Star Wars Episode XV: Why John Wayne Didn’t Sign Up

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No actor on movie screens in the 1940s embodied American patriotism and unpretentious masculinity better than JohnWayne, whose career was revitalized in 1939 with John Ford’s groundbreaking western, Stagecoach. But Wayne didn’t have the defining experience of most adult American men of the 1940s — though he played uniformed men in several movies, off-screen Wayne didn’t enlist to serve in World War II. We’ll talk about the motivations Wayne had to stay home, from his relatively late-blooming stardom to his affairs with Marlene Dietrich and the prostitute he ultimately married; Wayne’s relationship with decorated veteran Ford and their uneasy collaboration on the film They Were Expendable; and the connection between Wayne’s lack of military service and his later right-wing activism. 

Show Notes:

Aside from being a casual fan of movies like The Quiet Man and The Searchers, I knew very little about JohnWayne before deciding to include him in this Star Wars series. In not knowing where to start with learning about one of the greatest, most controversially mythic stars of the 20th century, I decided to compare and contrast two biographies published within months of one another: Marc Eliot’s American Titan: Searching For JohnWayne, and JohnWayne: The Life and Legendby Scott Eyman. I chose Eliot's book specifically because there was a Daily Mail story last year which used it to back up claims that Wayne avoided the war because he was so in love with Marlene Dietrich. But I didn't actually find that assertion in Eliot's book, at least not in any kind of literal way. It seems like it was a willful mis-inference on the part of the British tabloid. 

UPDATE, 4/21/15, 9:11 AM: I can't believe I forgot to include Mark Harris' Five Came Back in this episode's bibliography! It is the first place I learned of John Ford's disapproval of Wayne's approach to the war, so it's more responsible for this episode than any other source.  

Discography:

I’m Not Dreaming (Instrumental) by Josh Woodward

Keechie by No Age

Au coin de la rue by Marco Raaphorst

Divider by Chris Zabriskie

Falling In Love Again performed by Marlene Dietrich 

Gagool by Kevin MacLeod

For Better or Worse by Kai Engel

Let’s Call it a Day performed by Marlene Dietrich 

Marlene Dietrich Extras

If this week's episode on Marlene Dietrich piqued your interest in this fascinating broad, two things.

First: I forgot to mention in the show notes Maximilian Schell's incredible, experimental documentary on Marlene, called (as so many things about her are) Marlene. This is by no means a conventional biographical documentary, to its credit -- it's actually rather advanced Dietrich studies. I love it. It's on Amazon Instant video, iTunes, etc.

Second: last night I happened to catch on HBO a harrowing film called Night Will Fall, which tells the story of a British documentary shot primarily during the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps which was, for various reasons explained in the film, never finished or released. Alfred Hitchcock was brought on at some point as the director of this shelved, and ultimately suppressed film. This was actually first brought to my attention by a post on our forum by Moominmama, and so once I realized it was on TV last night I was excited to watch it anyway. However, I didn't know that the film would include a rather substantial segment on the concentration camp documentary on which Billy Wilder worked, Death Mills, which I mentioned in the Marlene Dietrich episode. Night Will Fall even includes clips from Wilder's film, and much more backstory than what I was able to include in the episode. And it is also full of really powerful footage of survivors and victims of the camps, so, watch at your own risk (I admit that I did not sleep well last night), but do watch.

Star Wars Episode VI: Marlene Dietrich at War (YMRT #32)

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German actress/singer Marlene Dietrich — famous for her revolutionarily ambiguous, highly glamorous sexual libertine persona, as displayed on-screen during the 1930s in films like Morocco and Shanghai Express — was embedded with the Allies during World War II as a performer, propagandist, and de facto intelligence agent. We’ll explore how and why this happened, why the experience left Dietrich depressed and financially destitute, and how Billy Wilder convinced Marlene to play a Nazi sympathizer in the filmmaker’s attempt to make a post-war Hollywood propaganda film, A Foreign Affair. Also: a few of Dietrich’s many affairs with co-stars such as John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, her plot to kill Hitler, and the FBI investigation that tried (and failed) to prove that Dietrich was a German spy.

Show Notes:

A Foreign Affair, which I discuss in the episode and highly recommend, is not on DVD. I first saw it in a rep house in Paris two years ago, and then found a copy on VHS while I was working on this episode. The short clip I included in this episode comes from the radio version of the film, which is on YouTube.

To keep things interesting, this week two of my sources, though very different books, both have the same title. Dietrich’s own autobiography Marlene, first published in 1989, claims to set the record straight on all of the previous books written about her, which she insists are rubbish. She’s so persuasive on this matter that I ignored all other books published while she was alive, and focused on Marlene: A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler, who spent some time with Dietrich in the 1970s and also interviewed many of her friends and lovers, but held back publishing her book until 2011, long after Dietrich’s death. 

In looking for information on the making of A Foreign Affair, I discovered two books new to me: Charles Brackett’s diary of working with Wilder, It’s the Pictures That Got Small; and A Foreign Affair: Billy Wilder’s American Films by Gerd Gemunden. I found the former to be almost too bitchy, and the latter to be a little academic but very useful in its detailing of Wilder’s wartime and post-war experience.

Two other sources worth mentioning, both of which I read years ago but did not consult directly this week: Josef von Sternberg’s memoir Fun in a Chinese Laundry, and Gaylyn Studlar’s book on Sternberg and Dietrich’s collaborations, In the Realm of Pleasure.

The bit about Dietrich’s FBI file comes from this Guardian story, and details on Operation Muzak and other aspects of Dietrich’s war experience come from this article on the CIA’s own website.

Discography:

You Go to My Head performed by Marlene Dietrich

Rite of Passage by Kevin MacLeod

Give Me The Man performed by Marlene Dietrich

Assez performed by Marlene Dietrich

Au coin de la rue by Marco Raaphorst

Benbient by Canton

Lili Marlene performed by Marlene Dietrich

Prelude No. 21 by Chris Zabriskie

Look Me Over Closely performed by Marlene Dietrich

Black Market performed by Marlene Dietrich

Gymnopedie No.3 by Eric Satie

Illusions performed by Marlene Dietrich 

Follies of 1938, Part 1: Hollywood's Greatest Year (YMRT #8)

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This micro-episode sets up a topic we’ll be exploring throughout the summer: the films, stars and scandals of 1938. By midway through that year, Hollywood was in such a desperate downswing — and so concerned that Americans were losing interest not just in specific movies but in moviegoing as a habit — that the studios banded together to launch a massive PR campaign to convince the public that 1938 was Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year. It wasn’t. 

Show Notes!

This episode is shorter than usual, and not as polished as I would like it to be, particularly in terms of the recording quality, and these things are related. Mr. You Must Remember This has a new job, for which we are in the process of temporary relocating to San Francisco. I was short on time this week, and by the time I got around to recording, I was in Los Angeles and parts of my usual recording set-up were en route to our new home. All should be back to normal by next week. I hope. 

The primary research source for this episode was Catherine Jurca’s fascinating book Hollywood 1938: Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year. I basically piggybacked on her extensive, awe-inspiring research, and tried to synthesize it into something more anecdotal. This book gave me the idea to do a series of episodes stemming from the events of 1938, and so, while most of those future episodes won’t necessarily have much to do with the MPGY campaign, I thought telling that story would be the best possible way to begin a series called Follies of 1938. 

Next week, we’re going to return to our other ongoing series, The Many Loves of Howard Hughes. The tentative plan for the next few weeks is to alternate between series, but I reserve the right to mix it up, too. 

Music!

"Preludes for Piano #1" by George Gershwin

"Concerto in F Major for Piano and Orchestra I - Allegro" by George Gershwin, performed by Oscar Lavant with New York Philharmonic

"Preludes for Piano #3" by George Gershwin

"Preludes for Piano #2" by George Gershwin

"Lady Be Good," performed by Count Basie and his Orchestra

"Concerto in F Major for Piano and Orchestra II - Andante Co Moto" by George Gershwin, performed by Oscar Lavant with New York Philharmonic

"You Go To My Head," performed by Marlene Dietrich