John Wayne’s Tense Clash With a Director Led to Chaos on Set
John Wayne was one of the biggest stars in movie history, but not every film he made was a success.
One of his most difficult experiences happened in 1958 while filming The Barbarian and the Geisha. He worked with director John Huston, and the two men did not get along at all. Wayne was a very traditional actor who treated his work like a regular job, while Huston had a more artistic and loose style.
The main problem was that Huston did not like to follow a strict plan. Wayne wanted to know exactly what they were filming every day so he could learn his lines. Huston would often tell him to just look at the scenery instead of worrying about his part. Wayne complained about this by saying, I ask him what’s on tomorrow’s shooting schedule, and he’ll tell me to spend more time absorbing the beauty of the scenery and less time worrying about my part. When Wayne pushed for a script, the director would just tell him they would improvise.
This lack of organization made Wayne want to quit the movie entirely. He even wrote to his friend and fellow director John Ford to complain about how frustrating it was to work with Huston. According to the script supervisor, Angelica Allen, Wayne truly hated the director and even joked about wanting to kill him. She remembered that Wayne was very professional but also very rigid in how he worked.
Wayne eventually stayed to finish the film in Japan, but he took control once the director left. He did not like the way he looked or how some scenes were handled, so he re-shot several parts of the movie himself. This made John Huston very angry. When Huston finally saw the version of the film that Wayne had changed, he wrote in his memoirs, John Wayne apparently took over after I left… and when I saw it, I was aghast.
Despite all the fighting and the changes Wayne made, the movie was a total failure at the box office. Today, it is also criticized for how it portrays Japanese culture and for using a white savior story. The film features many white actors playing roles they were not suited for, which makes it feel very outdated to modern audiences. Many people now consider it one of the worst movies in John Wayne’s career.
The two men never made up and continued to blame each other for the disaster for the rest of their lives. It shows that even two of the most famous people in Hollywood can fail when they cannot find a way to work together. The movie serves as a reminder that a bad relationship behind the scenes can lead to a bad product on the screen.
It is interesting to see how a star as big as John Wayne felt he had the power to just take over a movie from a famous director. While he was trying to save his own image, he ended up making a film that almost nobody liked. It seems that his ego was just as big as his reputation on the screen, and in this case, it did not help him at all.
Have something to add? Let us know in the comments!