John Wayne started out as a prop guy. He was a college student, and he picked up extra cash doing props for movies and occasional extra work. This was how he met John Ford. He almost got fired from a couple of Ford’s films (as a prop guy – never as an actor) for various snafus – which are HYSTERICAL to hear about.<\/p>\n
Here’s my favorite one. I laughed out loud, again, reading it.<\/p>\n
Wayne was a prop guy working on Ford’s Four Sons<\/i> in 1928:<\/p>\n That was the next<\/i> time I pretty near left the business. I was just working vacations, wasn’t really interested in the business as such, but I really liked Ford. He had this wonderful woman, Margaret Mann, who had never done anything before, and he was talking a performance into her — taking two, three hours to talk her into the right mood for this scene. It was the fourth son bringing the letter from the third son she’s lost in the war. It’s fall, and when the door opens, my job as property man was to throw up the maple leaves, and they had a fan there to blow them out — it was a silent picture, remember. The fan turned on, and down came the breeze into the middle of the set and the door closed and I relaxed. Then I’d go out and sweep the leaves away and get ready to do another take. We kept doing this over and over, and it got to be fairly monotonous for one who wasn’t as interested yet in the business as he should have been. So this one time, they opened the door, the son went in, I threw up the leaves, the leaves wafted in, I figured the scene was over, you know. The fellow turned off the fan and I picked up the broom, went in, and started to sweep. And I looked up and I’m looking right into two cameras — and they’re turning<\/i>! And looking at me are the cameraman, and John Ford, and the wife of the man who was head of the studio then. Shit, there I was. I just threw down my goddamn broom and started to walk off. There was that moment of tension and then, again, Ford broke up laughing, so they all laughed. They said, “Woah now!” They had Archduke Leopold’s Serbian heir working on the picture, and a lot of German guys, so they played a martial piece of music and marched me around, and then took me to the Archduke and bent me over in front of him and he pinned the Iron Cross on me. Then they took me back to Ford and he bent me over and kicked me in the ass. And then<\/i> they sent me off the set, because this actress laughed every time she looked at me — she couldn’t stop laughing. I was never so goddamned embarrassed in my life<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n