American Titan: Searching for John Wayne by Marc Eliot Read Free Book Online

American face became his trademark. His acting style was purely external, reflecting the cowboys he played rather than opening a window to offer a glimpse of his real self. Ford loved Carey because he so perfectly projected the director’s image of himself. They fed creatively off each other; Ford learned how to use Carey’s stoicism as the foundation for a directorial style that was becoming more expansive without being grandiose, and Carey learned how doing less could reveal more in front of a camera.
    Despite Ford’s having made him a star, their four-year collaboration ended over Carey’s resentment of other members of Ford’s growing company of players getting what he felt was more attention. Ford, meanwhile, had wearied of Carey’s inflating ego. Ford had made Carey a major star who earned $2,250 a week, to Ford’s own $150 salary at Universal. Audiences tired of Carey as well, and he blamed his director for that. In 1921, when Ford got an offer to move to Fox, which offered him higher budgets and a starting salary of $600 a week, it ended the Ford/Carey collaboration of twenty-six westerns and left the director in search of his next great projected screen other.
    Ford’s first western for Fox was The Big Punch (1921). It starred Charles “Buck” Jones, a Hollywood actor who, in Ford’s view, didn’t have what it took to be the next Harry Carey. He kept looking. A few years and several pictures later, a new, unknown, tall, strong, and handsome stagehand literally stumbled into Ford’s world. His name was Marion Morrison.
    IN 1926, AFTER TWENTY YEARS of marriage, on May 1, Clyde and Mary legally separated. According to public records in the Superior Court of Los Angeles, almost immediately after, Molly filed for divorce. She took Robert and moved in with her parents, who had since relocated to Los Angeles to be near their daughter. Clyde quickly found himself a new girlfriend. Florence Buck, an attractive twenty-nine-year-old who worked in Glendale as a clerk at Webb’s department store, was divorced and had a young daughter named Nancy. They fell for each other quickly and lived together while waiting for Clyde’s divorce to become final. It would take nearly five years before the courts granted it, on February 20, 1930 (not an unusual amount of time in those days as divorce was discouraged by the California courts especially when there were children involved). Clyde then took Florence, Nancy, and his few possessions and rented a small house in Beverly Hills, not yet the movie star glamour spot it was soon to become, to be nearer to his son. He found work at a nearby electrical supply store, even as his health continued to fail. The asthma and tuberculosis that had caused him to move west had brought on heart disease, something he hid from his fellow employees when he applied for the job.
    And he married Florence.
    Duke couldn’t bear the thought of his father having a new woman and child in his life. When Clyde told Duke he could meet his new wife, he said no. Although he never completely forgave his father for leaving his mother, eventually he became close to Florence because of how well she took care of Clyde, and how encouraging and uncritical she was. She brought him a measure of peace, and that meant something to Duke. 12
    He also had a new girlfriend of his own. He had first met the beautiful, dark-haired Spanish Josephine Saenz, from a prominent Catholic family in the Hispanic section of Los Angeles, at a dance in Balboa he went to with some of his frat brothers. Duke’s prearranged date for the evening was Josephine’s older sister, Carmen Saenz. After the dance, all the boys and girls went out for ice cream. Joining them was Josephine, whom Duke somehow got to sit next to; according to Maurice Zolotow, he “happened to look into Josephine’s eyes. He felt as though something had hit him and suddenly realized that, for the time in his life, he was in love . . . he remembered feeling so