Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre's production
of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" on Oct. 30, 1938,
was perceived by many people to be an
actual news broadcast and not entertainment.
Posted on 08/01/2003 12:03:52 PM PDT by weegee
Joseph Stalin ordered the KGB to assassinate John Wayne because he considered his anti-communist rhetoric a threat to the Soviet Union, according to a new biography of the film star based on interviews with Wayne's close associates and the movie legend Orson Welles. Stalin apparently learned of Wayne's popularity from the Russian filmmaker Sergei Gerasimov, who attended a peace conference in New York in 1949. Michael Munn, a film historian and author of John Wayne - The Man Behind The Myth, said Gerasimov told Stalin of Wayne's fervent anti-communist beliefs.
"Stalin decided that he would have him killed," said Mr Munn, who says he was told of the plot by Orson Welles at a dinner in 1983. Welles had said that the KGB was given the task of assassinating Wayne.
"Mr Welles was a great storyteller," said Mr Munn, "but he had no particular admiration for John Wayne." He said that Welles had offered the story without prompting, and that his sources were excellent.
A prominent Russian filmmaker, Alexei Kapler (who was imprisoned for an affair with Stalin's 16-year-old daughter, Svetlana), had told another Russian filmmaker, Sergei Bondachuk, about the order. Bondachuk was sceptical at first, but after Gerasimov confirmed the story, Bondachuk told Welles.
Mr Munn said Wayne had also told him that his friend, the stuntman Yakima Canutt, had "saved his life once". Mr Munn later asked Mr Canutt what he had meant by this comment. The incident is thought to have taken place in the early 50s.
"Yakima told me that the FBI had discovered there were agents sent to Hollywood to kill John Wayne," said Mr Munn. "He said the FBI had come to tell John about the plot. John told the FBI to let the men show up and he would deal with them."
Wayne then apparently hatched a plot with his scriptwriter at the time, Jimmy Grant, to abduct the assassins, drive to a beach and stage a mock execution to frighten them. Mr Munn said he did not know what transpired, but heard the two men stayed in the US to work for the FBI.
"Afterwards though, John shunned FBI protection and did not want his family to know. He moved into a house with a big wall around it."
Wayne then relied upon a group of loyal stuntmen who infiltrated communist cells in America and learned of plots to kill him.
"He then gathered all the stuntmen, went to the communist meetings, and had a huge fight," Mr Munn said. This was when Wayne believes Mr Canutt saved his life.
A further attempt to kill Wayne was made in Mexico on the set of the film Hondo (which was released in 1953), led by a communist cell, according to Mr Munn.
The book claims that Stalin's order was cancelled by his successor Nikita Krushchev after the dictator's death in 1953. The book says Krushchev told Wayne in a private meeting in 1958: "That was a decision of Stalin during his last five mad years. When Stalin died, I rescinded that order."
Wayne also told Mr Munn about an attempt to kill him by an enemy sniper while he was visiting the troops in Vietnam in 1966. "One of the snipers was captured," said Mr Munn, "and said there was a price on John's head, put there by [China's communist leader] Mao Tse Tung."
Mr Munn said he had gathered the anecdotes over decades of work in the film industry. "I am quite convinced that it was not propagated by John or his inner circle," he added.
I never thought this was possible, but suddenly John Wayne seems about a thousand times cooler than he already was.
;o)
I am a big John Wayne fan, but who would ever thunk that he was running his own counter-intelligence service -- headed by Yakima Canutt no less.
This story makes me wonder if any other "unsolved murders" in Hollywood are USSR-related....
No one will believe any of it then...
Was't Silverstein's "A boy named Sue" an inside joke?
"Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean, My fist got hard and my wits got keen. I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame. But I made me a vow to the moon and stars That I'd search the honky-tonks and bars, And kill that man that give me that awful name.
And he said: "Son, this world is rough, And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough, And I know I wouldn't be there to help ya along. So I give ya that name and I said good-bye. I knew you'd have to get tough or die, And it's that name that helped to make you strong."
Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre's production
of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" on Oct. 30, 1938,
was perceived by many people to be an
actual news broadcast and not entertainment.
Burt Kennedy (film director) told the story of John Wayne laying out one of Frank Sinatra's bodyguards in a Las Vegas hotel.
The Duke wanted to sleep and Sinatra had a loud party one floor above. The bodyguard got lippy, Wayne backhanded him flat to the ground and knocked him out with a metal bar stool.
I think he really was John Wayne.
I thought it was Moscow that had reporters working for The Guardian
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