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.I realized it wasactually written by Hal Wallis and his wife Martha Hyer.And it wasawful.Just ridiculous.It was The African Queen in a Westernsetting.I turned it down. When I took on North to Alaska I was not the first choice,which always irked me.They wanted Richard Fleischer to directit, but he turned it down when he discovered they had no finishedscript.So this time, I turned the tables and suggested they get DickFleischer to direct Rooster Cogburn.Wayne had approved Fleischerfor North to Alaska and I thought there was no reason why he 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 329THE LAST RIDE 329would not approve him for Rooster Cogburn.But Wayne rejectedhim. Fleischer assumed Wayne was getting revenge for his havingrefused to direct North to Alaska, but Duke wasn t petty like that.Hetold me he understood Fleischer s reasons for not doing that picture.By1975 Fleischer had a good body of work behind him, like The BostonStrangler, the Pearl Harbor picture Tora! Tora! Tora! which Dukeadmired, and Soylent Green.Wayne said to me, I couldn t let DickFleischer take on Rooster Cogburn because I thought you were the onlyone who could make that film what it should have been, and, by God,I was right.I thought you d come to our rescue, but you didn t. So, having lost me and having turned down Dick Fleischer, HalWallis chose Stuart Millar, who d been an assistant to WilliamWyler for a long time and then began producing films.But he d onlydirected one film, When the Legends Die, a really fine film withRichard Widmark.I think they all thought that Rooster Cogburnwould establish Millar as a top director.But he had a lousy script anda star who thought Millar was too inexperienced as a director.Andmaybe Duke was right. He told me that Millar would do so many takes that eventuallyDuke lost his temper and said, Damn it, Stuart, there s only so manytimes we can speak these lines before they stop making any sense atall. I think Millar was desperately trying to make sense of the script.Wallis had Charles Portis come in and try tidying up the screenplay,but he wasn t able to do much with it, so Wayne and Hepburn madeup most of their lines.All Millar had to do was shout, Action! and Cut! It didn t do Stuart s career any good and after that he went intoTV. Richard Jordan played the heavy in the film, and was well awarethat his presence would be overshadowed by the combination ofWayne and Hepburn.When I interviewed Jordan on the set of ANightingale Sang in Berkeley Square at Pinewood in 1978, he toldme, It [Rooster Cogburn] was a two-person picture, and I didn tmind that.Wayne and Hepburn were the stars, and if anyone wasgoing to come and see the picture, they were coming to see them, notme or anyone else in the cast. 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 330330 JOHN WAYNE I never became friendly with Wayne but that s because he washaving too good a time spending all his hours with KatharineHepburn.I thought he was the best screen partner she d had sinceSpencer Tracy.She was sometimes giving him direction.He wastrying to inject whatever he could to recapture the performance hegave in True Grit, and Hepburn would quietly tell him, You retipping your mitt, which meant he was going over the top. They had such a respect for each other that the rest of us reallywere outside of it all.But I never minded because I felt that Wayneshould enjoy himself while he was able, and we all thought thatmaybe Katharine Hepburn might not be around much longer, so sheshould have a good time too.She only complained because Waynewas bossing everyone I mean everyone around, just trying toget the film made, which wasn t fair to Stuart Millar, and Hepburncomplained that she was the one who usually bossed everyonearound! Ironically, despite Jordan s seemingly justified theory that neitherWayne nor Hepburn might be around much longer, Hepburnoutlived both Wayne and Richard Jordan, who died too early in lifein 1993, aged just fifty-six.Rooster Cogburn (or Rooster Cogburn and the Lady, as it waslater retitled) was shot in Oregon from September to November1974.Hal Wallis felt he had a surefire hit on his hands and hedecided there would be a second sequel, which Wayne agreed to.When Rooster Cogburn was released in 1975, it received badreviews and did less well than True Grit, but it did manage to takea modestly respectable $8 million in domestic sales. It was one ofthe highest-grossing Westerns of all time, said Richard Jordan, but everything about it was compared either to True Grit in itsquality and its box office, or to The African Queen.I heard that thesecond sequel got canceled because Rooster Cogburn didn t dowell, but I think there wasn t a third Rooster Cogburn film simplybecause Wayne s health began to fail quickly and he would havebeen too ill to do it. But Rooster Cogburn was not enough of a success to compete withother releases of that year, such as Jaws and Airport 1975.Of the fewWesterns released in 1975, Rooster Cogburn was the most successful, 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:43 PM Page 331THE LAST RIDE 331but, for the first time since 1959, John Wayne was not listed in the topten box-office stars.He had been in the top ten since 1949, except for1958, and had been number one in 1950, 1951, 1954, and 1969, andhad been number two in 1956, 1957, and 1963
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