Thursday, July 30, 2015

New Meaning to Taking Care of Your Friends

July 30, 2015
   Finishing the big Wyatt Earp In Hollywood opus this morning. Since I'm dealing with the movie outlaws in the last outlaw town (Hollywood), one tidbit I am trying to shoehorn in somewhere is the Jack Warner comment to John Wayne, after The Duke's Batjac Production Co. ran into financial difficulties: "You really ought to bring Batjac back to Warner Bros, Duke. You should be here, where you can be f---- by friends." If you want to understand Hollywood, that says it all.

John Wayne in "West of The Divide," (1934)

"Wayne got into a beef with [Jack] Warner about the costs of a picture Wayne had made; Warner's hung us on that one too. Warner's promptly threw away the rest of the pictures. . .we got a good screwing, because of the way Warner's released the picture."
—William Clothier, who photographed a Batjac production of "Good-bye My Lady" which cost $900,000 and had world rentals of $677,000, and with Warner's creative book keeping the film showed even more of a loss. Both quotes and the above information are from the excellent book "John Wayne: The Life & Legend" by Scott Eyman. I highly recommend it.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Post your comments