38. “Can’t You Walk, Instead of Skipping Like a God*** Fairy?“
During the long working relationship between John Wayne and director John Ford, Ford seldom spared a kind word for his protégé. Wayne worshiped Ford: “My whole set up was that he was my mentor and my ideal! I think that deep down inside, he’s one of the greatest human beings that I have ever known“. Ford, by contrast, was savage in his mistreatment of Wayne, bullying him at every opportunity. That bullying helped create one of the most iconic pieces of John Wayne’s public image: his cowboy strut.
During the filming of Stagecoach, Ford seemingly disliked everything about Wayne. At one point, the director grabbed his lead actor by the chin and berated him: “Why are you moving your mouth so much? Don’t you know that you don’t act with your mouth in pictures?” He even hated the way Wayne moved, which Ford thought was effeminate: “Can’t you walk, instead of skipping like a god*** fairy?” That one stung so bad, that Wayne changed the way he walked for the rest of his life.