Free American Titan: Searching for John Wayne by Marc Eliot Page A

ended, William Fox warehoused all his Grandeur equipment, and widescreen 70 mm would not be used again until the early ’50s, when it was revived as part of the dying industry’s attempt to combat the ubiquitous but small television screen.
    The film’s financial failure signaled the end of William Fox’s career as a Hollywood mogul. He eventually served six months in jail for perjury, having to do with the government’s antitrust lawsuit. When he was released, he declared bankruptcy and retired from the film business. In 1935, under new management, the studio was taken over by Twentieth Century in what was politely called a merger. Under the leadership of Darryl F. Zanuck, Twentieth Century Pictures became Twentieth Century–Fox. William Fox moved back to New York City and died in obscurity in 1952 at the age of seventy-three. No Hollywood producers came to his funeral. (In his unpublished memoirs, Wayne graciously gave William Fox and his studio credit as the person and institution that gave him his first big opportunity in Hollywood.)
    With his star turn a bust, Wayne didn’t appear in another movie for a year and a half. Zanuck finally put him in a movie after demoting him to the Bs, the cinematic dead end for has-beens or never-wases. The whole experience left him bitter and broke: “So I was the star of a super-spectacle $3 million picture. What a laugh. My salary was all of $75 a week.”
    Without money, without a future, and without a dream, he did what any twenty-three-year-old would do in his situation.
    He decided it was the perfect time to think about setting down and getting married.

Chapter 5
    In 1936, to make room for his growing brood—Josephine had given birth to their second child, a girl they named Mary Antonia “Toni”—Wayne managed to save enough money to buy a two-story Spanish-style mansion on North Highland Avenue, not too far from Hancock Park, where Josie’s parents still lived. As soon as they moved in, Josie set about to decorate it. She wanted a stylish showcase, but her taste tended to run to nouveau riche, a choice Wayne especially disliked. It made him feel less like he was living in a real home and more like on some fancy movie set. One time coming home late and tired, he sat down on a new and elegant-looking chair in the living room Josie had bought; it collapsed under his weight and he wound up on the floor like the hapless victim in some two-reel comedy.
    He insisted to Josie he had to have one room in the house for himself, what today would be called a man cave, one room of the house with big old comfortable chairs, a large wooden desk, and an oversize sofa he could stretch out on without having to take off his boots. In a house that otherwise had so much activity, with decorators and Josie’s parents and friends, and their own two little children running around, or screaming, or crying, Wayne increasingly sought comfort and solitude in that room.
    Josie, meanwhile, became active in the elusive upper-crust strata of Hollywood’s non-moviemaking social set, and often insisted Wayne accompany her to the seemingly endless black-tie events, even if they went on well past his regular bedtime. He did so reluctantly, to keep peace in the family, even if it meant he didn’t get enough sleep for the next day’s early call.
    Imbedded in Josie’s newly acquired social sophistication was her unspoken rejection of being married to a movie actor. Josie felt the need to compensate for his work in cheap movies by elevating her status, for the good of the both of them. Redecorating their home was the same as dressing up her husband in a tux to make him more acceptable. Wayne felt caught in the peculiar web of Josie’s double dissatisfaction, her need to appear to be the picture of the perfect wife in public, but in private her inability to disguise her revulsion for the field in which her husband worked. To Josie he was, as her father had warned her, just a struggling actor, and because