American Titan: Searching for John Wayne by Marc Eliot Page A

ocean. That made it an even more dangerous stunt; since the weather couldn’t be controlled, the two assigned stuntmen refused to make the dive, even with the extra hazard pay of $75 for each scene.
    Pappy was furious. According to Hedda Hopper, an on-set observer at the invitation of the director, “Ford turned to Wayne who was standing around, cranking the pump and said, ‘Over you go. Show these chicken-livered slobs up.’ ”
    Ford himself later recalled the incident this way: “A blank of a blank blank [ sic ] storm came up and our two blankety blank [ sic ] stuntmen who were supposed to come up in bubbles, like they’d been shot out of an escape hatch, said it was too rough to work . . . Well, Duke was standing on the top deck of this boat we were on. He wasn’t supposed to go in the water at all, but I asked him if he’d try this stunt. He never said a word, except ‘Sure.’ Dove right into the cold water from that deck. I knew then that boy had the stuff and was going places.”
    Although he figured he was due the extra money for all the stunt work he did that day, when it came time to sign his work sheet, Duke saw he was only being credited $7.50 for pump cranking. When he asked the production paymaster why, he was told that he wasn’t listed as a stuntman, and therefore, he couldn’t receive stuntman pay. He desperately needed the extra money but said nothing about it. He didn’t want to be seen as a troublemaker, especially to Ford, who hated complainers. “I haven’t a thing to squawk about. I’m just a lucky ham,” was all he would say. On the twenty-six-mile boat ride back to the mainland, he made up his losses by winning $600 in a high-stakes poker game with some of the crew.
    IN ADDITION TO ALL THE work and extra money he had in his pockets, after taking care of Robert, his mother, and his father, he still had enough left over to ask Josie out. She accepted, and after only a few dates, he told her he had a steady job with enough money to be able to take care of her, and he asked Josie to marry him. She said yes, if her father gave his approval. Duke went to him and he didn’t. He left empty-handed and disappointed but took it like the man he told Josie he had become. He was sure he would eventually be able to change her father’s mind.
    BY THE END OF 1929, Duke had become a familiar face with the Fox Studio stars, contract players, and off-screen workers who busily crisscrossed the lot like ants on a hill. He met and became good friends with one of them, Ewing Scott, a young assistant director who, like Duke, liked to have a good time at the end of the working day. They started hanging out together nights, for dinner and drinks, sometimes skipping dinner and going straight to the drinks. After a few, they would confide their sorrows and complaints to each other about the injustices of those who worked at the low end of the studio. Duke also poured his heart out to Scott about his problems with Josie. Scott listened patiently and his answer was always the same. Let’s have another round. By eleven each night, they were both pretty much done, Duke in his cups, Scott feeling no pain.
    Somehow, the next morning, Duke always made it to the studio on time no matter how early the call, available for whatever anyone needed him for that day, all the while keeping his eyes and ears open, watching how the stars did their magic in front of the cameras, and how the crews could build a dream out of two-by-fours, hammers, nails, paint, and lights. He continued to get uncredited walk-ons and extra work mostly in props, a job made easier by the massive air-hangar-size prop warehouse Fox had; if he couldn’t find what he wanted there, nearby rental outlets kept full inventories of whatever junk a director might want to use.
    Ford used him off-screen whenever he could because he liked him: “He was just a rangy, overgrown boy who looked too tall for his clothes. But there was something about the confident