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Famous Historic Figures’ Public Image vs the Reality of their Lives

Khalid Elhassan June 3, 2020 34 min

John Ford - The Searchers — John Wayne. Pintrest

38. “*Can’t You Walk, Instead of Skipping Like a God*** Fairy?*“

Film director John Ford with John Wayne. DGA Quarterly Magazine

During the long working relationship between John Wayne and director John Ford, Ford seldom spared a kind word for his protégé. Wayne worshiped Ford: “My whole set up was that he was my mentor and my ideal! I think that deep down inside, he’s one of the greatest human beings that I have ever known“. Ford, by contrast, was savage in his mistreatment of Wayne, bullying him at every opportunity. That bullying helped create one of the most iconic pieces of John Wayne’s public image: his cowboy strut.

During the filming of Stagecoach, Ford seemingly disliked everything about Wayne. At one point, the director grabbed his lead actor by the chin and berated him: “Why are you moving your mouth so much? Don’t you know that you don’t act with your mouth in pictures?” He even hated the way Wayne moved, which Ford thought was effeminate: “Can’t you walk, instead of skipping like a god*** fairy?” That one stung so bad, that Wayne changed the way he walked for the rest of his life.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.