Free To Kill the Duke by Sam Moffie, Vicki Contavespi Page A

part.
    The first time John Wayne had invited Dick Powell out to play a practical joke on one of their peers was after a long Saturday afternoon and evening of drinking — the Duke excused himself from the party and came back with a bag full of Ivory soap.
    “Are we going to all take showers together?” A sarcastic Ward Bond hollered to the group.
    “No, we’re going to take part in a celebrity car wash,” Wayne announced. Everyone get into the tactical bivouac gear out in the garage.”
    The 11 partygoers followed Wayne out into his garage and saw their outfits for the celebrity car wash. All black commando stuff that Wayne had probably pilfered from a movie set.
    “Some car wash,” Bond scoffed.
    After they were all in uniform they followed Wayne for about seven blocks — dodging car lights and running in out of the darkness. When they arrived at the home of Kirk Douglas, Wayne handed out bars of soap to the men in his command.
    “Gentlemen, that’s Kirk’s favorite car. Our mission is to soap the shit out of all the windows so Kirk will have to spend a pretty penny at the Hollywood car wash,” Wayne told them.
    And the group did just that.
    They soaped up Kirk Douglas’ cars windows so bad, that Douglas had to hire professionals to get the windows clean again. For months after that raid, the 11 who took part in it avoided Douglas at any event in Hollywood — he was that mad.
    A second commando raid that Dick Powell heard about was when, after another wild night of drinking, the Duke had everyone assume their uniforms and go out and toilet paper Jerry Lewis’ home. At a fundraiser a few weeks after this event, Dick Powell heard that Jerry blamed Dean and to get back at Dean, Jerry slashed the four tires on Martin’s Cadillac limousine. For a while the Duke and his commando team of practical jokers thought about toilet papering a different star’s home once a month, but the idea didn’t catch on as well as the toilet paper did in the branches of Jerry’s trees.
    Dick Powell was well aware that the Duke had filled a trash can full of beer and had leaned it up against Ward Bond’s on-location, trailer-room door, so that when Bond opened up the door, the trash can spilled its contents into the trailer. It took Bond days to get the scent of stale beer out of the one-room trailer he was staying in.
    When he was filming a movie with George Montgomery, the Duke threw a bucket of cold water with ice on George and everyone else he found in the shower stall…
after
the victims were all lathered up and deep into a hot shower. Montgomery and the others all got back at Wayne byputting plastic wrap under the toilet seat, because Wayne was one of those men who never lifted the seat when he was urinating. The resulting spray back all over his shoes and pants made Wayne howl and pledge revenge.
    With all the practical jokes that Dick Powell had participated in or knew about, there was a particular one that some people claim was the best ever. Dick Powell wasn’t one of the claimers, because he was the victim.
    The Powells had just finished totally renovating their house with special emphasis on the ultra-modern kitchen they had designed themselves. Dick was in love with the hand sprayer with an extra-long hose attached to it, so he could water the hanging plants inside the kitchen area. The problem was that Dick had bragged about the kitchen to the Duke before the party.
    Somehow John Wayne got into Dick Powell’s new kitchen the day of the big, house-reopening party and tied rubber bands around the hand sprayer and pointed it right to the front of the sink. The Powells’ party was an invitation-only formal affair. The house tour featured a different food dish and drinks in every room with the end of the tour being the kitchen. Again, Powell had bragged to the Duke about the entire event. When it came time to show off the kitchen and the most modern kitchen sink in Hollywood, John Wayne asked for the water to be turned