Speaker 1: Oh boy, Welcome back, Pardner to Behind the Bastards the
Speaker 1: Cowboy podcast talking about John Wayne who is about to
Speaker 1: get his first he's just had his first role on screen. Um,
Speaker 1: and he's about to get his first cowboy job. So
Speaker 1: he's he's he's he gets on a gig on a
Speaker 1: film as a as a prop boy. Yet again with
Speaker 1: his dude role. Walsh, this director and his apparently the
Speaker 1: thing that gets him his first cowboy job is Walsh
Speaker 1: catches a glimpse of Marian while he's carrying furniture across
Speaker 1: the sound stage. He's again he's huge and very strong.
Speaker 1: So he has this like reputation for people just like
Speaker 1: pick up a couch when that needs to be moved
Speaker 1: and just like walk it as on his own, like
Speaker 1: across the stage or something. And so Roll sees this
Speaker 1: big showed of a dude just kind of man handling furniture. Um,
Speaker 1: and he feels that like Marian has a warm and
Speaker 1: wholesome expression on his face. Uh. Quote. I stopped and watched.
Speaker 1: I noticed the fine physique of the boy, his careless
Speaker 1: strength and the grace of his movement. Um. Now is
Speaker 1: this another forward situation for sure? But are we grooming
Speaker 1: hashtag Disney grooming. I mean, I think what you've got
Speaker 1: here is a dude whose job it is. Like any director,
Speaker 1: this obviously gets problematic a lot of the time, but
Speaker 1: as a director you should be able to let you
Speaker 1: should be looking and appreciating the way people move and look.
Speaker 1: That is part of like your gig is to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I like the way that motherfucker moves. Just appreciate the
Speaker 1: human form. Yeah, there's a creepy way for that, but
Speaker 1: in this case it doesn't seem to be creepy. Although
Speaker 1: I should state John Wayne's opinion is that this is
Speaker 1: not the first time Walsh saw him and decided like
Speaker 1: he looked good. John Wayne's later opinion is that Walsh
Speaker 1: saw him at a Fox Company nick when he was
Speaker 1: super hungover and engaged in a walking contest, which he
Speaker 1: barely won because everybody was still pretty drunk. Um. Whatever
Speaker 1: the case, why did he always has to make these
Speaker 1: back stories of like no, actually, like I beat him
Speaker 1: at arm wrestling. That's how we first met. I checked
Speaker 1: his ass and then you give me a part and
Speaker 1: I was like, this part sucks. It is one of
Speaker 1: those things. He's a liar, so I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: about that, although I don't feel like barely one a
Speaker 1: walking contest while drunk is particularly cool either. That's true.
Speaker 1: That's true, so who knows. Um, but his story is
Speaker 1: very much tall privilege. You can't be a six three
Speaker 1: brawny man hanging around a film set is not going
Speaker 1: to get noticed doing any of the same stuff. No,
Speaker 1: um he is. He is again like being a tall
Speaker 1: white guy is the easy mode of life. It is.
Speaker 1: There's so many things you can you can get out
Speaker 1: of just by being a tall white dude. It's incredible. Um.
Speaker 1: So Marian he Walsh is like, I like to look
Speaker 1: at this kid. I want to make him a Cowboys star.
Speaker 1: Uh and he he puts Marian through screen testing, which
Speaker 1: is like where they put you on camera to decide
Speaker 1: if you actually do look good on camera, and he
Speaker 1: does so they cast him as the star of of
Speaker 1: an upcoming film, um, which more than doubles his pay overnight.
Speaker 1: But it's clear, however, that he's gonna need a new name.
Speaker 1: Marian Morrison definitely not a cowboy actor name. Duke is
Speaker 1: that's starlet name though, Like that's a oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Marion Morrison. Yeah, absolutely a great leading female name, but
Speaker 1: not not good for a cowboy actor in the twenties.
Speaker 1: Still not cutting in. They decide not. They decide he
Speaker 1: needs an even better name than Duke Morrison, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from Scott I'm in here. Roll Walsh claimed
Speaker 1: that he came up with a name Wayne, and that
Speaker 1: she Hand, who's another person involved in the film's production,
Speaker 1: added John, but Duke said that the whole thing was
Speaker 1: she Hands. I Sheehan was a fan of Mad Anthony Wayne,
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War general, because he had been tough and
Speaker 1: a nonconformist. The John seems to have been an afterthought,
Speaker 1: but it worked. Gave the two halves of the name
Speaker 1: the equivalence of two blocks of granite that miraculously fit together.
Speaker 1: And one of the things Wayne will later say that
Speaker 1: I think it's true is that it kind of works
Speaker 1: as a single thing you call him like John Wayne
Speaker 1: is a single name on its own, Like it's not
Speaker 1: something you split up in your head. And that's part
Speaker 1: of why it's so it became so iconic. Um So
Speaker 1: obviously they picked this name for him, which is I
Speaker 1: think objectively a good decision. You can't argue with the results. Um,
Speaker 1: Wayne John's not you'd call him Wayne or John's, but
Speaker 1: you wouldn't call him Wayne John's. Yeah, Wayne, Wayne John fails.
Speaker 1: Wayne John can't lift a couch. Terrible name. Absolutely not. No, No,
Speaker 1: Wayne John is not a chod John Wayne hardcore chowed.
Speaker 1: I love I love your interpret like your definition of
Speaker 1: chowed because very different than I think what my understanding
Speaker 1: of the word showed is, which is like a short
Speaker 1: dick I have I have chosen, I have taken it
Speaker 1: from the show. I think you should leave so as
Speaker 1: I do every single thing I say. Look, I love that.
Speaker 1: So Fox, you know, they change this guy's name. Um,
Speaker 1: and when they do their press releases and stuff. In
Speaker 1: the movie he's going to be in the big trail.
Speaker 1: They have to like come up with a backstory for him,
Speaker 1: and they just lie all the time in these right,
Speaker 1: Like they don't give a ship what your actual backstory is.
Speaker 1: Fox is going to make up whatever it seems best.
Speaker 1: So they decided to say that his birth name was
Speaker 1: Wayne Morrison, which for whatever reason sounded better for them
Speaker 1: than the truth. Um, and John's fine with this. He
Speaker 1: doesn't fight back. His museum states quote it was okay
Speaker 1: with him. If the people paying his salary wanted to
Speaker 1: spruce up his name, Um, which is reasonable as a
Speaker 1: poor kid. If somebody's like, hey, we can make you
Speaker 1: rich and famous, but you gotta pick a different fuck it.
Speaker 1: I don't give a ship. Call me whatever. You can
Speaker 1: call iced Tea, I don't. Yeah. Yeah, so please take
Speaker 1: that name away from she took the only good name
Speaker 1: I had. Give a good name to my fucking brother.
Speaker 1: But that's crazy that you're not only invincing like a
Speaker 1: stage name, but you're like even your given name is
Speaker 1: not tough enough. You can't let people know you were
Speaker 1: ever called Marian. You're not going to buy that, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: So the Big Trail is not a good shoot. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's what you might call a problem. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know you You've you've been on some sets,
Speaker 1: Francesca Um, probably more than me, certainly more than may Im.
Speaker 1: And I guess, uh so you tell me how normal
Speaker 1: this all sounds. I mean I've uggled them. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I guess I've been on like a set or two.
Speaker 1: What's up? Yeah? So the cast and crew had to
Speaker 1: travel out to Huma, Arizona, and Duke now John Wayne
Speaker 1: shows up on set drunk and he stays that way
Speaker 1: for days. Um, he gets horrible diarrhea instantly, he gets
Speaker 1: sick from the water and he can barely function, and
Speaker 1: he's almost immediately like both so sick that he can't
Speaker 1: walk and still drinking. Um, so this is his first
Speaker 1: start and this is his first starring. Row shows up
Speaker 1: hammered and then start shooting himself. Amazing, incredible, unbelievable. Is
Speaker 1: that where he gets his actual cowboy walk known only
Speaker 1: the lead but sort of the wide leg, like I
Speaker 1: just shot my past. I don't want to smear this
Speaker 1: too much. Yeah. Um so ironized Cody, the Italian man
Speaker 1: who pretended to be a Native American person, takes care
Speaker 1: of John Wayne during this period when he's got deadly diarrhea,
Speaker 1: and Jensen, the biographer claims quote gave him various Indian
Speaker 1: remedies for diarrhea. Now again, iron eyed Cody not an
Speaker 1: indigenous person, so God only knows. He's just spoon feeding him. Basta.
Speaker 1: It was just just a little molla. He is a
Speaker 1: classic food of the planes. Uppa settles the stomach every time.
Speaker 1: It's like, well that's some I don't understand magic. But
Speaker 1: thank you, Cody. He just smacked him. Yeah, he's literally
Speaker 1: just cooking a pizza and enough and everybody's like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, look at his hes. Not whiskey is not
Speaker 1: a meal. Um. So, after, in Cody's words, quote, puking
Speaker 1: and crapping blood for a week, the director of the film, Walsh,
Speaker 1: is forced to shoot the movie around his star, who
Speaker 1: was actively dying at this point. He loses like eighteen
Speaker 1: pounds in a couple of weeks. So again, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that he is pooping himself to death, he does
Speaker 1: not quit drinking all day every day. Jensen writes that
Speaker 1: this was partly a factor of him wanting to show
Speaker 1: up all of the other drunk people on set. Quote,
Speaker 1: he had to show these self important actors that he
Speaker 1: was as manly as they were. He drank like crazy,
Speaker 1: which prolonged his dysentery. Nothing more manly than shooting your
Speaker 1: pants on a set. That is that is what shows
Speaker 1: you're tough, pooping yourself to death because you drink so much.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how Johnny Depp got into character for
Speaker 1: Pirates of the Caribbeans. That is actually accurate. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: it is also how Johnny Depp got in the character
Speaker 1: for being Johnny Depp. Yes, every day, it's just rings
Speaker 1: and shipping his pants. Yeah, exactly, That's that's really all
Speaker 1: he needs. So iron eyed Cody recalled that one night
Speaker 1: the drinking got completely out of hand. Uh, the Apaches
Speaker 1: hired to work on the film, got really wasted and
Speaker 1: decided to attack the settlers. Um. They raced into location
Speaker 1: set on their horses, drunkenly firing arrows into the wagons,
Speaker 1: the town set, and even the tents in which some
Speaker 1: of the cast and crew were sleeping. By the way,
Speaker 1: I have no idea if any of these guys were
Speaker 1: actually Apache. If they're just cast that way, it's probably
Speaker 1: a mix. Like a lot of them are probably like Cody,
Speaker 1: just like Italian dude, Like who knows, Um, it is
Speaker 1: Hollywood in the twenties. Um. So Cody wakes John Wayne
Speaker 1: up to warn him that, like, hey, a bunch of
Speaker 1: the crew were shooting arrows at other people. Like it's
Speaker 1: kind of a big mess. As it heads up, there's
Speaker 1: like an arrow fight going on on set. Um, And
Speaker 1: he sees that Duke is like too drunk to like
Speaker 1: know what's going on. So Cody sees these these actors
Speaker 1: on horses coming and he decides, well, I might as
Speaker 1: well join them. So he gets on his horse and
Speaker 1: just start shooting arrows at the set and apparently Duke
Speaker 1: just keeps lying down and drinking the entire time. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's fun. That sounds like a fun filming set
Speaker 1: to do. Oh the Golden years of Hollywood. Like this
Speaker 1: guy can't even get up, No he's not. Like half
Speaker 1: the set is like drunk and pretending to be indigenous
Speaker 1: and shooting arrows at the other half of the set. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the star are is drunken, shifting his pants
Speaker 1: on on the floor. Just grown up cowboys and Indians. Yeah,
Speaker 1: grown up seems like too strong a term. Yeah. Um
Speaker 1: it's a bunch of seven year olds with access to
Speaker 1: liquor and real arrows. Yeah. Yeah, So the studio is
Speaker 1: not psyched with their big star. This is not a
Speaker 1: great first performance. You know, even in the thirties, you
Speaker 1: wanted a guy who, for example, could hold off on
Speaker 1: the being an alcoholic long enough to make the movie. Um.
Speaker 1: Wayne does eventually dry out enough to become functional, and
Speaker 1: it's because another actor sits down to drink with him,
Speaker 1: and instead of giving him normal whiskey gives him what moonshine,
Speaker 1: basically peer ever Clear, and so John Wayne drinks like
Speaker 1: essentially hundred and eighty proof Ever Clear with a stomach bug,
Speaker 1: which makes him so sick that he stops drinking for
Speaker 1: a while. Is there anything alcohol can't do? You just
Speaker 1: have the jangle keys in front of face, but like yeah,
Speaker 1: like worse alcohol for him. Yeah. So the Big Trail
Speaker 1: flops not it doesn't do super well. Although people today
Speaker 1: will claim it was a really good movie. It just
Speaker 1: isn't like a huge hit at the time kind of
Speaker 1: is not seen as very successful. But it's people will
Speaker 1: argue it's it's a pretty good movie. Um, those people
Speaker 1: are fucking lying. Like, I don't know, it seems maybe
Speaker 1: it was good, Like who knows. I would watch the
Speaker 1: behind the scenes once again, Sure I would much Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like like the documentary about the making of The Isle
Speaker 1: of dr Moreau, Like I haven't seen it, but believe
Speaker 1: it's it's The director initial director of the film was
Speaker 1: a wizard who went crazy and got fired and decided
Speaker 1: to live in the jungle and sneak onto set in
Speaker 1: costume every day while they were trying to make the movie.
Speaker 1: It's it's fucking awesome. It's such a fun story. Say it, okay, Um,
Speaker 1: can I just put it? Didn't say that ironized Cody's
Speaker 1: real name? Yeah? Well, Espera Oscar DECORTI also like a
Speaker 1: really effeminate name, Espada. Yeah, so no wonder he and
Speaker 1: Marian got along. Um no, it's it's very funny. I
Speaker 1: do like the image of him like feeding lasagna to
Speaker 1: John Wayne and pretending it's like an ancient Apache remedy
Speaker 1: for I can't figure out what he's doing, and all
Speaker 1: of the other Italians and costume are like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's an ancient remedy. Oh, Hollywood was pretty racist. Um
Speaker 1: still is so the Big Trail. You know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: kill his career entirely, because a lot of people do
Speaker 1: see it as a pretty decent movie. Um, but it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It does, like poorly enough that he spends most of
Speaker 1: the next decade kind of just hanging in there as
Speaker 1: an actor. He's he's moved up solidly from prop Boy,
Speaker 1: but he's also kind of a side character. He's like
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan, right, he's not unknown. But no in this
Speaker 1: period really considers themselves a John Wayne fan. You know,
Speaker 1: like they've got a career. They're doing okay, but they're
Speaker 1: also not like they're never like top build usually, right,
Speaker 1: they're not they're not going to move a lot of
Speaker 1: butts into seats. Um and Westerns are pretty much all
Speaker 1: this out there. Correct, There's a lot. No, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of gangster movies. There's a lot of romance flicks.
Speaker 1: There's some like war pictures and stuff like. But westerns
Speaker 1: are they're like the Marvel movies of the day broadly speaking, right,
Speaker 1: Like they're the most number one what tends to get
Speaker 1: like not like they're kind of the most consistent way
Speaker 1: people are making a bunch of money. They're like superhero
Speaker 1: films broader than Marvel because there's cheap ones too, because
Speaker 1: you can make them pretty cheap sometimes. And this is
Speaker 1: the Fast and the Furious franchise. Yeah, I don't know, right,
Speaker 1: Like in these are a lot of your action films, right,
Speaker 1: this is what puts butts in seats. These are the
Speaker 1: popcorn flicks. Right. And John Wayne kind of for a
Speaker 1: decade is sort of a side character and those sort
Speaker 1: of movies. Right, He's rarely gonna be a particularly big
Speaker 1: because he's not a big draw. You know. This changes
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine when John gets finally cast in
Speaker 1: a john Ford Cowboy film called Stagecoach. If you have
Speaker 1: ever whenever you are watching like a movie or a
Speaker 1: TV show that mentions John Wayne or cowboy movies, you
Speaker 1: will see the same clip from the movie Stage Coach.
Speaker 1: And it is John Wayne with a lever action gun
Speaker 1: that he flips over and over in his hand as
Speaker 1: he fires while walking onto screen, and it like slowly
Speaker 1: zooms on in us face. It is one of the
Speaker 1: most iconic scenes in Western cinema. Among other things, it's
Speaker 1: entirely why Terminator to the action scenes initially are shot
Speaker 1: the way. It's why Arnold in that movie gets a
Speaker 1: lever action shotgun that he can flip around and fire.
Speaker 1: It's this really iconic moment that makes its way into
Speaker 1: a bunch of modern pop culture right um, And that
Speaker 1: is the moment, that moment when John Wayne walks on
Speaker 1: scene in Stagecoach that makes him as a star. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from a BuzzFeed right up by Anna
Speaker 1: Helen Peterson. Stagecoach was intended as an ensemble picture. Wayne
Speaker 1: doesn't even show up until fifteen minutes into the film,
Speaker 1: but When he does, It's with a Heroes intro. Wayne
Speaker 1: twirls his rifle as if it were a pistol as
Speaker 1: the camera zooms into a glorious close up of Wayne's face.
Speaker 1: It's become one of the most iconic scenes in classic cinema,
Speaker 1: and Wayne's way out of Quickie Western purgatory. Gradually, Wayne
Speaker 1: became something of a leading man. He was in Ford's
Speaker 1: next picture, The Long Voyage Home as a Swedish fisherman,
Speaker 1: and played a Navy officer opposite Marlene Dietrich in Seven Centers.
Speaker 1: Wayne's westernness was treated as a matter of fact. He was,
Speaker 1: in photoplays words, the typical Western American, open faced and
Speaker 1: open minded, but the press also emphasized that he enjoyed
Speaker 1: the finer things. Wayne dressed with meticulous care like any
Speaker 1: well capped businessman, looks divine and tucks her tails, and
Speaker 1: doesn't wean a guitar or sing sad pieces about Western
Speaker 1: skies either. He lived in an exquisitely furnished home and
Speaker 1: the swinkiest section of Hollywood, and has no yin for
Speaker 1: horses off screen, so he becomes huge after this right
Speaker 1: stagecoach makes him into a leading man and he kind
Speaker 1: of immediately takes off in Hollywood. Part of it is
Speaker 1: that he's been in film twenty years at this point,
Speaker 1: he's in his he's like forty, Um, he's old enough
Speaker 1: to get he's one of these guys who doesn't look
Speaker 1: right until he gets kind of grizzled. Um. And so
Speaker 1: he gets very popular for that. And he doesn't just
Speaker 1: get cast as the stead in westerns um. And he's
Speaker 1: kind of the first cowboy actor who's more actor than cowboy,
Speaker 1: because the previous generation, guys like John Mix, are real cowboys,
Speaker 1: you know, like that's how they learned. Wayne isn't really
Speaker 1: like he's he's got some of that in his background, right,
Speaker 1: Like he has some claim to it, but it's he's
Speaker 1: kind of you know, he's a fancy dandy boy. You know,
Speaker 1: he wants to he's just having a good time being
Speaker 1: a rich guy. Yeah, and and he grew up poor,
Speaker 1: so it's like, yeah, he's gonna want to not ride
Speaker 1: a horse to a crop set right. Right. It's often
Speaker 1: framed as like he hated horses, and he's like, no,
Speaker 1: he just had to do that as a kid. He
Speaker 1: probably doesn't want to do it anymore. Like he's too
Speaker 1: many horses. But that's really interesting that like it takes
Speaker 1: especially in the Westerns, and maybe in this time that
Speaker 1: like having an older hero was much more compelling than like,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, the Tom Hollins of today, like
Speaker 1: a little baby face Spider Man. You're like, no, you
Speaker 1: want a grizzled guy was killed many, many, many people.
Speaker 1: You want a guy who's like, looks like he's kind
Speaker 1: of seen some ship, who can who can play that
Speaker 1: off a little bit, And he doesn't. Even this isn't
Speaker 1: really the height of his career because he's still kind
Speaker 1: of young at this point. Um, but yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the first time he gets his big snakes. He's old
Speaker 1: enough to you know, to look like he's been through
Speaker 1: some stuff. Um. Now, there's one last PostScript to the
Speaker 1: story of Stagecoach. While it ignited John Wayne's career, by
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, Tom Fix was largely out of work
Speaker 1: and desperate for a good job. He asked John Ford
Speaker 1: for a part on Stage Coach, and Mix would allege
Speaker 1: until his death that John Wayne begged Ford not to
Speaker 1: give Mixed the part, sabotaged the guy who got him
Speaker 1: his first job, right, real piece of shit, you know,
Speaker 1: I know you're gonna get like, oh my god, that's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it was supposed to be an ensemble cast or
Speaker 1: it is an ensemble cast everybody. Yeah, But you know,
Speaker 1: if if Mixes in there, maybe that's gonna take some
Speaker 1: shine away from John Wayne. He's not gonna because mix
Speaker 1: is a better cowboy actor. Maybe that's gonna funk with
Speaker 1: John Wayne's ability to, uh, you know shine on set
Speaker 1: right now? Does he learn anything in these in these years?
Speaker 1: Like is he a better alcoholic? Number one? He's an
Speaker 1: incredible alcohol You gotta give him credit for that. The
Speaker 1: King like really, honestly, this is a separate story. But
Speaker 1: and I do my podcast on the heroes of drunk driving.
Speaker 1: He's one of the most influential drunk drivers they're ever
Speaker 1: really invented a lot of modern drunk driving techniques, holding
Speaker 1: a beer in between his legs, uh, screaming at his
Speaker 1: wife drunkenly from in the back seat while he drives,
Speaker 1: like all of those John Wayne originals in the closet
Speaker 1: when nobody could piss in a closet like John Wayne.
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. You know what else is oscar worthy? These ads?
Speaker 1: And we're back, uh, and the Oscar for best, ad
Speaker 1: goes to the one about how Mattresses no longer uses
Speaker 1: rare earth minerals mind by slave labor in the congo
Speaker 1: to make their beds. Not anymore, not anymore. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was back in That was back in the seventeen hundreds
Speaker 1: when Mattress was better known as the East India Trading Company. Um,
Speaker 1: they've moved on now they just ship people mattresses. It's fine,
Speaker 1: We've forgiven them. Yeah, you need to forgive them too.
Speaker 1: That's the message of our Oscar winning Mattress ad. So
Speaker 1: in the Ford films Seven Centers, John Wayne played opposite
Speaker 1: Marlena Dietrich and she's the real actress who inspired the
Speaker 1: fictional Bridget von hammers Mark and Inglorious Bastards. So in
Speaker 1: that movie, she is the German actress that Quentin Tarantino
Speaker 1: insisted on strangling on camera for very unclear reasons. Um
Speaker 1: or maybe not so unclear reasons. I don't I'm not
Speaker 1: enough of an expert on that. But it's weird, right,
Speaker 1: we gotta agree, it's weird. It's kind of uncomfortable that
Speaker 1: he did that. Yeah, yeah, I'm remembering that. That's in
Speaker 1: the Yes, yes, yes, it's like the Yeah he wanted
Speaker 1: it to be his hands on on camera that strangled her.
Speaker 1: Very weird. Um, but your feet fucking Quintin Tarantino. So, Um,
Speaker 1: she's the real actress that that lady is based off of.
Speaker 1: She's quite a star, one of the most famous leading
Speaker 1: ladies ever and certainly in this period. Um, kind of
Speaker 1: top of the fucking female you know, actor food chain. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: in real life, Wayne and Dietrich started hooking up immediately. Um,
Speaker 1: she is way more experienced than him. Um she oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she is Marlen di Dietrich, and he is is an
Speaker 1: awkward boy who spends most of his time drunk with
Speaker 1: a bunch of dudes on a yacht. Um. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that like he obviously he gets super
Speaker 1: into this thing. He's also kind of insecure with her
Speaker 1: and around her because she's more experienced than him and
Speaker 1: more famous than him. Um, so a few things are
Speaker 1: going on here. This is kind of a complex relationship,
Speaker 1: although I think from marline she just likes fucking hot actors.
Speaker 1: You know, he's the one who starts developing some complexes
Speaker 1: around this. Hey boy, boy, lift that couch over there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, hang on, Let me, pour some oil on
Speaker 1: your back. Keep doing that. No, no, I didn't say
Speaker 1: come yet. So obviously he's still married to Josie at
Speaker 1: this point. His his wife, of course, when they get married,
Speaker 1: when and his gife getting married, Like their friends from
Speaker 1: the beginning are like, well, this isn't going to last.
Speaker 1: He is incapable of not cheating on you constantly, and
Speaker 1: you are super catholic now heartbreaking, Lee. Josie adores her husband. Um,
Speaker 1: John mostly seems to be distracted and frustrated by her.
Speaker 1: She feels like his acting like her attitude is I
Speaker 1: just gotta put up with this for a little while.
Speaker 1: Nobody is in acting very long. Eventually it'll he'll get
Speaker 1: too old. It'll be a short feeling for him, um,
Speaker 1: and then he'll figure out something more serious to do
Speaker 1: with his life. Um John Wayne kind of views his
Speaker 1: wife and children the same way, right, even my whole thing,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. So, he would later complain to friends
Speaker 1: that he and Josie only had sex four times during
Speaker 1: their marriage. Fucking probably a lie, but like a gross one.
Speaker 1: So mean dude, Um, he's just so angry that like,
Speaker 1: what does that say about you two? Like that's obviously
Speaker 1: doesn't look good on you, bron. Maybe she would want
Speaker 1: to suck you more if she didn't feel like you
Speaker 1: were sucking every single other person in town because she's
Speaker 1: not into that ship. Like, maybe maybe your behavior is
Speaker 1: having an impact on the things you don't like about
Speaker 1: your marriage. John Wayne, He's not going to into my wife,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like those kids four nuts. Honestly,
Speaker 1: that was it, in and out, five pomps, four nuts.
Speaker 1: I mean really not even that hot, Like my wife's
Speaker 1: not as hot as Marlen. Wow, you are just quoting
Speaker 1: directly from his o biography. The story of It showed
Speaker 1: the tale of John Way. Uh so he's initially, some
Speaker 1: people will say, was kind of morally conflicted about all
Speaker 1: the sleeping around he was doing. But by the time
Speaker 1: he's an actual star, it becomes just like totally Uh
Speaker 1: it becomes just like so routine to him that he
Speaker 1: stops trying to hide it. So everyone in Hollywood knows
Speaker 1: that John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich are sleeping with each other.
Speaker 1: Um they do not even like they They're out in
Speaker 1: public together at events while Josie is eight months pregnant,
Speaker 1: which doesn't do She's not happy you know that's not great.
Speaker 1: That's not a great position to put someone in. Um.
Speaker 1: So she confronts him over it. But she's also too
Speaker 1: Catholic to divorce him, right, Like, you don't do that.
Speaker 1: So she's yeah, it's it's growny um like his parents
Speaker 1: got divorced. Yeah, because pars and he it's interesting years
Speaker 1: earlier or whatever that he doesn't push divorce U because
Speaker 1: he could have. And Jensen, one of his biographers, suspects
Speaker 1: that this is because he's still too possessive and insecure
Speaker 1: about her. Um. And I'm gonna he's actually the piece
Speaker 1: of ship in the relationship. Oh for sure, Absolutely, he's
Speaker 1: the piece of ship in this relationship. I don't know
Speaker 1: much about Josie, but I know that John Wayne is
Speaker 1: the bad guy in this relationship. Um. I'm going to
Speaker 1: read a quote about him as a as a husband
Speaker 1: and a father from from Jensen's book. He demanded his
Speaker 1: children profess their love to him on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: Barely Able to sleep, Duke awoke every day before dawn
Speaker 1: and demanded the entire house rise with him, even if
Speaker 1: it was a day off for family and friends. He
Speaker 1: had a litany of rules based upon superstitions, which were
Speaker 1: a result of the childhood of poverty and emotional abuse
Speaker 1: by his mother. Ever, convinced that he was destined for ruined,
Speaker 1: Duke consisted that the superstitions be followed or his life
Speaker 1: would collapse into abject failure. So he he he makes
Speaker 1: bizarre rules for his family. He screams at them if
Speaker 1: they put hats on beds. Can't do that around John.
Speaker 1: If you if you spill salt, you have to toss
Speaker 1: it over your shoulder, which is not an uncommon thing
Speaker 1: in this day. Umbrella's can only be opened outside. No
Speaker 1: one can hand him a salt shaker. You don't hand
Speaker 1: John Wayne a salt shaker. You know what's really funny
Speaker 1: about that is that I like, I lived in Latin
Speaker 1: America for a while and the same thing, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: just the superstistent you put the salt on the table,
Speaker 1: then you can pick it up. Yeah, there's like a
Speaker 1: lot like this is not he didn't invent this. It's
Speaker 1: not like only to him. Maybe the no hats on
Speaker 1: beds thing. I haven't heard that before. That's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: But is he like, you know, you know, look me
Speaker 1: in the eyes when we toast otherwise seven years bad luck.
Speaker 1: You know that one's true? Yea, like seven years of
Speaker 1: bad sex or whatever it is, even though I've only
Speaker 1: done it with your mom four times, four times at
Speaker 1: the dinner table after screaming about salt. Uh. But what
Speaker 1: does it mean, professor? Love like just every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta tell dad that he's a good dad before
Speaker 1: he goes out to fun Marlene Dietrich on Rodeo drive
Speaker 1: out in public. He doesn't start it like it can't
Speaker 1: be him to say I love you first. That is unclear.
Speaker 1: But he does not strike me as I say I
Speaker 1: love you first kind of dude. I don't know. Maybe so. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's also like this around his friends. He's got these
Speaker 1: card playing buddies that he plays cards with, and if
Speaker 1: somebody sets a card on the table face up by accident,
Speaker 1: they have to get up and circle their chair three
Speaker 1: times in order to avoid bad luck. Um. So he's
Speaker 1: you know again, this is not I think people might
Speaker 1: be I want to say, this is like O C. D.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe I'm not going to diagnose him,
Speaker 1: but these are all like superstitions that exist at the time,
Speaker 1: and he's just this is not an uncommon thing with
Speaker 1: people who like grow up in desperate situations where they
Speaker 1: get super paranoid about not wanting to do anything that
Speaker 1: can make ship go wrong for them, because they understand
Speaker 1: how fragile successes um and how shitty it is when
Speaker 1: you're dirt poor. I get it, you know, not that
Speaker 1: it's good, but I understand what's going on in his
Speaker 1: head here. I think. So while he's keeping a tight
Speaker 1: eye on his wife and kids, he escalates his relationship
Speaker 1: with Dietrich. She later claimed that she more or less
Speaker 1: directed their affair as the more experienced partner. Quote what
Speaker 1: pleased me most was he wasn't vain or arrogant, Far
Speaker 1: from it. He was insecure as an actor, worried about
Speaker 1: his talent or what he felt was a lack of it.
Speaker 1: As a man. He was a little insecure and vulnerable.
Speaker 1: I was able to help in both respects. We had
Speaker 1: a small affair, a small friendship, which we both enjoyed.
Speaker 1: Now that's to her again, marleya Dietrich, huge star. Uh.
Speaker 1: He it's a bigger thing for him, and it's definitely
Speaker 1: a bigger thing for his wife, for whom this is devastating, right,
Speaker 1: Mereley just like, yeah, you know is he was he
Speaker 1: was young. He needed somebody to show him the ropes
Speaker 1: and like make him feel better about himself. I did that.
Speaker 1: It's whatever. Then I wanted Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed that
Speaker 1: he didn't know how to talk back to me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was a little wife. How cute months pregnant, she's
Speaker 1: fat four children? Yes, but that's really interesting that. I
Speaker 1: mean it might I'm curious to how this ends because
Speaker 1: I feel like it's foreboding, like she clearly he was
Speaker 1: clearly obsessed with Well, that's an interesting part here. So
Speaker 1: John Wayne was actually in Mexico partying with Dietrich while
Speaker 1: his wife Josie delivers their fourth child and second daughter,
Speaker 1: Melinda Um. So their relationship continued for some time, and
Speaker 1: while Wayne definitely got along better with Dietrich than he
Speaker 1: did with his wife, it was also a tempestuous relationship.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to read a real rough quote from
Speaker 1: the true life of John Wayne here. Duke handled her
Speaker 1: the way he handled every woman in his life. When
Speaker 1: she provoked him, he punched her, and it didn't matter
Speaker 1: if it was in public. On location for the Spoilers
Speaker 1: in Lake Arrowhead, California, Duke and Marlene were rehearsing a
Speaker 1: scene for the film. Duke suggested one way to play
Speaker 1: the scene, and Marlen suggested another. Duke pressed his point
Speaker 1: and Marlene finally shot back, that's a dumb idea. Duke's
Speaker 1: face turned to stone and his eyes burned with suppressed rage.
Speaker 1: As the camera was about to roll, Duke angrily retied
Speaker 1: his bandanna, which he'd loosened between takes. Uh. Duke tied
Speaker 1: a bigger than normal not and Marlen saw it and
Speaker 1: told him, you don't even know how to tie a bandana. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: Duke exploded. He swung a huge fist in a roundhouse
Speaker 1: right and hit Marlen right in the face. She went flying,
Speaker 1: landing hard in the rough dirt. Marlene lay sprawled on
Speaker 1: the ground for a moment, gathering her senses. She didn't
Speaker 1: cry now, no, no, she was on the ground and
Speaker 1: straight up. When she came to she lit a cigarette.
Speaker 1: That's well, it's actually more uncomfortable than that, Francesca, because
Speaker 1: according to Jensen, whose source here is the actress Margaret Lindsay,
Speaker 1: who is there on set when this happens, she looks
Speaker 1: up at him with a tense arousal, gets up and
Speaker 1: gives him what is described by this other actress as
Speaker 1: a love punch, and then they start making out. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you want to do with this information? How do you
Speaker 1: want to parse that all out? But that's what someone
Speaker 1: else who was there says, went down. I've been waiting
Speaker 1: for you to do that since the moment I met you.
Speaker 1: He will, he will be repeatedly physically abusive to people,
Speaker 1: to women specifically, throughout his life. It is unclear to
Speaker 1: me if that's what's going on here or if they
Speaker 1: just had kind of a thing where that I don't
Speaker 1: I really don't know, Like I don't know what's going
Speaker 1: on with these two. Um. I mean it's interesting though,
Speaker 1: because she as even though she did that, you got
Speaker 1: to think about being a star like her in that
Speaker 1: time you're on set, this guy who you're sleeping with,
Speaker 1: who's younger, more inexperienced, hits you. What are you gonna do,
Speaker 1: like cry or be mad wherever that shows so much
Speaker 1: vulne ability, You're gonna get up and be like, No,
Speaker 1: I liked it. It's exactly whatever. You know. That is
Speaker 1: much more a position of strength when you've got to
Speaker 1: protect your image, that's right, right, And that's a huge,
Speaker 1: probably part of what's like. I I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know these people obviously, Um, but that seems really plausible
Speaker 1: to me. Um yeah, fucking embarrassing otherwise. And again, a
Speaker 1: number of people through the years and other circumstances see
Speaker 1: John Wayne hit women in public, like with his fists.
Speaker 1: Not that like a slap is okay either, but like
Speaker 1: specifically like punching them. Um, it's just like a thing
Speaker 1: John Wayne does, like his, like his, like his mentor
Speaker 1: John Ford. Um, cool dudes, learned it from the best.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it is also Yeah, so Duke's relationship with
Speaker 1: Marlene fell apart for the same reason so many of
Speaker 1: his relationships did. He started fucking a teenage girl in Mexico.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, so that's why this doesn't work out. She
Speaker 1: may have been working as a prostitute it at the time.
Speaker 1: Her exact background is kind of unclear. Some sources will
Speaker 1: say her mother ran a brothel that was very popular
Speaker 1: with the actors and that's where John Wayne meets her. Um,
Speaker 1: but we know that he definitely at age thirty four.
Speaker 1: I think starts fucking at the oldest She's like seventeen
Speaker 1: at this point. Um. Her name is Esperanza Bauer. She
Speaker 1: goes by Chatta. UM. Biographer Randy Roberts writes in his
Speaker 1: book John Wayne American Quote, Chata's life before nineteen forty
Speaker 1: one is a mystery. She was never accepted in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and rumors circulated at the time that she met John
Speaker 1: Wayne that she was working as a high priced call
Speaker 1: girl and a bit actress in the Mexican film industry.
Speaker 1: Pillar Wayne later wrote that Chatta was born in the
Speaker 1: slums of Mexico City and became a prostitute to escape poverty.
Speaker 1: Others said that when Chatta and Duke met, she was
Speaker 1: married to a Mexican student named Eugenio Morrison. We really
Speaker 1: don't know what her background is, but we know she
Speaker 1: is a teenager and possibly a sex worker. Hard to say, Um, Roberts. Chata, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe even the worst, which is not a sex
Speaker 1: worker but the daughter of something a traffic was not
Speaker 1: actually working. And then it's hard. Yeah, we really do
Speaker 1: not know the precise details here other than that it's
Speaker 1: for sure gross, right, it's for sure gross. It's for
Speaker 1: sure bad stuff. Um, it's just the exact dimensions of
Speaker 1: like what precisely was going on is kind of unclear,
Speaker 1: but it's for sure bad. And I should note here
Speaker 1: that like Roberts's book is way classier and it's description
Speaker 1: of Chata the Jensen's book. Sure, it's called What American
Speaker 1: John Made American? Well gee, I mean because Jensen is
Speaker 1: like the most negative book about John Wayne. But it's
Speaker 1: also written by a dude who was writing at least
Speaker 1: in a pretty gross time, and I think was kind
Speaker 1: of gross himself because he describes Chata as quote, an
Speaker 1: underaged prostitute with a spoking body and amazing good looks.
Speaker 1: I call the ship Jensen what the funk, dude? And
Speaker 1: that's her biography. If you are describing someone as an
Speaker 1: underaged prostitute, the whatever comes next should never include the
Speaker 1: phrase smoking body. Never you have just stated you're talking
Speaker 1: about a child. Richard Jensen, God, what a again? John
Speaker 1: Wayne biographer is probably only moderately less terrible than John Wayne.
Speaker 1: No exactly, he's only a few gradations better on the
Speaker 1: me too creep predator scale. And again, I also I
Speaker 1: am unclear as to how much we should like. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are arguing someone's underage, you
Speaker 1: should always say sex trafficking victim rather than prostitute. But also,
Speaker 1: this is a real different time, and I don't know
Speaker 1: the extent to which she has agency in her life,
Speaker 1: and seventeen is means a different thing in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: nine than it does today in some ways, Like I
Speaker 1: have no idea what's going on. I have no idea
Speaker 1: whether she's a victim of her mom or if she
Speaker 1: is pursuing a rich guy to get out of like
Speaker 1: Mexico and into the United States, and like like, who,
Speaker 1: I don't know, what's I mean from brothel to Hollywood,
Speaker 1: Like I'll take the deal. Because she's also trying to
Speaker 1: get a career in Hollywood, which John Wayne attempts to
Speaker 1: help her with. So like, there's there's stuff going on here.
Speaker 1: It's certainly horrific behavior on John Wayne's part, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? John Wayne falls in love. He says, um,
Speaker 1: he will for years call her his true love even
Speaker 1: after they have split up. And he punches Oh, he
Speaker 1: punches her a lot. He punches her a lot. Um,
Speaker 1: So whatever is going on in her background, Wayne falls
Speaker 1: in love immediately He moves her to California, where he
Speaker 1: has her tell people she's twenty four years old. Um,
Speaker 1: so he knows this is again we just said, like
Speaker 1: these are somewhat different times and some of this stuff
Speaker 1: is viewed differently. But john Wayne knows this is gross
Speaker 1: enough that he has to age her up, you know, Like,
Speaker 1: so again that different yeah even for Hollywood people like
Speaker 1: that's kind of young John. Um, he starts trying one
Speaker 1: of the things that's important to him. And again, we
Speaker 1: don't know how much it is that she wanted a
Speaker 1: career in movies. There's an argument to be made that
Speaker 1: he wanted her to be seen as having a career,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't look like he just trafficked a girl
Speaker 1: from Mexico into Hollywood. Um. So, whatever is going on
Speaker 1: here again? Super messy? Uh, super messed up. Um. Marlena
Speaker 1: Dietrich when she finds out that what he's doing that
Speaker 1: he's that he set this girl up with an apartment
Speaker 1: in Hollywood and brought her into the country, she dumps him.
Speaker 1: She's like, no, no, no, like that's that's fucking weird.
Speaker 1: John So, Um, I don't know. Good for Marlene. I
Speaker 1: guess she's fine. He's still married to Josie at this
Speaker 1: point though, and if she wasn't happy with Marlene Dietrich,
Speaker 1: she's really not happy with with this. Um not psyched
Speaker 1: about what what John is doing. Um. Now her parents
Speaker 1: are both high society Catholics, and so he's called upon
Speaker 1: regularly to show up at events and functions. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know he's surly because he'd rather be fucking someone
Speaker 1: who is at the oldest now nineteen, right, they've been
Speaker 1: together a couple of points, So he just acts like
Speaker 1: a jick the parties. He's goes the events to cruise
Speaker 1: for like young Catholic girls. He goes to the events
Speaker 1: so that everyone knows how much he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: be there, Like he sulks because he'd rather be with
Speaker 1: his like teenage mistress in the apartment that he makes
Speaker 1: the studio pay for her in Hollywood. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the family friends was like and they did. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he's like, not only is he cheating on his
Speaker 1: wife with a teenager, but he has to like make
Speaker 1: sure everybody knows how unfair he thinks it is that
Speaker 1: he has to show up at parties where adults are Um.
Speaker 1: Cool guy, John Wayne, Um, what a dude. So Hollywood
Speaker 1: is helping bank roll sort of the because he's too
Speaker 1: big of a cash cow for them to like making
Speaker 1: them a lot of money. Yeah, this is the early forties.
Speaker 1: He moves chat at a Hollywood in the spring of
Speaker 1: forty three. Some will argue that it was like part
Speaker 1: of what he was doing by having the studio pay
Speaker 1: for her apartment and pay for her to like they
Speaker 1: would give her like money every month, that it was
Speaker 1: partly like a tax dodge, like that's how he received
Speaker 1: some of his salaries so that it wasn't taxed. I
Speaker 1: don't know how to evaluate the truth of that, but
Speaker 1: it does sound like some movie star shit, like not
Speaker 1: only are you like keeping a secret teenage mistress, but
Speaker 1: you're doing it as a tax dodge, you know, like
Speaker 1: everyone's on board. Yeah, that's that does sound very Hollywood
Speaker 1: and in the nows too, like that's not just a
Speaker 1: forties thing. Um. So the two start seeing each other
Speaker 1: probably in forty one. I think like forty three is
Speaker 1: when she moves to Hollywood. That it's also the year
Speaker 1: one that the United States, helped long by our buddies
Speaker 1: in Japan, decides to give this whole World War two
Speaker 1: thing a try, right, Um, So this is our big
Speaker 1: old patriotic war. Right, every everybody's got to go volunteer
Speaker 1: to fight. It is all but unthinkable for young leading
Speaker 1: men in the prime of their life action movie stars. Right,
Speaker 1: You've got this war where absolutely every man who can
Speaker 1: is doing something. It's considered obscene by a lot of
Speaker 1: people that somebody capable of doing action like in the film,
Speaker 1: somebody like being a war hero in movies, wouldn't go
Speaker 1: volunteer to fight to serve in some way, Right. Jimmy
Speaker 1: Stewart tries to join the Army. He gets rejected as
Speaker 1: being under He has just one, like, I think, an
Speaker 1: Academy award. This is right after It's a wonderful life.
Speaker 1: He's one of the biggest stars in the world. He
Speaker 1: gets rejected for being underweight, so he hires a personal
Speaker 1: trainer so he can bulke up, and he joins the
Speaker 1: Army Air Corps and he flies twenty bomber missions over Europe,
Speaker 1: like the most one of the most dangerous jobs of
Speaker 1: the entire wars. You me, Stewart. He retires as a general, didn't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Stewart bombs like Europe repeatedly, Like he has an
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous job. They didn't need all those bombs some
Speaker 1: of them, yes, but yeah, but it's also like, undeniably,
Speaker 1: as one of the biggest stars in the world, he
Speaker 1: takes a job where like a huge percentage of men
Speaker 1: who do that job die doing it, like it is
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous um And there's a lot of famous actors
Speaker 1: who do similar things. Clark Gable, who was over forty
Speaker 1: at the point and was old enough that he could
Speaker 1: have gotten out of serving, joins the Air Force. Some
Speaker 1: will say he was suicidal because his wife had just died,
Speaker 1: but he flew. He also flies bomber missions. As an
Speaker 1: aerial gunner. Gable is like crammed into a gun in
Speaker 1: the belly of a bomber, like shooting at fighter planes.
Speaker 1: So even though it's not like all these movie stars
Speaker 1: you know, were once action heroes or the detectives or
Speaker 1: in real life, they become them because it's sort of
Speaker 1: still seen as you know, you know, serving your country
Speaker 1: and your role model. Even though like some a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys go on to be politically problematic, but
Speaker 1: they're all human enough to look at the Nazis and
Speaker 1: be like, I should we probably do something about that,
Speaker 1: where we probably got to do something about that, right, right, right,
Speaker 1: or just even even like the idea that you would
Speaker 1: attempt to physically train to be able to like like
Speaker 1: Jimmy could have just like you know, tried to put
Speaker 1: on I just can't do it, you know, off yet
Speaker 1: he committed Oh my god, that yeah, alright. So and
Speaker 1: Henry Fonda, who could have gotten out of the service
Speaker 1: because he had three kids and initially they weren't drafting
Speaker 1: like Father's right, they were trying to keep families together.
Speaker 1: They were mainly drafting singleman. Fonda could have gotten a deferment. Instead,
Speaker 1: he enlists in the Army Air Corps and again, like
Speaker 1: serves his country at war. Now, a lot of big
Speaker 1: stars did not join the military. Gary Cooper doesn't join,
Speaker 1: Bing Crosby, James Cagney. But they're also way over forty
Speaker 1: I think at this point, like they're old enough that like,
Speaker 1: well I just can't you know, I'm an old man.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna slow everybody down, right, which fair enough.
Speaker 1: You probably shouldn't be getting into that stuff. If you're
Speaker 1: Bing Crosby and you have been chain smoking cigarettes since
Speaker 1: age eight, you might not be helpful. Um, But John
Speaker 1: Wayne was young enough to serve. He's in his mid
Speaker 1: thirties at this point, right, he is the prime of
Speaker 1: his life. He is a big strong man. Initially though,
Speaker 1: he qualifies for a deferment, and he gets a deferment
Speaker 1: because he has a wife and kids. Right, I got
Speaker 1: six kids. Keep saying, good old, good old Josie. I
Speaker 1: gotta stay with Josie and the kids. You know, I
Speaker 1: gotta keep him. I gotta keep him, you know, I gotta.
Speaker 1: I want to go out there and fight the crowds.
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong, but this family. I'm so dedicated
Speaker 1: to my family. I've got yeah, yeah, I've got a
Speaker 1: wife to sleep around on. I have kids to ignore. Um.
Speaker 1: So he gets a deferment um, and his studio uses
Speaker 1: his family as an excuse for the fat that he's
Speaker 1: not serving with because the press asked, right, John Wayne's
Speaker 1: a big star, He's not what what are you doing
Speaker 1: in the war? John Wayne? That everyone else is a
Speaker 1: part of um. This exerpt from an article in Modern
Speaker 1: Screen is a good example of how they justified this quote.
Speaker 1: A man of thirty five heading to a family of
Speaker 1: six has to think twice before leaving. Just the same,
Speaker 1: Big John Wayne is restless because, like I said, he's
Speaker 1: a man's man who thinks straight and believes in action.
Speaker 1: It's a dilemma for a family man and an American
Speaker 1: gentleman who wants to make a personal appearance in the
Speaker 1: big scrap. So that's how they frame it as, like, Oh,
Speaker 1: he really wants to get in there. But ah, he's
Speaker 1: just got it. He's got his family. Oh he loved
Speaker 1: to make a cameo, but he's he's a teenager that
Speaker 1: he traffics into the United States. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if you've heard of the Alcoholics Yacht Club. Very
Speaker 1: important work that they're doing out there in Mexico. Really
Speaker 1: the most important branch of the Navy is the Alcoholic
Speaker 1: Yacht Club. Yeah, so he would love to Oh my god,
Speaker 1: he'd so love to be there to help your little war. Ever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now it's very funny too because while he's making these
Speaker 1: claims and forty two and forty three, he has already
Speaker 1: moved Chata into Hollywood and asked his wife for a divorce.
Speaker 1: They are separated. When all of it, when he's claiming
Speaker 1: all of this ship to the press, now, hang on,
Speaker 1: not yet, not yet, honey, don't sign the papers don't
Speaker 1: not quite yet, not quite yet man now, although actually
Speaker 1: I should say he really does want it. Um, she
Speaker 1: refuses to divorce him for a while because you know,
Speaker 1: again she's incredibly Catholic. Uh. And his mentor, patron, John Ford,
Speaker 1: gives him hell to for trying to divorce her because
Speaker 1: he's Catholic. Right, Ford, who again beats his wife relentlessly,
Speaker 1: believes that John Wayne should stay married because that's what
Speaker 1: God wants and just keep cheating on his wife, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the john Ford but also trapped them
Speaker 1: John Come on, yeah, so that's what a fucking like.
Speaker 1: So good on Clyde and Molly. I just want to
Speaker 1: say that, you know, early pioneers a lot of things,
Speaker 1: trying to farm in the desert but also getting a divorce,
Speaker 1: and one of those two things was excecting, abusive, really
Speaker 1: very revolutionary. That Molly was the one doing the abusing
Speaker 1: a plus like incredible work. Um. So it is worth
Speaker 1: emphasizing that John Wayne, while he dodged the draft in
Speaker 1: World War Two, justified it by needing to take care
Speaker 1: of his family. While he's doing this, he is living
Speaker 1: away from his wife in luxury at the Chateau Marmont
Speaker 1: and fucking a girl who is at most nineteen who
Speaker 1: he possibly illegally trafficked into the United States. That part's questionable,
Speaker 1: but um yeah, it's cold so um brand for hollow
Speaker 1: Christian masculinity, like you know, emblem that he is, he
Speaker 1: doesn't actually and kind of the shift of like oh
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, that's the old way is to actually
Speaker 1: put your anywhere your mouth is or do something like
Speaker 1: be a hero. This is like yeah, like is playing
Speaker 1: from this playbook, you know exactly. I'm just like thinking,
Speaker 1: like what if like Jenna Bush was sent to Iraq?
Speaker 1: Loell like Jenna Bush, I mean is co hosting Good
Speaker 1: Morning America. You know what I'm saying. I I think
Speaker 1: we should send all of the children of elected leaders
Speaker 1: into war zones. I don't care which ones they don't
Speaker 1: need to be supported or just send them just mail
Speaker 1: them there, you know what, like in a shipping crate.
Speaker 1: It's the Today Show. But yes they should and they
Speaker 1: should all be sent there. I mean retroactively, you could
Speaker 1: still go to Iraq, I like, help rebuild bro Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think I don't look, I don't think the
Speaker 1: iraqis need Jenna Bush's help. Um, but you know, um,
Speaker 1: she could take somebody's place in a city getting shelled
Speaker 1: right now, Um, just move them into your house, Jenna,
Speaker 1: Come on, indeed, do something. So Ford chastises John Wayne
Speaker 1: for quote this is how he talks about John Wayne's teenage. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know what term to use here, but he
Speaker 1: says that she playing with Mexican jumping beans because again,
Speaker 1: everyone's very racist, very like these are like this is
Speaker 1: for nineteen forty three, you know, like um. But he
Speaker 1: also calls him a damn fool for breaking up his marriage.
Speaker 1: According to biographer Roberts, Wayne wrote back that the marriage
Speaker 1: is over and he quote does not give a four
Speaker 1: letter word if I could see my kids. I don't
Speaker 1: give a ship if she takes the kids. Awesome, what
Speaker 1: a hero. So there are several things John Ford never
Speaker 1: forgave John Wayne for and this is one of them.
Speaker 1: When the war started forward to his credit, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is to his credit before joins
Speaker 1: the OSS, which is the precursor to the c i A.
Speaker 1: And he gets the rank of commander and he gets
Speaker 1: this to make like propaganda movies. Right, That's what Reagan
Speaker 1: does during the war, right, lot of guys who don't
Speaker 1: want to go fight because not everybody does the Jimmy
Speaker 1: Stewart thing, still join the military and they make propaganda
Speaker 1: reels about how not to get v D or whatever. Um, John,
Speaker 1: So that's John for John stuff. In those days there
Speaker 1: was some good stuff, some good v D. You mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh my god, the old time syphilis. This new ship
Speaker 1: cannot compete. No, the itch isn't the same. Not just
Speaker 1: doesn't hold a candle. You kids don't even know what
Speaker 1: it's like to have your p burn. Unbelievable zoomers. Okay,
Speaker 1: so um. Biographer Scott i'man basically said so again. Ford
Speaker 1: joins the OSS and starts calling John Wayne a coward
Speaker 1: for failing to serve um and tries to push him
Speaker 1: to join. Now, there's a couple of different versions of
Speaker 1: what Wayne wants to do in the OSS. Biographer Scott
Speaker 1: i'man frames it as if John Wayne wanted to get
Speaker 1: like a special ops gig suited for an action star.
Speaker 1: So when i'man's telling, he crafts his application to the
Speaker 1: ouss to make him look like an international man of mystery.
Speaker 1: Quote swimming above average, small boat sailing, average football played
Speaker 1: college ball at the University of Southern California. Squashing tennis, fair,
Speaker 1: deep sea fishing, seven marlin in two years, hunting good field, shot,
Speaker 1: horseback riding, have done falls and posse riding in pictures.
Speaker 1: Not as easy as it sounds. So that's that's the way,
Speaker 1: like I'm in as like he wants to try to
Speaker 1: get a job doing like, you know, secret agent kind
Speaker 1: of shit. Um, squashing tennis, that's fair. It's basically throwing
Speaker 1: a grenade, you know. Fair. So Ford introduces John Wayne
Speaker 1: to wild Bill Donovan, who's the head of the OSS
Speaker 1: and like will become the founder of the c I
Speaker 1: a UM, and Donovan suggests that Wayne might be good
Speaker 1: for what they call small boat work, which is running
Speaker 1: the German blockade to deliver weapons to partisans, which would
Speaker 1: be a pretty cool thing to do in World War two.
Speaker 1: If he really wants to get him a bit role
Speaker 1: in the war in the war, well, and if he'd
Speaker 1: done this, that's dope. Like that's literally, um fucking uh.
Speaker 1: What's his name's character in Casablanca? Um? Yeah, um Bogart,
Speaker 1: that's what he's doing. He's like running guns to two
Speaker 1: rebels in like occupied Europe, and ship. So i'man says
Speaker 1: like that's what John Wayne is trying to do. Wild
Speaker 1: bills like, oh yeah, you'd be perfect for this. John
Speaker 1: Wayne's like, I would love to run guns past the
Speaker 1: Nazi blockade. I just gotta finish three more movies, Like,
Speaker 1: give me three more movies, but then I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be ready to get in. You know, I'm ready
Speaker 1: to get in. And friends of his at the time
Speaker 1: will note that he kind of always tells people I
Speaker 1: just gotta do one more movie. I gotta do two
Speaker 1: more movies and then I'm getting into the war effort.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, guys, I'm almost there. I'll be right behind you.
Speaker 1: This is like Trump on January six, Just like you guys,
Speaker 1: go right there. There are versions of this story. One
Speaker 1: version is that he films his three pictures and he
Speaker 1: holls this officer at the OSS that Donovan had set
Speaker 1: him up with, and that guy was like, dude, we
Speaker 1: sent you a letter, you know, did you not get it?
Speaker 1: We already filled that position. So john gets worried. He's like,
Speaker 1: oh no, I'm gonna miss my chance to be in
Speaker 1: the os S And he sends John Ford a letter
Speaker 1: which states, dear Pappy, have you any suggestions on how
Speaker 1: I should get in? Can I get assigned to your outfit?
Speaker 1: And if I could, would you want me? How about
Speaker 1: the Marines? You have Army and Navuman under you? Have
Speaker 1: you any Marines? Or how about a CB or what
Speaker 1: would you suggest? I just hate to ask favors, but
Speaker 1: for Christ's sake, you can suggest, can't you. Now. I'man's
Speaker 1: take here seems to be that John Wayne was perhaps
Speaker 1: unwilling to fight, but or willing to serve, but not
Speaker 1: as like a simple soldier. Whatever he was going to do,
Speaker 1: he wanted it to be like a special position, one
Speaker 1: that matched his opinion of himself, and something that would
Speaker 1: exclude him from the standard military chain of command. So,
Speaker 1: like Jimmy Stewart, Jean Autrey, Clark Gable, these guys are
Speaker 1: all fighting as normal soldiers more or less, John Wayne
Speaker 1: does not want to do that. Scott i'man writes, quote,
Speaker 1: It's probable that Wayne was emotionally committed to working under
Speaker 1: Ford's command, was embarrassed about Donovan shying away from him
Speaker 1: at the height of the war, and simply wasn't willing
Speaker 1: to enlist and take his chances. Certainly he had an
Speaker 1: image of himself as an officer under Ford, but as
Speaker 1: he would say, I would have had to go in
Speaker 1: as a private. I took a dim view of that.
Speaker 1: So the reality is unclean. And again, some people will
Speaker 1: say initially John Wayne was trying to get this gig
Speaker 1: running guns. Others will say he only just wanted to
Speaker 1: be in Ford's unit making movies like he never wanted
Speaker 1: to get close to the danger. Hard to say. Uh.
Speaker 1: The author of the BuzzFeed right up, I quoted earlier
Speaker 1: ads quote. The truth of Wayne's hesitation was logical, if unspeakable.
Speaker 1: He'd worked for a decade to claw his way out
Speaker 1: of the quickies. If he left Hollywood, then, even to
Speaker 1: serve his country, he might not ever regain his momentum.
Speaker 1: So he stayed put, made a dozen films, two of
Speaker 1: which dealt with the war, and allowed the press to
Speaker 1: rationalize his lack of service. He doesn't want to suck
Speaker 1: his career up right now, or his hair, and that's
Speaker 1: the dominant theory now. Richard Jensen has a third theory,
Speaker 1: which a list at least explains why Wayne was not
Speaker 1: accepted for the OSS. He argues that while John Ford
Speaker 1: was giving John Wayne ship for not serving and being like,
Speaker 1: why are you being in a coward? Why aren't you
Speaker 1: willing to like man up and and take part in
Speaker 1: this war. While he's doing that, Ford is also telling
Speaker 1: wild Bill Donovan, don't hire this guy, don't let him in,
Speaker 1: don't don't bring this guy like he'd done before. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: he does this like about roles in Hollywood. So friends,
Speaker 1: that's totally tracks. That's absolutely the guy John Ford is
Speaker 1: right because he's already fallen out with him by this point.
Speaker 1: So well, they're in and out a bunch, like they
Speaker 1: they're close, Like Wayne will take care of him when
Speaker 1: he's sick and dying. They have a codependent kind of thing, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's totally a codependent relationship because like Ford will
Speaker 1: want nothing to do with him and then want him
Speaker 1: back and kind of yeah, they kissed that one time,
Speaker 1: but they were drunk and they were drunk and it
Speaker 1: was cold, so you know, john Ford, uh kind of
Speaker 1: sucking and he does this like when he's not when
Speaker 1: he's like ship shutting down Wayne's ability to get roles
Speaker 1: early on in his career. He's also constantly being like, no,
Speaker 1: you're not talented, so nobody's gonna want you to act
Speaker 1: in their movies. Like your shitty at acting, You look
Speaker 1: like crap, you're fat. You know, he's like the worst. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course John Wayne loves him forever and takes
Speaker 1: care of him when he's sick and dying. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so friends speculated like this isn't Jensen who invinced the speculation.
Speaker 1: People who are close to both of them speculate that
Speaker 1: Ford stops John Wayne from getting a job as the oss.
Speaker 1: Some will say it's revenge for what he did with Chattah,
Speaker 1: that he likes divorcing his wife. You know that Ford
Speaker 1: is just angry that he's getting a divorce because he's
Speaker 1: super catholic. Uh. Jensen notes that others speculated Ford didn't
Speaker 1: want John Wayne to get a chance to quote prove
Speaker 1: he was Ford's equal, so he just didn't want him to,
Speaker 1: like he wanted him to kind of look like ship
Speaker 1: for not being in the war, because otherwise he might
Speaker 1: look good it and then that's bad for Forward because
Speaker 1: it makes Ford less powerful in the relationship. I don't
Speaker 1: see why both can't be true. I think it seems
Speaker 1: like both or true. And he wanted Wayne to think
Speaker 1: he was. He wanted him in the war, and Wayne
Speaker 1: didn't even want to go. He sure didn't. That seems
Speaker 1: really clear that John Wayne did not want to go
Speaker 1: to fucking war. Um. And I I mean, look, I
Speaker 1: don't blame him, but yes it is. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't cling to this kind of masculinity. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: don't have the same, but it does seem like a
Speaker 1: bigal oversight for those who are waving Wayne flags at rallies. Still, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's that's exactly like right, and it's going to
Speaker 1: get grocer later. Like obviously, as a general rule, I
Speaker 1: am pro draft dodging. I will say World War two
Speaker 1: is the one war where you're kind of questionable if
Speaker 1: you're dodging it because like some ship didn't need to
Speaker 1: get done, you know. Um. But generally speaking, I'm pro
Speaker 1: draft dodging, but not when you become like super pro
Speaker 1: war forever after that, then then you're being scummy if
Speaker 1: you draft dodge and are like nobody should have to
Speaker 1: fight in a war. That's fine, that's perfectly consistent. That
Speaker 1: is not where John Wayne's going to go, right, And
Speaker 1: your entire persona is crafted around sort of this American
Speaker 1: hero worship and you rely on that and you're winning
Speaker 1: these you know, battles on the frontier, you're forming a nation.
Speaker 1: You are literally playing soldiers fighting in the Battle of Iwajima.
Speaker 1: You know, that's like one of your iconic films. And
Speaker 1: like you, you didn't even wouldn't even make didn't even
Speaker 1: find out a way to make movies for the government
Speaker 1: during the war. Like right, Um, let alone do the ship.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Jimmy Stewart never a big action star,
Speaker 1: but fucking put up when it was time to put up.
Speaker 1: Put his fucking money where his mouth was. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you know who else puts their money where their mouth is?
Speaker 1: Products and services? Who sup with this podcast? Who also
Speaker 1: helped carry out the bombing of Fortress Europe? Good on them?
Speaker 1: That's the that's the one promise that our sponsors make
Speaker 1: is that they have bombed German cities. Um, absolutely uh
Speaker 1: from it's the Italians problems with you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: they were already it was over, Yeah, dropping pasta on them,
Speaker 1: just way too much. Bombing of Napoli. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a lot of pretty cities get pretty fucked up here. Look,
Speaker 1: it's it's a messy war. Um so ads we're back
Speaker 1: so um so good ship. It's good stuff. John Wayne
Speaker 1: does like volunteer spends like three weeks visiting troops fighting
Speaker 1: in Guam. Like he does a little tour. He does
Speaker 1: some USO shit, but not not much. Sky i'man who
Speaker 1: is like a very positive biographer really likes John Wayne
Speaker 1: even notes that, like he didn't really do much in
Speaker 1: World War Two by the standards of other guys, even
Speaker 1: other guys who didn't join the military, he did less
Speaker 1: than them. He just visited troops and like flipped his
Speaker 1: pistol around a few times. And he doesn't visit a
Speaker 1: much like Bob Hope, right, who sucks bad person. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of like horrible regressive politics. But Bob Hope
Speaker 1: cannot serve in this period and like spends like his
Speaker 1: whole all of his time going to field hospitals and
Speaker 1: doing shows. Like there are guys who don't serve but
Speaker 1: still like put a huge amount of time into like
Speaker 1: keeping morale up for troops. John Wayne does a bit
Speaker 1: of that, but he he doesn't really want to take
Speaker 1: a break from his career to even do that. Um,
Speaker 1: he would visit USO hospitals to talk to wounded soldiers,
Speaker 1: who would often ask him, why aren't you in this war,
Speaker 1: Duke um, and he would he would be like, I
Speaker 1: have an old football injury. I knew he was back
Speaker 1: up boy. You know you ever heard a body surfing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we used to do in the Old West. Like
Speaker 1: every single soldier who landed at Normandy hadn't fucked themselves
Speaker 1: up playing football as a kid, right, Like they didn't
Speaker 1: have pads back then. All of them were dead shoulder
Speaker 1: and back injuries. No, you are and fodder. You need
Speaker 1: to go now. Yeah, it's fine if you're back hurts,
Speaker 1: it'll be over suon Yeah god, um so he yeah.
Speaker 1: He sometimes would say that President Roosevelt had asked him
Speaker 1: to keep morale up by making more movies. This is
Speaker 1: super untrue, but he doesn't make a lot of movies. Um.
Speaker 1: And obviously this works out great for him career wise
Speaker 1: because all of the other leading men who might take
Speaker 1: roles for him are off fighting and in some cases dying. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, bily brilliant strategy. Have you seen gone with
Speaker 1: the Wind? I have you know the kid, the like
Speaker 1: fresh faced young kid who like marries Scarlett early in
Speaker 1: the movie and becomes uh like goes off to die
Speaker 1: and dies in the Confederate arm Yes, he actually dies
Speaker 1: fighting in World War two, Like he dies in combat. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so this is again a lot of times you have
Speaker 1: like soldier like especially nowadays and when Vietnam comes around,
Speaker 1: like there will be moments and stuff and in Korea,
Speaker 1: like with Elvis, where it's very performative. This is not
Speaker 1: performative for most of the celebrities who join in World
Speaker 1: War Two. Clark Gable people, Yeah, Gable Gable did Gable
Speaker 1: weight ship. I'm mixing him up with the other one. Um,
Speaker 1: you said Cooper didn't. Yeah, Cooper did not. Clark Gable does.
Speaker 1: Clark Gable is like a fucking a gunner, like on
Speaker 1: a on a bomber plane. Um, which is one of
Speaker 1: the most dangerous jobs in the whole war. Um. You're
Speaker 1: like hanging in like a glass cockpit on the bottom
Speaker 1: of a plane, exposed to gunfire with no armor and
Speaker 1: if you get shot, you just get the air sucked
Speaker 1: out of you and pulled to the ground. It's a horror.
Speaker 1: Butler did that. Fuck Yeah, he fucking yeah, he sure did.
Speaker 1: Look he's not He's pretty right. Wing himself, but definitely hot,
Speaker 1: like we could we could be fair about that, comparing
Speaker 1: pieces of trap. I mean, like, that's what this show is.
Speaker 1: It's though. It is though funny that Rhett Butler goes
Speaker 1: to war and like survives and the kid who dies
Speaker 1: and gone with the wind also dies finding um loops
Speaker 1: little on the nose, Hollywood. Um so uh. If you're
Speaker 1: surprised that the man who dodged the draft in World
Speaker 1: War Two, which is the only war in which that's
Speaker 1: arguably unethical, goes on to become a right wing icon,
Speaker 1: you should not be. What's interesting is that John Wayne
Speaker 1: himself would spend the rest of his life outraged by
Speaker 1: his own failure to serve. Whether it was venal profit
Speaker 1: seeking or simple cowardice, he saw it as the ultimate
Speaker 1: strike against his MACHINESMO and Ford never lets him forget it.
Speaker 1: Oh God. Perhaps the first expression of this comes in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, when he helps to create the Motion
Speaker 1: Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals or m
Speaker 1: p A. Now with a name like that, you know,
Speaker 1: some fucked up culture war bullshit is about to drop,
Speaker 1: and it sure did. See brown people will be killed
Speaker 1: in the in these films. Yeah, I mean it's more that,
Speaker 1: like these guys are hardcore anti communist, which if you're
Speaker 1: an anti communist in the US World War Two, you
Speaker 1: kind of got to sit out a little bit, like
Speaker 1: you gotta kind of keep quiet because the Soviet unions
Speaker 1: are ally you can't kind of you cannot be as
Speaker 1: unhinged in your attacks against communism for four years or so, um,
Speaker 1: because we we kind of need them to do all
Speaker 1: of that, because we need like twenty million of them
Speaker 1: are so to die fighting. Um. So nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: they start this anti communist organization kind of near the
Speaker 1: end of the war, and John Wayne had not been
Speaker 1: political earlier in his career. He would later claim to
Speaker 1: have even had a socialist period. I don't know how true.
Speaker 1: I think that is. It's kind of a right wing
Speaker 1: thing to claim he used to be a socialist in
Speaker 1: college then he saw the light. I think he's one
Speaker 1: of the first guys to do that. Absolutely. This is yeah,
Speaker 1: that is such a playbook. Yeah. His friend Henry Fonda
Speaker 1: later recalled quote, the Duke couldn't even spell politics in
Speaker 1: the thirties, So I think it's probably he just did
Speaker 1: not give a shit um. But in the early forties, again,
Speaker 1: he's got to do something to feel like a man.
Speaker 1: He's got to do something to like shore up his
Speaker 1: credentials as a tough guy, and being anti communists seems
Speaker 1: like the best bet. So he gets elected head of
Speaker 1: the Screen Actors Guild in the early forties. Um. And
Speaker 1: he claims that becoming the head of a union is
Speaker 1: the first time he starts to notice the deadly trend
Speaker 1: of on wrestling socialism. Yeah, so that's so perfect. That's
Speaker 1: also just so peak, like right wing icon idiot. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's beautiful. Thanks to this union, I realized unions
Speaker 1: are too terrible. Yeah, except for this one and the police.
Speaker 1: Once you get union, So, once you get sensitized to it,
Speaker 1: he told an interviewer, you'd begin to be aware of
Speaker 1: cracks at our president, the flag patriotism. He described the
Speaker 1: attitude of his colleagues towards traditional Americana as quote a
Speaker 1: kind of sneering. Now this is up, you suck an asshole.
Speaker 1: This is all ship, he would claim later after he
Speaker 1: became a political figure. UM film critic and his story
Speaker 1: and Emmanuel Leave believes that guilt over his failure to
Speaker 1: serve in World War Two drove Wayne to right wing politics.
Speaker 1: There's ample evidence to suggest this. Friends of his, like
Speaker 1: Mary Saint John often gave telling anecdotes quote he was
Speaker 1: not the kind of man to dwell on it or
Speaker 1: talk about it, but you knew he did. You could
Speaker 1: see it in his face. Whenever anyone asked him about
Speaker 1: his war record, he wouldn't tell them that he had
Speaker 1: not served, and it made him feel like a hypocrite.
Speaker 1: So that's so perfect. Of course, you're gonna make up
Speaker 1: for your your feeling that you didn't defend your country
Speaker 1: by you utilizing the most bullshit prop of so called Americanism,
Speaker 1: which is defending yourself against communism. Yeah, and and oh
Speaker 1: it's so and it's so perfect, and it is like
Speaker 1: the parallels again to today two Trump's little bones burs.
Speaker 1: I hate to bring his name up again, but just
Speaker 1: it's so clear. And the people who are the most
Speaker 1: vitriolic are also folks who would never in their fucking
Speaker 1: lives fight for any cause. Yeah, it's the same ship
Speaker 1: with like George Bush, you know, getting getting a cushy
Speaker 1: family excuse not to actually fight in Vietnam. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's this but like super willing to
Speaker 1: send other people to fight, and what matters is the image.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter, Like what you do doesn't matter. It's
Speaker 1: just like why you can you can pay for your
Speaker 1: daughter to have an abortion and also support ending the
Speaker 1: right uh to to to reproductive choice. Because it's not
Speaker 1: what you do that matters. It's what you say you
Speaker 1: know in public, and it's whether or not you have
Speaker 1: the wear the right hat. It's like Ben Shapiro with
Speaker 1: his cowboy hat and his big black truck. You never
Speaker 1: towed Ben Shapiro. You don't know how to toe, you
Speaker 1: know how to set a fucking tow hitch, Like, by god,
Speaker 1: you would panic if you had to change lanes with
Speaker 1: a trailer, Like but you got that characterization. Yeah, Ben
Speaker 1: haul like a fucking tin foot, little bit, little baby
Speaker 1: trailer just just once been show me you know how
Speaker 1: to use a truck? Literally? Tiny boat work? What is it?
Speaker 1: Small boats? Small boat work? Couldn't do small fishing for Marlin.
Speaker 1: Goddamn it. Go run some guns, John Wayne, So leave manual.
Speaker 1: Leave the fucking film. Criticism claims that like this sort
Speaker 1: of shame is what drives Wayne to the m p
Speaker 1: A in nineteen. Like blockbuster war movies, doing this was
Speaker 1: a prominent and easily publicized way to frame himself as
Speaker 1: a warrior struggling against the great evil, when he had
Speaker 1: actually failed to do anything about the real great evil
Speaker 1: of the time. UM. He served as the president of
Speaker 1: the organization starting in nineteen forty nine, now the year before,
Speaker 1: at age forty one, John Wayne was cast in a
Speaker 1: film called Red River. This would be the first movie
Speaker 1: to feature Wayne as he is now most famous to
Speaker 1: millions of Americans as a gruff, hard edged, late middle
Speaker 1: aged cowboy because again he's aged like he looks like
Speaker 1: he's in his fifties in this because but also kind
Speaker 1: of the perfect like American hero um, sort of unwitting,
Speaker 1: like I don't want to be here, um, like protagonist,
Speaker 1: which is something that we love. We love a guy
Speaker 1: he's about to retire, but he gets drawn out of
Speaker 1: retirement because he's got a fucking kid. Gas. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like you're sucking John McClain. He's balding and divorced and
Speaker 1: he's like exhausted, but then he's got to go murder
Speaker 1: some Germans. You know, we love that ship, Bruce Will.
Speaker 1: This did this perfectly. Yeah, he really did. He did
Speaker 1: everything right in his in his career politics. Probably I've
Speaker 1: never wanted to know what Bruce Willis beliefs about politics.
Speaker 1: It seems like that wouldn't make me happy. It's also
Speaker 1: changed in the last like ten years. I feel like,
Speaker 1: whereas like right wingers, we would think we're more right
Speaker 1: wing in Hollywood like ten years ago, or just like, hey,
Speaker 1: that guy's pretty good. You know, he's fine. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's the Arnold Schwarzenegger thing where it's like you've
Speaker 1: suddenly gone from being like an arch conservative to one
Speaker 1: of the least crazy people talking about politics in America
Speaker 1: because everything has lurched so far to the right. It's
Speaker 1: it's great, it's fine, it's not going to cause any problems. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's this John Wayne, this kind of tough older cowboy. Um,
Speaker 1: this old hand who he's like one of the terms
Speaker 1: he's he's a begrudging tutor for younger cowboys. Right, that's
Speaker 1: a big part of his appeal in these movies. He's
Speaker 1: taking some fresh faced young book under his wing. This
Speaker 1: is the John Wayne. He's a star are at this point?
Speaker 1: This is the John Wayne that becomes an icon, right,
Speaker 1: Like this is the John Wayne whose face is still
Speaker 1: plastered all over fucking merch tables at gun shows to
Speaker 1: this day. So his his career torpedoes forward at the
Speaker 1: same time as his anti communist activism lurches forward. He
Speaker 1: serves three turns as president of the the the m
Speaker 1: p A until nineteen fifty two. Now, since this was
Speaker 1: the height of the Second Red Scare, many of John
Speaker 1: Wayne's friends and many of the studio executives in particular,
Speaker 1: warned him that, like, hey, you might not want to
Speaker 1: get into politics this much. It could kill you with
Speaker 1: the box office. Americans, whatever we feel about communists, may
Speaker 1: not want to see John Wayne, cowboy hero wearing a
Speaker 1: suit talking to Congress about like your colleagues being socialists.
Speaker 1: Um so uh, John Wayne claimed, like it's one of
Speaker 1: those things. The idea that like this is probably not true.
Speaker 1: The idea that like he got a lot of pushback
Speaker 1: saying he shouldn't get into right way politics is probably
Speaker 1: a lie because John Wayne is the only one who
Speaker 1: claims it, and he only ever brings this up to
Speaker 1: point out that but even then, I became the biggest
Speaker 1: box office draw in Hollywood. After you know I started
Speaker 1: doing all this stuff. Like That's how he frames it
Speaker 1: as like they didn't want me to start being anti communists,
Speaker 1: but once I did, that just made me more popular.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, once again trying to cancel me. First they
Speaker 1: took Jenny, then they take my anti communist activism. He is,
Speaker 1: by the way, married to Chattah and has divorced Jenny
Speaker 1: at this point. Whether or not, like his kids today
Speaker 1: will claim, I should note that he was a good
Speaker 1: dad and like stayed in their lives. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the cases some biographers have claimed other things, but
Speaker 1: his kids are pretty positive about I mean maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm not gonna tell them what their lives
Speaker 1: were like. Um, he's certainly like I don't think they
Speaker 1: wanted for anything right, Like he didn't like like they
Speaker 1: benefited from the Wayne money. It's scene like so um so.
Speaker 1: Eugene Levy describes how he generally framed this to the press.
Speaker 1: Wayne said that those who warned him must have meant
Speaker 1: it would ruin me with the Moscow fan clubs, because
Speaker 1: when I became president of the Alliance, I was thirty
Speaker 1: second on the box office polls. But last year i'd
Speaker 1: skin it up near the top. It's very familiar right
Speaker 1: wing framing. Right, they tried to cancel me, but I
Speaker 1: just it just made me more popular all that ship.
Speaker 1: He's the perfect figurehead for not World War Two, arguably
Speaker 1: the most righteous American war, but the Cold War the
Speaker 1: most exactly like unrighteous, like pillaging you know, Third World
Speaker 1: countries or Global South countries under phantom threats. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it didn't get real at a certain point, but
Speaker 1: like it was such a propaganda war because we have
Speaker 1: this one war that is unquestionably necessary, and he's like, nah,
Speaker 1: that ain't me. But then we started invading these tiny
Speaker 1: little entrees and he's like, oh yeah, yeah, fun m up,
Speaker 1: fuck um up, um yeah, it's cool. He he innvinced
Speaker 1: being James Woods in a way. So the part of
Speaker 1: the second Red Scare that John Wayne was personally involved
Speaker 1: in was the backlash to the pro Soviet movies that
Speaker 1: he made in the early nineteen forties. Members of the
Speaker 1: House un American Activities Committee HUAC were livid that studios
Speaker 1: like MGM had made films celebrating the Russian war effort. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: Hollywood stars were being called up to inform on their
Speaker 1: fellow celebs for left wing sympathies leave you writes quote.
Speaker 1: It got to the point where Lela Rodgers, Jinger's mother
Speaker 1: and vice president at r KO, was asked to examine
Speaker 1: all screenplays for questionable content. She was proud to declare
Speaker 1: that she had found a line in the Tinder Comrade
Speaker 1: which stated share and share alike, that's the meaning of democracy.
Speaker 1: Dalton Trumbo, who wrote the screenplay, later became one of
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Ten. The friendly witnesses of HUAC included many
Speaker 1: Hollywood celebrit such as Gary Cooper, who reportedly condemned communism
Speaker 1: because it was not on the level whatever that meant,
Speaker 1: or Adolph Minju, whose credo was that communism could be
Speaker 1: expressed by players by a look, by an inflection, by
Speaker 1: a change in voice. So what that's what? Literally, like
Speaker 1: Trumbo gets canceled for ship like that, for saying like
Speaker 1: democracy is about sharing. Like that's like the most cancel
Speaker 1: culture America's ever got is what does to fucking yeah
Speaker 1: exactly on American activities man back by the way, Oh
Speaker 1: for sure, they're so horny to do this. Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: was one of the guys who named the most names.
Speaker 1: He loved getting up in front of Congress and informing
Speaker 1: on his colleagues. Now, to to their credit, there were
Speaker 1: some very base fucking actors and actresses, including Katherine Heppard
Speaker 1: refuses to talk to the community. She's like the fun like,
Speaker 1: you can't make me do ship. I don't give a fuck,
Speaker 1: Katherine Heppern, What are you gonna do? Cancel Katherine Hepburn. No,
Speaker 1: you're fucking not um, And they don't. Uh uh. John Wayne,
Speaker 1: who is an avowed anti communist, does nothing, so he
Speaker 1: does not get up in front of who act This
Speaker 1: is not a principled stance. His biographer Iman claims that
Speaker 1: this was in part that because like well he wasn't
Speaker 1: really that judgmental about people, he wouldn't have wanted to
Speaker 1: cancel his colleagues because if he liked you, he didn't
Speaker 1: care about your politics. You know these buddies with Orson Wells,
Speaker 1: who was pretty left wing. Um. That's one justification for
Speaker 1: why he doesn't get up in front of whoac UM.
Speaker 1: Blacklisted screenwriter Howard Coke, who's one of the people who
Speaker 1: gets caught up in this, theorizes that it was not
Speaker 1: John Wayne's decision to stay out, but instead studio meddling
Speaker 1: that kept him from testifying. In some cases, the heads
Speaker 1: of the studios made deals with the committee not to
Speaker 1: put a certain individual on the stand publicly. That was
Speaker 1: true not only of so called suspects so what they
Speaker 1: like to call the unfriendly witnesses, but also a friendly
Speaker 1: witnesses that the studio didn't want to have tainted by
Speaker 1: political publicity of any kind. Somebody like Wayne is a
Speaker 1: good example. How are you going to get pole rushing
Speaker 1: in to see him shooting down the apaches when they
Speaker 1: start thinking of him as the guy wearing a suit
Speaker 1: and tie and saying, what a great job all these
Speaker 1: seventy year old politicians with their glasses and bow ties
Speaker 1: are doing defending America. Mixed message, So, I mean money
Speaker 1: is number one in his life at this point, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and obviously coward is not going into World
Speaker 1: War two, but also potentially just wanting to keep making money.
Speaker 1: It is also here's the thing, and this is gonna
Speaker 1: sound weird, but it's kind of also a condemnation of
Speaker 1: him that he doesn't testify in front of who act
Speaker 1: because it shows he doesn't really believe Carrie Grant, who
Speaker 1: again goes and fights in World War Two, also a
Speaker 1: right wing ship head. Carrie Grant's studio goes, don't get
Speaker 1: up and testify in front of who ak, it's going
Speaker 1: to be bad for your image. But Carrie Grant, again,
Speaker 1: this is not a good thing to do. But he
Speaker 1: does believe it because he gets up and says fuck
Speaker 1: you to the studio and testifies against his colleagues and stuff,
Speaker 1: which is and again getting into like murky moral territory.
Speaker 1: But I guess I'm saying it's more respectable to be
Speaker 1: a right wing ship head who believes enough to hurt
Speaker 1: your career by it than it is to only be
Speaker 1: a right wing ship head when you think it's good
Speaker 1: for your career. I guess that's where I'm landing here.
Speaker 1: I feel you landing there. I I land more in
Speaker 1: the like I'm glad he didn't snitch, And yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: yes you needed into communism to fucking booster your career
Speaker 1: and go speak at some brunches, But good for you.
Speaker 1: Good and bad aren't as as meaningful. Here is just
Speaker 1: the state that, like Carrie Grant was a guy who
Speaker 1: believed in some things, John Wayne didn't. Right that that's
Speaker 1: more because like obviously yes, it's good to not testify.
Speaker 1: It just is a note of like, how kind of
Speaker 1: empty he is? He's still punching women, guys don't. Don't
Speaker 1: worry And I don't know Carry Grant probably right. I
Speaker 1: don't know much about the guys still punching women. Maybe
Speaker 1: not Jimmy Stewart, I don't. I want to believe he wouldn't,
Speaker 1: But I don't know much about Jimmy Stewart. Um he
Speaker 1: did different did was part of the bombing of Korea,
Speaker 1: So I don't know. Some some mixed stuff there too.
Speaker 1: Um So, yeah, it's weird as Scott, i'man rights. Being
Speaker 1: seen as anti communist had real benefits for John Wayne
Speaker 1: in the Blacklist years that followed quote and so the
Speaker 1: Blacklist arab began. There would be more hearings in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 1: The result was that dozens were jailed, hundreds lost their jobs,
Speaker 1: hundreds more left the country, some died. Every motion picture
Speaker 1: union from the Screen Actors Guild to the Screen Director's
Speaker 1: Guild ultimately capitulated to the Blacklist. All this would be
Speaker 1: called by one writer, echoing Daniel Dafoe, the Plague Years.
Speaker 1: Dalton Trumbo had another name for it. The time of
Speaker 1: the Toad. During this period, the right wing press regularly
Speaker 1: ganged up on performers who had committed the terrible sin
Speaker 1: of not serving in the military during World War Two.
Speaker 1: The hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler accused Danny Kay of not
Speaker 1: giving exactly his all during the war, and then added
Speaker 1: the seasoning of anti Semitism by mentioning Kay's real name, Kaminsky.
Speaker 1: Peglar neglected to mention that many conservatives hadn't served John
Speaker 1: Wayne among them. By the way, don't come from my boy,
Speaker 1: Danny Kay. Don't you fucking come from my boy Danny Kay,
Speaker 1: Danny Kay Pegler? What the why are you pulling love God?
Speaker 1: Pulling out the anti semitism for peace, for not going
Speaker 1: and fighting in World War Two? Like what are you?
Speaker 1: What are you talking about here? Yeah, it's it's awesome.
Speaker 1: So again, and this is part of the point that
Speaker 1: people will make is that by being super pro anti communist,
Speaker 1: very right wing, he deflects a lot of criticism for
Speaker 1: the fact that he doesn't do anything in the war. Yep, Um, well,
Speaker 1: he gets the past because he's someone needs there Christian
Speaker 1: masculine identity. I mean, that's like he's more of an emblem.
Speaker 1: He's a symbol. Yeah yeah, he's like Batman, but worse,
Speaker 1: a lot worse than bad. If Batman sees the bad
Speaker 1: signals like uh, I gotta gotta sees the batstick. Delasi's
Speaker 1: like cuddling with the teenager he trafficked into the United States,
Speaker 1: and it's like, can someone else deal with that? Um
Speaker 1: so with his colleagues blacklisted, John Wayne stars in an
Speaker 1: increasing series of right wing films, including nineteen fifty two
Speaker 1: Is Big Jim McClain, in which he played a heroic
Speaker 1: Huac investigator. In nineteen fifty four, he was cast in
Speaker 1: what would probably become the most shameful role of his career. Francesca,
Speaker 1: are you ready for this? This is my favorite John
Speaker 1: Wayne role. Genghis Khan. Hell yeah, just another white guy
Speaker 1: taking an Asian actor's role. It's amazing. Somebody's like, who
Speaker 1: are we going to get to pay Genghis Khan? You
Speaker 1: know who looks like a Mongolian warlord? John Wayne? John
Speaker 1: Wayne middle now kind of fat John Wayne. It's he
Speaker 1: looks so silly in this. It's amazing. It's almost beyond parody.
Speaker 1: How like racist this movie is. It's like, if you
Speaker 1: were joking about racism in this period, you would like
Speaker 1: make up John Wayne being Genghis Khan is like a gag.
Speaker 1: But no, they really did it. Hell yeah they did.
Speaker 1: Look at that Look at that mustache, those blue eyes. Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Everyone needs to look this up right now. And I
Speaker 1: think we need to watch this high. Yeah, it's incredible that. Like,
Speaker 1: obviously the most famous white guy who racistly plays an
Speaker 1: Asian in this period is Mickey Rooney. But boy boy,
Speaker 1: howdy is John Wayne nipping at his fucking heels in
Speaker 1: terms of racist casting here? But also like Genghis is
Speaker 1: the good guy? What because like n W, it's generally
Speaker 1: the hero. It's more just that like he's impressive, right,
Speaker 1: I think that's probably like I've I watched this years
Speaker 1: ago as a kid, just because I heard about it. Like,
Speaker 1: I think it's more of just like an historical epic.
Speaker 1: You're not trying to like, I don't know. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: here's another fun fact. The more the role was originally
Speaker 1: written from Marlon Brando, Oh you would rather see Brando
Speaker 1: is Genghis. Imagine Brando is Geges. This is so funny
Speaker 1: to be that's really funny. I mean maybe old Brando,
Speaker 1: like really old Brandon. I could see ye. Fat Brando
Speaker 1: is gegus cot. Fat Brando not having to walk anywhere,
Speaker 1: just being like a horse. You're just sitting on a
Speaker 1: horse the whole time, not moving kill him, like I
Speaker 1: get that, just stroking a long sort of spy white beard. Uh,
Speaker 1: that might have made sense. This is documentary about the
Speaker 1: making of The Isle of Dr Moreau, which is also
Speaker 1: an incredible Marlon Brando documentary. Among other things, he decides
Speaker 1: that his character is secretly a dolphin and wears a
Speaker 1: bucket on his head the whole movie, but never explains
Speaker 1: it to anyone. It fucking rules Marlon Brando's like late career.
Speaker 1: Brando is the greatest Hollywood actor there has ever been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. It's just like when everyone wants your career
Speaker 1: to stay alive except for you. Yeah, it's very funny.
Speaker 1: Nobody hated Hollywood more than Marlon Brando, a man who
Speaker 1: only ever made his money as an actor. It's also
Speaker 1: he's going to be the hero of well, one of
Speaker 1: the heroes of our third episodes Good good Times Anyway.
Speaker 1: The Conqueror. John Wayne as Genghis Khan not a good movie,
Speaker 1: as this exerpt from the Guardians Film blog makes clear.
Speaker 1: The film opens with Timushin as Genghis was originally known,
Speaker 1: intercepting a wedding procession of markets. No, not merecats. The
Speaker 1: market lord has a tartar bride or tie Jane Hayward,
Speaker 1: but not for long. I feel this tartar woman is
Speaker 1: for me. In tones, timushin my blood says, take her.
Speaker 1: Few actors can make lines like this sound good, and
Speaker 1: John Wayne wasn't one of them. Writer Oscar Millard wanted
Speaker 1: to give the screenplay an archaic flourish, mindful of the
Speaker 1: fact that my story was nothing more than a tarted
Speaker 1: up Western I thought this would give it a certain
Speaker 1: cash a and I left no lily unpainted, he said
Speaker 1: in nine. It was a mistake I have never repeated.
Speaker 1: Poor old John Wayne has to prance about saying things
Speaker 1: things such as I greet you my mother, where normal
Speaker 1: people would say hello mom. This might be why he
Speaker 1: looks so miserable in every scene. You've got to do
Speaker 1: something about these lines, he told Millard during filming. I
Speaker 1: can't read them. It was too late. So one of
Speaker 1: the worst movies of all time. Very cringe but Francesca,
Speaker 1: here's the good part. Do you believe in karma? Uh?
Speaker 1: A little bit, a little bit. This is this is
Speaker 1: a very calmer moment because while they're filming this movie,
Speaker 1: they're they're in like Nevada in the desert, like making
Speaker 1: this thing because I guess that's our best equivalent to mongolia. Um.
Speaker 1: While they're making this, they are a hundred miles away
Speaker 1: from an attack mcbomb testing site. Uh. So they go
Speaker 1: to the government They're like, hey, we got John Wayne
Speaker 1: out here filming a movie. Is it safe to be
Speaker 1: this close to nuclear bombs going off? And the Government's like, oh, absolutely, no,
Speaker 1: you guys are fine. It's totally far away, not going
Speaker 1: to be a problem, not gonna be a problem. So
Speaker 1: it was a problem. The entire cast and crew of
Speaker 1: The Conqueror get massive doses of radiation, like like they like,
Speaker 1: they're right next to nuclear bombs going off for days,
Speaker 1: you know, weeks as they film this. Don't worry, keep going,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be good for the lighting. Yes, your burns
Speaker 1: look incredible, honey, that's great. So what was the Union
Speaker 1: doing at this point? Jesus, Yeah, it's been too gutted.
Speaker 1: They can't complain about geting nuked, or they'll get called
Speaker 1: out as being socialist. It's very funny that John Wayne
Speaker 1: gets nuked by the US government and spoilers. It's what
Speaker 1: kills him. That's extremely funny. It's the funniest thing that
Speaker 1: could possibly have happened. He gets he gets fucking nuked
Speaker 1: and irradiated while pretending to be Genghis Khan. That rules.
Speaker 1: That's incredibly funny. That is kind of like the spirit
Speaker 1: of Genghis Khan. It is Genghis Khan was smiling down
Speaker 1: from heaven like, yes, this is what I want. That
Speaker 1: is amazing. Wow, And so okay, how much radiation are
Speaker 1: we talking a funkload? Francesca? Wait so again. Recently it's
Speaker 1: become a story that like a bunch of Russian soldiers
Speaker 1: probably got radiation set because they dug trenches in Chernobyl. Right, Chernobyl.
Speaker 1: A lot of radiation also a lot less than there
Speaker 1: was decades ago when it was new. These guys are
Speaker 1: standing downwind of nuclear bombs as they go off, a
Speaker 1: lot of radiation um the cast and crew of the Conqueror,
Speaker 1: as well as a startling number of Americans like them.
Speaker 1: Because the US government nukes a lot of Americans, citizen's.
Speaker 1: They get known as down Winders in the decades to
Speaker 1: come because they all get cancer. Um. By nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: this is film in fifty four, By nine ninety six
Speaker 1: of the two cast and crew on the set had
Speaker 1: developed cancer. Forty six of them, including John Wayne, had died. Um.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. Within what time period again, thirty years,
Speaker 1: a little less than thirty years, half of them have
Speaker 1: cancer and a quarter of them are dead from cancer. Um,
Speaker 1: including John Wayne. He gets a couple of cancers right
Speaker 1: first in nineteen sixty four, so ten years later it's
Speaker 1: lung cancer. So maybe it was a smoking I'm sure
Speaker 1: the nukes didn't help. He finally dies of like a
Speaker 1: horrible stomach cancer. So he probably dies in part at
Speaker 1: least as a result of getting nuked on the set
Speaker 1: of The Conqueror. Of all the sets, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't going to be a good one.
Speaker 1: It had to be the Gang Khan. It is extremely fun,
Speaker 1: though it is at least see. The one redeeming thing
Speaker 1: I think about this is I don't it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like he did like a pigeon like accent, like some
Speaker 1: sort of I don't mean stereotypical. I think he does. Ye,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I guess that's better. I don't know that
Speaker 1: I want to like I I don't certainly want to
Speaker 1: be saying what's better or worse. It all seems pretty
Speaker 1: rough to me. No, I think we all agree everyone
Speaker 1: on that set deserve to get nooked. I mean that
Speaker 1: was fine that this happened. It's totally fine. Um, good stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's gonna that's gonna be our part two. Francesco,
Speaker 1: We're gonna have you back for part three, but for
Speaker 1: right now, you want to plug your plug doblesh my god,
Speaker 1: you guys check out the Bituation Room podcast. I promise. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe we'll just watch Genghis Khan on
Speaker 1: our next episode. We might, babe, who knows. I'm excited
Speaker 1: for the third chapter and all the they find in
Speaker 1: his stomach. Oh yeah, app all the meat in his guts.
Speaker 1: All right, Well that's gonna do us uh and everyone else,
Speaker 1: you know, until until next time. Uh stand directly next
Speaker 1: to a nuclear blast while the government says it's fine.
Speaker 1: Because you're John Wayne. You know the government is never
Speaker 1: gonna lie to you. Oh my god, behind The Bastards
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