's not He's

1:03:07

pretty right. Wing himself, but definitely

1:03:10

hot, like we could we could

1:03:12

be fair about that, comparing pieces of trap.

1:03:14

I mean, like, that's what this show is. It's though.

1:03:17

It is though funny that Rhett Butler goes

1:03:20

to war and like survives and the kid

1:03:22

who dies and gone with the wind also dies

1:03:24

finding um

1:03:27

loops little on the nose,

1:03:30

Hollywood. Um

1:03:32

so uh. If you're surprised

1:03:35

that the man who dodged the draft in World War

1:03:37

Two, which is the only war in which that's arguably

1:03:39

unethical, goes on to become a right wing

1:03:42

icon, you should not be. What's

1:03:44

interesting is that John Wayne himself

1:03:46

would spend the rest of his life outraged

1:03:48

by his own failure to serve. Whether

1:03:51

it was venal profit seeking or simple

1:03:53

cowardice, he saw it as the ultimate strike

1:03:55

against his MACHINESMO and Ford never

1:03:58

lets him forget it. Oh God. Perhaps

1:04:00

the first expression of this comes in nineteen forty

1:04:03

four, when he helps to create the Motion

1:04:05

Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American

1:04:07

Ideals or m p A. Now

1:04:10

with a name like that, you know, some fucked up

1:04:12

culture war bullshit is about to drop, and

1:04:14

it sure did. See brown

1:04:17

people will be killed in the in

1:04:19

these films. Yeah, I mean it's

1:04:21

more that, like these guys are hardcore

1:04:23

anti communist, which if

1:04:25

you're an anti communist in the US

1:04:27

World War Two, you kind of got to sit

1:04:29

out a little bit, like you gotta kind of keep quiet

1:04:31

because the Soviet unions are ally you

1:04:33

can't kind of you cannot be as unhinged in

1:04:36

your attacks against communism for four years

1:04:38

or so, um,

1:04:40

because we we kind of need them to do all of that,

1:04:45

because we need like twenty million of them are

1:04:47

so to die fighting. Um.

1:04:51

So nineteen forty four, they

1:04:53

start this anti communist organization kind

1:04:55

of near the end of the war, and John Wayne

1:04:57

had not been political earlier in his career.

1:05:00

He would later claim to have even had a socialist period.

1:05:02

I don't know how true. I think that is. It's kind of a right

1:05:04

wing thing to claim he used to be a socialist in college

1:05:07

then he saw the light. I think he's one

1:05:09

of the first guys to do that. Absolutely.

1:05:11

This is yeah, that is such

1:05:13

a playbook. Yeah. His friend

1:05:15

Henry Fonda later recalled quote, the Duke

1:05:17

couldn't even spell politics in the

1:05:20

thirties, So I think

1:05:22

it's probably he just did not give a shit

1:05:24

um. But in the early forties, again, he's

1:05:26

got to do something to feel like a man. He's got

1:05:28

to do something to like shore up

1:05:31

his credentials as a tough guy, and

1:05:33

being anti communists seems like the best

1:05:35

bet. So he gets elected head

1:05:37

of the Screen Actors Guild in the early forties.

1:05:40

Um. And he claims that becoming the head of a

1:05:42

union is the first time he starts to notice the

1:05:44

deadly trend of on wrestling socialism.

1:05:48

Yeah, so that's so perfect.

1:05:50

That's also just so peak, like

1:05:53

right wing icon idiot. Oh

1:05:55

yeah, it's it's beautiful. Thanks to this

1:05:58

union, I realized unions are too terrible.

1:06:00

Yeah, except

1:06:03

for this one and the police. Once

1:06:06

you get union, So, once you get sensitized

1:06:08

to it, he told an interviewer, you'd begin to be aware

1:06:10

of cracks at our president, the flag patriotism.

1:06:13

He described the attitude of his colleagues towards

1:06:16

traditional Americana as quote a kind

1:06:18

of sneering. Now this

1:06:20

is up, you

1:06:22

suck an asshole. This is all ship,

1:06:25

he would claim later after he became a political

1:06:27

figure. UM film critic

1:06:29

and his story and Emmanuel Leave believes

1:06:31

that guilt over his failure to serve in World

1:06:34

War Two drove Wayne to right wing

1:06:36

politics. There's ample evidence to

1:06:38

suggest this. Friends of his, like Mary Saint

1:06:40

John often gave telling anecdotes

1:06:42

quote he was not the kind of man to dwell

1:06:45

on it or talk about it, but you knew he did. You

1:06:47

could see it in his face. Whenever anyone asked

1:06:49

him about his war record, he wouldn't tell

1:06:51

them that he had not served, and it made him feel

1:06:53

like a hypocrite. So that's

1:06:56

so perfect. Of

1:06:58

course, you're gonna make up for your your feeling

1:07:01

that you didn't defend your country by you utilizing

1:07:04

the most bullshit prop of

1:07:06

so called Americanism, which is defending

1:07:09

yourself against communism. Yeah, and

1:07:12

and oh it's so and it's so perfect,

1:07:14

and it is like the parallels again

1:07:16

to today two Trump's little

1:07:18

bones burs. I hate to bring his name up again,

1:07:21

but just it's so clear.

1:07:23

And the people who are the most vitriolic are

1:07:25

also folks who would never in their fucking

1:07:27

lives fight for any

1:07:30

cause. Yeah, it's the same

1:07:32

ship with like George Bush, you know, getting

1:07:34

getting a cushy family excuse not

1:07:36

to actually fight in Vietnam. Um,

1:07:40

you know, it's it's

1:07:43

it's it's this but

1:07:45

like super willing to send other people to

1:07:47

fight, and what matters is the image. It doesn't

1:07:49

matter, Like what you do doesn't matter. It's

1:07:52

just like why you can you can pay for your

1:07:54

daughter to have an abortion and also support

1:07:56

ending the right uh to to

1:07:58

to reproductive choice. Because

1:08:02

it's not what you do that matters. It's what

1:08:04

you say you know in public,

1:08:06

and it's whether or not you have the wear the right

1:08:08

hat. It's like Ben Shapiro with his cowboy hat

1:08:10

and his big black truck. You

1:08:13

never towed Ben Shapiro. You don't know

1:08:15

how to toe, you know how to set a fucking

1:08:17

tow hitch, Like, by god, you would panic

1:08:20

if you had to change lanes with a trailer,

1:08:23

Like but you got that

1:08:26

characterization. Yeah, Ben

1:08:30

haul like a fucking tin foot,

1:08:32

little bit, little baby trailer just

1:08:35

just once been show me you know

1:08:37

how to use a truck? Literally? Tiny

1:08:39

boat work? What is it? Small boats? Small

1:08:41

boat work? Couldn't do small fishing

1:08:44

for Marlin. Goddamn it. Go run some

1:08:46

guns, John Wayne, So

1:08:51

leave manual. Leave the fucking

1:08:53

film. Criticism claims that like this sort

1:08:55

of shame is what drives Wayne to the m

1:08:57

p A in nineteen. Like blockbuster

1:09:00

war movies, doing this was a prominent

1:09:02

and easily publicized way to frame himself

1:09:05

as a warrior struggling against the great

1:09:07

evil, when he had actually failed to

1:09:09

do anything about the real great evil of the time.

1:09:12

UM. He served as the president of the organization

1:09:14

starting in nineteen forty nine, now

1:09:17

the year before, at age forty one, John

1:09:19

Wayne was cast in a film called Red

1:09:21

River. This would be the first movie

1:09:23

to feature Wayne as he is now most famous

1:09:26

to millions of Americans as a gruff,

1:09:28

hard edged, late middle aged

1:09:30

cowboy because again he's aged like he

1:09:32

looks like he's in his fifties in this because but also

1:09:35

kind of the perfect like American hero um,

1:09:38

sort of unwitting, like I don't

1:09:40

want to be here, um,

1:09:42

like protagonist, which is

1:09:44

something that we love. We love a guy he's about

1:09:47

to retire, but he gets drawn out of

1:09:49

retirement because he's got a fucking kid. Gas.

1:09:51

Yeah, it's like you're sucking John McClain. He's

1:09:53

balding and divorced and he's like exhausted,

1:09:56

but then he's got to go murder some Germans. You know, we

1:09:58

love that ship, Bruce Will. This did this perfectly.

1:10:01

Yeah, he really did. He did everything right

1:10:04

in his in his career politics.

1:10:07

Probably I've never wanted

1:10:09

to know what Bruce Willis beliefs about politics.

1:10:11

It seems like that wouldn't make me happy. It's

1:10:15

also changed in the last like ten years.

1:10:17

I feel like, whereas like right wingers, we would

1:10:19

think we're more right wing in Hollywood like ten

1:10:21

years ago, or just like, hey, that guy's pretty

1:10:24

good. You know, he's fine. Yeah, it's it's it's the Arnold

1:10:26

Schwarzenegger thing where it's like you've suddenly

1:10:28

gone from being like an arch conservative

1:10:30

to one of the least crazy

1:10:33

people talking about politics in America

1:10:35

because everything has lurched so far to the

1:10:37

right. It's it's great, it's fine, it's

1:10:39

not going to cause any problems. Um.

1:10:43

So it's this John Wayne, this kind of tough

1:10:45

older cowboy. Um,

1:10:47

this old hand who he's like one of the terms

1:10:50

he's he's a begrudging tutor for younger

1:10:52

cowboys. Right, that's a big part of his appeal in

1:10:54

these movies. He's taking some fresh

1:10:56

faced young book under his wing. This

1:10:58

is the John Wayne. He's a star are at this point?

1:11:01

This is the John Wayne that becomes an icon, right,

1:11:04

Like this is the John Wayne whose face

1:11:06

is still plastered all over fucking merch

1:11:08

tables at gun shows to this day. So

1:11:11

his his career torpedoes forward

1:11:13

at the same time as his anti communist activism

1:11:16

lurches forward. He serves three turns as

1:11:18

president of the the the

1:11:21

m p A until nineteen fifty two.

1:11:23

Now, since this was the height of the Second

1:11:25

Red Scare, many of John Wayne's

1:11:27

friends and many of the studio executives

1:11:29

in particular, warned him that, like, hey,

1:11:31

you might not want to get into politics this much. It

1:11:34

could kill you with the box office. Americans,

1:11:37

whatever we feel about communists, may not want to

1:11:39

see John Wayne, cowboy

1:11:41

hero wearing a suit talking to Congress

1:11:43

about like your colleagues

1:11:45

being socialists. Um

1:11:48

so uh, John

1:11:50

Wayne claimed, like it's

1:11:53

one of those things. The idea that like this

1:11:55

is probably not true. The idea that like he

1:11:57

got a lot of pushback saying he shouldn't get into

1:11:59

right way politics is probably a lie

1:12:02

because John Wayne is the only one who claims it,

1:12:04

and he only ever brings this up to point out

1:12:06

that but even then, I became the biggest

1:12:08

box office draw in Hollywood. After

1:12:11

you know I started doing all this stuff. Like That's

1:12:13

how he frames it as like they didn't

1:12:15

want me to start being anti communists,

1:12:17

but once I did, that just made me more popular.

1:12:20

Um yeah, once again

1:12:22

trying to cancel me. First they took

1:12:24

Jenny, then they take my anti

1:12:27

communist activism. He is,

1:12:29

by the way, married to Chattah and has divorced

1:12:32

Jenny at this point. Whether or not, like his

1:12:34

kids today will claim, I should note

1:12:36

that he was a good dad and like

1:12:38

stayed in their lives. I don't

1:12:41

know what the cases some biographers have

1:12:43

claimed other things, but his kids are pretty positive

1:12:45

about I mean maybe

1:12:47

I don't know. I'm not gonna tell

1:12:49

them what their lives were like. Um,

1:12:53

he's certainly like I don't think they wanted

1:12:55

for anything right, Like he didn't like like

1:12:57

they benefited from the Wayne money. It's

1:12:59

scene like so um

1:13:02

so. Eugene Levy describes how

1:13:05

he generally framed this to the

1:13:07

press. Wayne said that those who warned

1:13:09

him must have meant it would ruin me with the Moscow

1:13:11

fan clubs, because when I became president

1:13:14

of the Alliance, I was thirty second on the

1:13:16

box office polls. But last year i'd

1:13:18

skin it up near the top. It's very

1:13:20

familiar right wing framing. Right,

1:13:22

they tried to cancel me, but I just it just

1:13:25

made me more popular all

1:13:27

that ship. He's the perfect figurehead

1:13:29

for not World War Two, arguably

1:13:31

the most righteous American war, but the Cold

1:13:34

War the most exactly

1:13:36

like unrighteous, like

1:13:38

pillaging you know, Third

1:13:41

World countries or Global South countries

1:13:44

under phantom threats. I'm not saying

1:13:46

it didn't get real at a certain

1:13:48

point, but like it was such

1:13:50

a propaganda war because we

1:13:52

have this one war that is unquestionably

1:13:55

necessary, and he's like, nah, that ain't

1:13:57

me. But then we started invading these tiny

1:13:59

little entrees and he's like, oh yeah, yeah, fun

1:14:01

m up, fuck um up, um

1:14:08

yeah, it's cool. He he innvinced

1:14:10

being James Woods in a way. So

1:14:13

the part of the second Red Scare that John

1:14:15

Wayne was personally involved in was the backlash

1:14:17

to the pro Soviet movies that he made in the early

1:14:20

nineteen forties. Members of the House

1:14:22

un American Activities Committee HUAC

1:14:25

were livid that studios like MGM had

1:14:27

made films celebrating the Russian war effort.

1:14:29

Suddenly, Hollywood stars were being called up

1:14:31

to inform on their fellow celebs for left

1:14:34

wing sympathies leave you writes quote.

1:14:36

It got to the point where Lela Rodgers, Jinger's

1:14:39

mother and vice president at r KO, was

1:14:41

asked to examine all screenplays

1:14:43

for questionable content. She was proud

1:14:45

to declare that she had found a line in the Tinder

1:14:47

Comrade which stated share and share

1:14:50

alike, that's the meaning of democracy. Dalton

1:14:52

Trumbo, who wrote the screenplay, later

1:14:55

became one of the Hollywood Ten. The

1:14:57

friendly witnesses of HUAC included many

1:14:59

Hollywood celebrit such as Gary Cooper,

1:15:01

who reportedly condemned communism because

1:15:03

it was not on the level whatever that meant,

1:15:06

or Adolph Minju, whose credo was that

1:15:08

communism could be expressed by players by

1:15:10

a look, by an inflection, by a change

1:15:12

in voice. So what

1:15:16

that's what? Literally, like Trumbo gets canceled

1:15:18

for ship like that, for saying like democracy is

1:15:20

about sharing. Like that's like the most cancel

1:15:23

culture America's ever got is what

1:15:25

does to fucking yeah exactly on

1:15:28

American activities man back

1:15:32

by the way, Oh for sure, they're so horny

1:15:34

to do this. Ronald Reagan was one of the guys

1:15:36

who named the most names. He loved getting

1:15:38

up in front of Congress and informing on

1:15:40

his colleagues. Now, to to

1:15:43

their credit, there were some very base

1:15:45

fucking actors and actresses, including Katherine

1:15:48

Heppard refuses to talk to the community.

1:15:50

She's like the fun like, you can't make me do ship. I don't

1:15:52

give a fuck, Katherine Heppern, What are you gonna

1:15:54

do? Cancel Katherine Hepburn. No, you're

1:15:56

fucking not um, And they

1:15:58

don't. Uh uh. John

1:16:00

Wayne, who is an avowed anti communist,

1:16:03

does nothing, so he does not get

1:16:05

up in front of who act This is not a

1:16:07

principled stance. His biographer Iman

1:16:10

claims that this was in part that because

1:16:12

like well he wasn't really that judgmental about

1:16:14

people, he wouldn't have wanted to cancel his colleagues

1:16:17

because if he liked you, he didn't care about your politics.

1:16:19

You know these buddies with Orson Wells, who was pretty left

1:16:21

wing. Um. That's

1:16:23

one justification for why he doesn't

1:16:25

get up in front of whoac UM.

1:16:28

Blacklisted screenwriter Howard

1:16:30

Coke, who's one of the people who gets caught

1:16:32

up in this, theorizes that it was not

1:16:35

John Wayne's decision to stay out, but

1:16:37

instead studio meddling that kept him

1:16:39

from testifying. In

1:16:41

some cases, the heads of the studios made deals

1:16:43

with the committee not to put a certain individual

1:16:46

on the stand publicly. That was true not

1:16:48

only of so called suspects so what they like to call

1:16:50

the unfriendly witnesses, but also

1:16:52

a friendly witnesses that the studio didn't want to

1:16:54

have tainted by political publicity of any kind.

1:16:57

Somebody like Wayne is a good example. How

1:16:59

are you going to get pole rushing in to see him shooting

1:17:01

down the apaches when they start thinking of him as the guy

1:17:03

wearing a suit and tie and saying, what a great

1:17:05

job all these seventy year old politicians with their

1:17:08

glasses and bow ties are doing defending America.

1:17:10

Mixed message, So,

1:17:13

I mean money is number one in his life

1:17:16

at this point, and yeah,

1:17:18

you know, and obviously coward is not going into World

1:17:20

War two, but also potentially just wanting

1:17:22

to keep making money. It

1:17:24

is also here's the thing, and

1:17:27

this is gonna sound weird, but it's

1:17:29

kind of also a

1:17:31

condemnation of him that he doesn't testify

1:17:34

in front of who act because it shows he doesn't

1:17:36

really believe Carrie

1:17:38

Grant, who again goes and fights

1:17:40

in World War Two, also a right wing ship

1:17:42

head. Carrie Grant's studio goes,

1:17:45

don't get up and testify in front of who ak,

1:17:47

it's going to be bad for your image. But Carrie

1:17:49

Grant, again, this is not a good thing to do.

1:17:51

But he does believe it because he gets up and

1:17:53

says fuck you to the studio and testifies

1:17:56

against his colleagues and stuff, which

1:17:58

is and again getting into like murky

1:18:01

moral territory. But I guess I'm saying it's

1:18:04

more respectable to be a right wing

1:18:06

ship head who believes enough to hurt your career

1:18:08

by it than it is to only be a right

1:18:10

wing ship head when you think it's good for your career.

1:18:12

I guess that's where I'm landing here. I feel

1:18:15

you landing there. I I land more in the

1:18:17

like I'm glad he didn't snitch, And

1:18:19

yeah, sure, yes you

1:18:21

needed into communism to fucking booster

1:18:24

your career and go speak at some brunches,

1:18:27

But good for you. Good

1:18:29

and bad aren't as as meaningful. Here is

1:18:31

just the state that, like Carrie Grant was

1:18:33

a guy who believed in some things, John

1:18:35

Wayne didn't. Right that that's more because

1:18:38

like obviously yes, it's good to not testify. It

1:18:40

just is a note of like, how kind

1:18:42

of empty he is? He's

1:18:45

still punching women, guys don't. Don't worry

1:18:47

And I don't know Carry Grant probably right.

1:18:50

I don't know much about the guys still

1:18:52

punching women. Maybe not Jimmy

1:18:54

Stewart, I don't. I want to believe he wouldn't,

1:18:56

But I don't know much about Jimmy Stewart. Um

1:18:59

he did different did

1:19:02

was part of the bombing of Korea, So I don't

1:19:04

know. Some some mixed stuff there too. Um

1:19:08

So, yeah, it's weird as Scott, i'man

1:19:10

rights. Being seen as anti communist had

1:19:12

real benefits for John Wayne in the Blacklist

1:19:15

years that followed quote and

1:19:17

so the Blacklist arab began. There would be

1:19:19

more hearings in nineteen fifty. The result was

1:19:21

that dozens were jailed, hundreds lost their jobs,

1:19:23

hundreds more left the country, some died.

1:19:26

Every motion picture union from the Screen Actors

1:19:28

Guild to the Screen Director's Guild ultimately

1:19:30

capitulated to the Blacklist. All this

1:19:32

would be called by one writer, echoing

1:19:34

Daniel Dafoe, the Plague Years. Dalton

1:19:37

Trumbo had another name for it. The time

1:19:39

of the Toad. During this period, the

1:19:41

right wing press regularly ganged up on performers

1:19:44

who had committed the terrible sin of not serving

1:19:46

in the military during World War Two. The

1:19:48

hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler accused

1:19:50

Danny Kay of not giving exactly

1:19:53

his all during the war, and then added

1:19:55

the seasoning of anti Semitism by mentioning

1:19:57

Kay's real name, Kaminsky. Peglar

1:20:00

neglected to mention that many conservatives hadn't

1:20:02

served John Wayne among them. By

1:20:05

the way, don't come from my boy, Danny Kay.

1:20:07

Don't you fucking come from my boy Danny

1:20:09

Kay, Danny Kay Pegler?

1:20:12

What the why are you pulling love God?

1:20:15

Pulling out the anti semitism for

1:20:18

peace, for not going and

1:20:20

fighting in World War Two? Like

1:20:22

what are you? What are you talking about here?

1:20:24

Yeah, it's it's awesome. So

1:20:27

again, and this is part of the point that people will make

1:20:29

is that by being super pro anti

1:20:31

communist, very right wing, he deflects

1:20:34

a lot of criticism for the fact that he

1:20:36

doesn't do anything in the war. Yep,

1:20:40

Um, well, he gets the past because he's someone

1:20:43

needs there Christian masculine

1:20:45

identity. I mean, that's like he's more of an emblem.

1:20:48

He's a symbol. Yeah yeah, he's like

1:20:50

Batman, but worse, a

1:20:53

lot worse than bad. If Batman sees the bad signals

1:20:55

like uh, I

1:20:57

gotta gotta sees the batstick.

1:21:00

Delasi's like cuddling with the teenager he trafficked

1:21:02

into the United States, and it's like, can someone else

1:21:04

deal with that? Um

1:21:09

so with his colleagues blacklisted, John

1:21:11

Wayne stars in an increasing series of right

1:21:13

wing films, including nineteen fifty two

1:21:15

Is Big Jim McClain, in which he played

1:21:17

a heroic Huac investigator. In

1:21:20

nineteen fifty four, he was cast in what would

1:21:22

probably become the most shameful role of

1:21:24

his career. Francesca, are you

1:21:26

ready for this? This

1:21:28

is my favorite John Wayne role. Genghis

1:21:32

Khan. Hell

1:21:34

yeah, just another

1:21:37

white guy taking an Asian actor's

1:21:40

role. It's amazing.

1:21:43

Somebody's like, who are we going to get to pay Genghis

1:21:45

Khan? You know who looks like a

1:21:48

Mongolian warlord? John

1:21:51

Wayne? John

1:21:54

Wayne middle now kind

1:21:56

of fat John Wayne. It's he

1:21:58

looks so silly in this. It's

1:22:01

amazing. It's almost beyond parody.

1:22:03

How like racist this movie is. It's

1:22:06

like, if you were joking

1:22:08

about racism in this period, you would like

1:22:10

make up John Wayne being Genghis Khan

1:22:13

is like a gag. But no, they really

1:22:15

did it. Hell yeah

1:22:17

they did. Look at that Look at that mustache,

1:22:20

those blue eyes. Unbelievable.

1:22:23

Everyone needs to look this up right now. And

1:22:25

I think we need to watch this high.

1:22:28

Yeah, it's incredible that. Like, obviously

1:22:30

the most famous white guy who racistly

1:22:33

plays an Asian in this period is Mickey

1:22:35

Rooney. But boy

1:22:37

boy, howdy is John Wayne nipping

1:22:39

at his fucking heels in terms of

1:22:42

racist casting here?

1:22:44

But also like Genghis

1:22:47

is the good guy? What because like n

1:22:49

W, it's generally the hero. It's

1:22:52

more just that like he's impressive, right,

1:22:54

I think that's probably like I've I watched

1:22:56

this years ago as a kid, just because I heard about

1:22:58

it. Like, I think it's more of just like an historical epic.

1:23:01

You're not trying to like, I

1:23:03

don't know. Um. Also, here's

1:23:06

another fun fact. The more the role

1:23:08

was originally written from Marlon Brando,

1:23:10

Oh

1:23:13

you would rather see Brando is Genghis.

1:23:15

Imagine Brando is Geges. This

1:23:18

is so funny to be that's

1:23:22

really funny. I mean maybe old Brando,

1:23:24

like really old Brandon. I could see ye. Fat

1:23:26

Brando is gegus cot. Fat Brando

1:23:29

not having to walk anywhere, just being like a

1:23:32

horse. You're just sitting on a horse the

1:23:36

whole time, not moving kill

1:23:38

him, like I get that, just

1:23:41

stroking a long sort of spy white

1:23:44

beard. Uh, that might

1:23:46

have made sense. This is documentary

1:23:48

about the making of The Isle of Dr

1:23:51

Moreau, which is also an incredible Marlon

1:23:53

Brando documentary. Among other

1:23:55

things, he decides that his character is secretly

1:23:57

a dolphin and wears a bucket on his head the whole

1:23:59

movie, but never explains it to anyone. It fucking

1:24:02

rules Marlon Brando's

1:24:04

like late career. Brando is

1:24:06

the greatest Hollywood actor there has

1:24:08

ever been. Yeah, it's

1:24:10

amazing. It's just like when

1:24:12

everyone wants your career to stay alive

1:24:14

except for you. Yeah, it's very

1:24:16

funny. Nobody hated Hollywood

1:24:19

more than Marlon Brando, a man who only

1:24:22

ever made his money as an actor. It's also

1:24:25

he's going to be the hero of well, one of the heroes

1:24:27

of our third episodes Good

1:24:29

good Times Anyway. The Conqueror.

1:24:32

John Wayne as Genghis Khan not a

1:24:34

good movie, as this exerpt from the Guardians

1:24:36

Film blog makes clear. The film

1:24:39

opens with Timushin as Genghis was originally

1:24:41

known, intercepting a wedding procession of markets.

1:24:43

No, not merecats. The market lord

1:24:46

has a tartar bride or tie Jane

1:24:48

Hayward, but not for long. I feel

1:24:50

this tartar woman is for me. In tones, timushin

1:24:53

my blood says, take her. Few

1:24:55

actors can make lines like this sound good,

1:24:57

and John Wayne wasn't one of them. Writer

1:25:00

Oscar Millard wanted to give the screenplay

1:25:02

an archaic flourish, mindful of

1:25:04

the fact that my story was nothing more than a tarted up

1:25:06

Western I thought this would give it a certain cash a

1:25:08

and I left no lily unpainted, he said

1:25:10

in nine. It was a mistake I

1:25:13

have never repeated. Poor old John

1:25:15

Wayne has to prance about saying things things

1:25:17

such as I greet you my mother, where

1:25:19

normal people would say hello mom. This

1:25:21

might be why he looks so miserable in every scene.

1:25:24

You've got to do something about these lines, he told

1:25:26

Millard during filming. I can't read them.

1:25:28

It was too late. So one

1:25:31

of the worst movies of all time. Very

1:25:34

cringe but Francesca,

1:25:36

here's the good part. Do you believe in karma?

1:25:39

Uh? A little bit, a

1:25:42

little bit. This is this is a very

1:25:44

calmer moment because while

1:25:47

they're filming this movie, they're they're

1:25:49

in like Nevada in the desert, like

1:25:51

making this thing because I guess that's our best

1:25:53

equivalent to mongolia. Um.

1:25:56

While they're making this, they are a hundred miles

1:25:59

away from an attack mcbomb testing site.

1:26:01

Uh. So they go to the government They're like, hey,

1:26:04

we got John Wayne out here filming a movie.

1:26:06

Is it safe to be this close to nuclear

1:26:08

bombs going off? And the Government's like, oh, absolutely,

1:26:11

no, you guys are fine. It's totally far

1:26:13

away, not going to be a problem, not

1:26:15

gonna be a problem. So it

1:26:19

was a problem. The entire cast and crew

1:26:21

of The Conqueror get massive

1:26:23

doses of radiation, like

1:26:25

like they like, they're right next

1:26:28

to nuclear bombs going off for days,

1:26:30

you know, weeks as they film this. Don't

1:26:33

worry, keep going, it's

1:26:35

gonna be good for the lighting. Yes,

1:26:38

your burns look incredible, honey,

1:26:40

that's great. So

1:26:44

what was the Union doing at this point?

1:26:46

Jesus, Yeah, it's

1:26:48

been too gutted. They can't complain

1:26:50

about geting nuked, or they'll get called out as being socialist.

1:26:54

It's very funny that John Wayne gets

1:26:56

nuked by the US government and spoilers.

1:26:58

It's what kills him. That's extremely

1:27:01

funny. It's the funniest thing that could possibly

1:27:03

have happened. He gets he gets fucking

1:27:05

nuked and irradiated while pretending

1:27:07

to be Genghis Khan. That rules.

1:27:10

That's incredibly funny. That is

1:27:12

kind of like the spirit of Genghis Khan. It

1:27:15

is Genghis Khan was smiling down from

1:27:17

heaven like, yes, this is what I

1:27:19

want. That is amazing.

1:27:22

Wow, And so okay, how much

1:27:24

radiation are we talking a funkload?

1:27:27

Francesca? Wait so again. Recently

1:27:29

it's become a story that like a bunch of Russian

1:27:32

soldiers probably got radiation set because

1:27:34

they dug trenches in Chernobyl. Right,

1:27:36

Chernobyl. A lot of radiation also

1:27:39

a lot less than there was decades ago when it

1:27:41

was new. These guys are standing

1:27:43

downwind of nuclear bombs as

1:27:45

they go off, a lot

1:27:47

of radiation um

1:27:51

the cast and crew of

1:27:53

the Conqueror, as well as a startling

1:27:55

number of Americans like them. Because the US government

1:27:58

nukes a lot of Americans, citizen's.

1:28:00

They get known as down Winders in the

1:28:02

decades to come because they all get cancer.

1:28:05

Um. By nineteen eighty one, this is

1:28:07

film in fifty four, By nine ninety

1:28:10

six of the two cast and crew

1:28:12

on the set had developed cancer. Forty

1:28:14

six of them, including John Wayne, had

1:28:16

died. Um.

1:28:19

It's pretty cool. Within

1:28:22

what time period again, thirty

1:28:25

years, a little less than thirty years, half

1:28:27

of them have cancer and a quarter of them are

1:28:29

dead from cancer. Um,

1:28:32

including John Wayne. He gets a couple of cancers

1:28:35

right first in nineteen sixty

1:28:37

four, so ten years later it's lung cancer.

1:28:39

So maybe it was a smoking I'm sure the

1:28:41

nukes didn't help. He finally dies

1:28:43

of like a horrible stomach cancer. So he

1:28:46

probably dies in part at least

1:28:48

as a result of getting nuked on the set of The Conqueror.

1:28:51

Of all the sets, you know what I mean, it

1:28:54

wasn't going to be a good one. It had to be the Gang Khan.

1:28:58

It is extremely fun, though

1:29:00

it is at least see. The one redeeming

1:29:03

thing I think about this is I don't it

1:29:05

doesn't sound like he did like a pigeon like

1:29:08

accent, like some sort of I don't

1:29:11

mean stereotypical. I think he

1:29:13

does. Ye, so yeah,

1:29:16

I guess that's better. I

1:29:18

don't know that I want to like I I don't

1:29:20

certainly want to be saying what's better or worse. It

1:29:22

all seems pretty rough to me. No, I

1:29:24

think we all agree everyone on that set deserve

1:29:27

to get nooked. I mean that was fine that this

1:29:29

happened. It's totally fine. Um,

1:29:33

good stuff. Um, and that's

1:29:35

gonna that's gonna be our part two. Francesco,

1:29:38

We're gonna have you back for part three,

1:29:40

but for right now, you want to plug

1:29:42

your plug doblesh my god, you guys check

1:29:44

out the Bituation Room podcast. I

1:29:47

promise. Well, I don't know. Maybe

1:29:49

we'll just watch Genghis Khan on our

1:29:51

next episode. We might, babe, who

1:29:54

knows. I'm excited for the third chapter

1:29:57

and all the they find in his stomach. Oh

1:29:59

yeah, app all the meat in his guts. All

1:30:02

right, Well that's gonna do us uh

1:30:05

and everyone else, you know, until

1:30:07

until next time. Uh

1:30:09

stand directly next to a nuclear

1:30:12

blast while the government says it's fine. Because

1:30:14

you're John Wayne. You know the government is never gonna

1:30:16

lie to you. Oh my god, behind

1:30:21

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1:30:23

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