It’s in the walk.

Think of Mae West, hands caressing her Rubenesque hips, head tilted, not just sauntering, but oozing forward, the exaggerated female.

Elbows cocked and angled at his hips, moving with concentrated energy, Jimmy Cagney looks like a coiled spring about to explode.

Joan Crawford, leading with her linebacker shoulders, like a tank on the battlefield, determined, dangerous, unstoppable.

Spine rigid, arms glued to his side, plum straight steps—no motion in the hips or shoulders—eyes nailed to the distant horizon, Henry Fonda’s walk is a combination of cool reserve and righteous indignation.

Bette Davis, nervously wringing her hands—William Wyler once threatened to chain them down—as she paces back and forth in her pathologically unstable world.

Rapid fire mincing steps, hips and shoulders swaying, Marilyn Monroe is the archetype of the sexually charged woman, and yet simultaneously a little girl who is innocent of her immense power.

And then there is John Wayne.

His walk is odd.

Distinctive, but odd.

It’s a complex, disorienting, and ultimately elegant forward propulsion: long manly strides, elbows bent and poised—like a boxer locked into position—a distinctly feminine swooshing of the hips, and a pronounced case of pigeon toe.

Was Duke’s walk natural?

Or was it part of the John Wayne image, a carefully constructed bit of acting business?

Harry Carey, Jr., in his fascinating memoir, Company of Heroes: My Life as an Actor in the John Ford Stock Company, provides invaluable and deeply private insights into the famous John Wayne walk.

First, Harry Carey, Jr. sketches in some background on John Wayne’s intimate relationship with the great character actor Paul Fix (1901–1983) Carey’s father-in-law:

…Paul Fix had almost as much to do with Duke’s success as a screen actor as did John Ford. Paul Fix literally taught John Wayne what John Wayne knew about acting. He was the man who gave Duke his first insight into forming the mold which was to be his persona. Most people give Uncle Jack [John Ford] the credit for this, but the first man to put the John Wayne image into John Wayne’s head was Paul Fix.

Carey, Jr. discusses the early days, the B westerns, and journeyman actor John Wayne’s stage appearance that turned disastrous:

Paul first worked as an actor with Duke in those early westerns. In those days, Paul had a sort of slinky, haunted look about him, like a man who might steal or lie, so of course he was usually cast as a heavy; not the head honcho, though, the sly henchman. He played a lot of gangsters, along with Sheldon Leonard or Barton MacLane. Paul was very serious about acting, and he wrote many plays. He was always putting them on in the little theaters around Hollywood. He cast Duke in one of them, but Duke was so frightened of live theater that he overdosed on booze and made a total ass out of himself. His wife, Josephine [Alicia Saenz], was so furious she screamed from the audience, “You’re a bum—a drunken bum!” What a night in the theater! Little did they know that they were looking at the man who was to become the biggest movie star of all time.

Harry Carey, Jr. reveals how Paul Fix worked behind the scenes as an acting coach to John Wayne during the most important film of Duke’s career.

Duke used to tell Paul that he felt awkward in front of the camera. He said he didn’t know what to do with his hands; that he didn’t feel natural. Not too many years later, Duke got his big break when John Ford cast him as “The Ringo Kid” in Stagecoach. Duke was overwhelmed by this good news but paralyzed with fear that he wouldn’t be able to carry it off. He went to Paul for help. Without John Ford’s knowledge. Duke went to Paul’s house every night to go over the next day’s work while they were shooting in town.

Private and not so private acting coaches are not unusual in Hollywood. Montgomery Clift was so dependent on his acting coach Mira Rostova, that he put her on salary while shooting some of his most famous films. And much to the chagrin of his directors and co-stars, Clift, after every take, would anxiously look to Rostova—not the director—for approval or disapproval of his line readings.

“Not unlike Marilyn Monroe’s walk.”

And now Carey fills us in on the birth of the legendary John Wayne walk:

Because Duke was kind of heavy-footed and used to trudge more than walk, Paul told Duke to point his toes when he walked, and the “John Wayne walk” was born. Try it yourself. Take a step and point your toe, like you’re stabbing it into the ground—left foot, right foot. Your shoulders automatically move back and forth, and the hips follow, not unlike Marilyn Monroe’s walk. When Duke first did it, it was ballsey as hell. As the Wayne legend began to form, the walk became more pronounced. Rio Bravo or any of the “Rios” are good examples.

Hollywood stardom is a mysterious thing. In the days when the studio system dominated, the moguls consciously searched for the key to a players potential image. And then, once identified, the studio system—at its best, an incredible make-over machine—created, polished and ruthlessly exploited that star’s specific persona.

No wonder L.B. Mayer alternately broke down in rage and tears when he discovered that Andy Hardy/Mickey Rooney ran off in the middle of the night and married the young and sexy Ava Gardner. Mayer was terrified that the public would reject the incredibly profitable Andy Rooney series—innocence and apple pie—when they realized that small town, all American Andy/Mickey was actually something of a dog, hooking up with a hot 17-year old actress—not to mention a host of chorus girls, hookers and vulnerable starlets.

With Clark Gable it gradually became clear to the executives at MGM that he was a man’s man, possessed of a humorous glint in his eye that turned women to jelly. For Jean Arthur it was her sandpaper voice and hesitant delivery that conveyed a woman desperate for control, but on the edge of a melt down. Jean Harlow was perfect as the sexy, vulnerable, wise-cracking tootsie who didn’t take herself too seriously.

But since the demise of the studio system, Hollywood stardom has morphed into an eerie kind of tabloid celebrity. Movie stars no longer have an identifiable movie persona, in fact most work hard at subverting a fixed image. They take pride in grabbing movie roles that go against type. Contemporary actors want to prove that they have range, that they are versatile. Hence, absent a fixed address, the post-modern actor is, with rare exceptions, fated to be excluded from the pantheon of Hollywood immortals.

For John Wayne, after a long Hollywood apprenticeship, his stardom was defined and exquisitely refined as a particular kind of rugged American individual; a man, no matter how conflicted, who recognized the difference between good and evil—and strode across the silver screen like a colossus.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

1. Command Decision (1948) – Made just after WWII, this Air Force drama set in 1943 when the outcome of the war was still in doubt, is one of the most intelligent examinations of the burden of command ever put on film. Clark Gable is absolutely outstanding as Casey, a Brigadier General forced to give orders that on their face appear cold and even monstrous, but in truth are just the opposite. Caught between the Washington brass who have a war to sell and the men under him who see only a General ordering their comrades to certain death, Casey is a leader willing to be hated and even lose his command in order to do the greater good. What Casey cares about before anything is saving American lives. That means winning the war as quickly as possible, something which can only be accomplished if unspeakable sacrifices are made in the here and now.  

The film’s real strength lies in a refusal to demonize the different points of view represented. Walter Pidgeon plays Major General Kane, Casey’s superior and the man who has to worry about the political considerations of how Casey’s heavy losses will affect public opinion, which is just upstream from the financial decisions made in Congress. In a less intelligent, lazier film (translation: a modern one) Kane would be portrayed as a bureaucratic boob only worried about his own upward mobility, but not here. Ultimately, we may not like the way Kane’s forced to think but we’re made to understand the idea of competing goods.

Representing the men is Van Johnson who steals every scene oozing a contempt, and at times, an outright hatred for Casey. The moment when he comes to finally understand the bigger picture is both touching and understated – one of Johnson’s finest.

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2. Desperate Journey (1942) – Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan, Raymond Massey and Alan Hale had such memorable chemistry together in Michael Curtiz’s “Santa Fe Trail” (1940) that the four of them were rounded up two years later for Raoul Walsh’s rousing WWII action/adventure set behind German lines. Shot down on a bombing run, Flynn, Reagan, Hale and Arthur Kennedy are captured by Massey’s Nazi Major who makes a career-mistake in thinking he can convince Reagan to give up secrets [great Reagan video]. What follows is a rollicking actioner very much in the spirit of “Gunga Din” with one of my all-time favorite closing lines delivered by Flynn with the gusto and panache that made him an immortal: “Now for Australia and a crack at those Japs!”

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3. Tomorrow is Forever (1946) – At first it’s easy to confuse this complicated look at a mother’s sacrifice as a soapy melodrama, even a gimmicky one, but that’s because the film doesn’t tell you what it’s really about until a very satisfying climax when the theme plays out fully and comes together. Claudette Colbert and Orson Welles are Elizabeth and John, just married and with their whole lives ahead of them. But it’s 1918, WWI rages and John goes off to do his duty. Alone with a young son, Elizabeth receives a telegram informing her John’s been killed in action. It takes years, but after some time she remarries and watches her boy grow into a man just as WWII begins. After losing her beloved first husband to one war, Elizabeth can’t bear the thought of losing her son to another. This changes when a visitor from war-torn Europe, who may or may not be a much older and nearly crippled John, helps her to understand that what’s at stake in this war is bigger than any mother’s love.

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4. Happy Land (1943) – A horrible title can’t diminish the emotional power of this 20th Century-Fox oddity – a mixture of “A Christmas Carol” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” — about Lew Marsh (Don Ameche-in his finest performance), a pharmacist living in picture-perfect small town America whose life is shattered after he loses his only son to WWII. The ghost of Gramps (the wonderful Harry Carey) snaps Lew out of a clinical depression by taking him on a tour of the past where Lew is allowed to discover things about his beloved son he never knew. This was a generous, selfless boy — a young man to be proud of and mature beyond his years who died for a higher cause he believed in.

“Happy Land” doesn’t simplify a father’s grief or pretend to have all the answers.  When the credits roll, Lew’s still devastated and even a bit bitter. We’ve only been allowed to see the beginning of  a healing process … and that this process will never end is made touchingly clear.

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5. The Fighting Seabees (1944) – One of John Wayne’s lesser known WWII-era films, and one that deserves better recognition. The seabees are C.B.’s as in “Construction Brigade Battalion.” These are the men who build the bridges and airstrips in battle zones. But once upon a time, according to the movie, they were unarmed civilians, not allowed to fight back and frequently picked off by enemy snipers. Enter Wedge Donovan (Wayne), the head of Donovan Construction, who has watched too many of his men die helplessly and so he sets out to allow them to become armed enlisted men – The Fighting Seebees.

What sets this apart from other Wayne films, besides the opportunity to witness Duke dance a jitterbug, is that Wayne plays the role he’s usually up against. Donovan is a not a wise, seasoned pro. He’s an immature hot head whose arrogance and stupidity ends up getting a lot of men killed. Seeing Wayne in this kind of role takes some getting used to, but it adds a memorable emotional stake to what could have been a rote programmer. Of course, Wayne’s character redeems himself – and it’s a spectacular redemption – but that’s all you’re getting from me.