Richard Lutz on a question that won’t go away.
There is no doubt that once a digital piece goes live, it takes on a life of its own. On this site, there’s one that’s read day after day. For the past six years. It’s about John Wayne’s Hollywood secret and the hit rate is inexhaustible. Quote honestly, we really don’t know why. Maybe the headline was algorithmically bang on. Maybe folks love The Duke. Or gossip. Or all three. So, we thought we’d just send it out again. Here it is, from our 2014 Screengrab column that showcased TV movies of the week;
Screengrab: What Maureen O’Hara Really Said to John Wayne
Richard Lutz spins your dials to offer the best movie on the box this week.
There is a great Hollywood moment at the end of The Quiet Man which is movie legend. Sit down and listen:
In the last scene of this John Ford elegy to an Ireland that never existed, John Wayne runs hand in hand with Maureen O’Hara to a little knoll overlooking the Emerald Isle as they peer into their movieland future. It is a happy ending. But the director, ever the perfectionist, felt the two stars just weren’t cutting it for the ending to this 1952 light romance. The Duke seemed wooden.
Ford had an idea. He told Ms O’Hara, who was a strict Catholic and a bit of a puritan, to whisper something appallingly obscene and suggestive into The Duke’s ear. She said she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. It was against her better judgement and her upbringing.
“I couldn’t say that to The Duke,” she wrote later in her memoirs
Ford promised only she, Wayne and John Ford himself would ever know what she would utter. She trusted Ford, then at the height of his powers. She agreed to whisper something very naughty. But no one else was to know but they three.
The camera captures John Wayne reacting to this surprise, this moment. His eyes enlarge, for a mini second he is frozen, then he laughs, a real laugh, grabs Ms O’Hara and they run back to their idyllic cottage in the green rolling fields.
That’s the final shot. The movie ends and the credits roll. Hollywood magic. It is said that the trio never told anyone just what Maureen O’Hara whispered. They kept to their promise. Pals do that.
The movie itself is pure 1952 good fun. Wayne is an ex-boxer come home to Eire to inherit family land. Maureen O’Hara stands in his way and, of course, they fight, banter and fall for each other.
There are a host of Ford regulars like Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen, and the director’s own brother Francis Ford. Ford ensured there was the colour green in every shot. Critic Leonard Maltin called it “Boisterous blarney”. Yeah, that about fits.
It won two Oscars (one presumably for Best Dirty Comment Kept Secret By a Star) and it’s one to record and watch on a lazy wet Sunday afternoon.