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| The Wayne/O'Hara gestalt in a nutshell |
Last week I discussed the way
marriage was handled in several movie made by that archetype of Fifties
glamour, Marilyn Monroe. This week, I thought I’d take a look at one specific
film in the canon of another archetype of 50s Hollywood: John Wayne.
Wayne basically sculpted the tough
man/cowboy archetype during his time in the spotlight; in many of his movies he
does indeed get the girl, though in iconic pieces such as “The Searchers” and
“True Grit”, all he has is his integrity.
Perhaps that’s why when we look back on “The Quiet Man” and
“McClintock!” his two most explicitly marriage – minded movies, one is struck
by the breathtaking scenery and the jaw-grinding misogyny all at once. Being romanced by a square-jawed hero in a
pristine Irish landscape is a fine enough fantasy to have, but when you have to
enter into a nonstop battle of the sexes to get respect from your own husband
the price feels mighty high.
The Quiet Man concerns retired
(due to the accidental death of his opponent) boxer Sean Thornton, who travels
to Ireland to claim a sheep farm that’s part of his heritage and
birthright. He outbids local braggart Squire
"Red" Will Danaher for the land, and soon makes the acquaintance of
Red’s sister, Mary Kate. Sean and Mary
Kate soon court, but Red refuses Mary Kate permission to wed. Mary Kate enlists the entire town in
convincing Red that the town’s wealthiest widow, a woman by the name of Tilane,
is interested in marrying him – but her one wish is to have Mary Kate out of
the house. The wedding proceeds but Red
finds out the truth, then refuses to give Mary Kate her dowry – made of her
mother’s possessions and a small amount of money set aside.
Sean doesn’t see the value in the
money but for Mary Kate the dowry’s all she has left of her pride –and of her
mother. She demands Sean fight her
brother for the pot, but Sean won’t ‘cause of that pesky cracked-my-opponent’s
head-in incident. It takes Mary Kate
nearly running away to wake Sean up and force him to confront Red.
The Quiet Man’s look at marriage
is…very fifties. While Mary Kate has a
lively sense of herself, what’s important to her and is understandably
frustrated by those values being ignored, she doesn’t fight her own battle –
instead she pressures Sean to do it, at the possible cost of their marriage and
at the definite cost of their sex life.
And Sean – generally immune to her feelings – eventually threatens to
renege on the marriage and send Mary Kate back at her brother in an effort to
call his bluff. The marriage, which
both characters desire, is beyond the point when pride is on the line. Even when the movie acknowledges Mary Kate’s
right to be mad it considers her foolish and self-absorbed, and Sean foolish to
not be ‘manly’ enough to punch Red in the face until they come to an
understanding. Only in a John Ford
picture.
“McLintock!” is, if possible,
worse. Focusing on the titular drunken rancher who
was long ago abandoned by his wife on grounds of adultery (and who smartly took
their daughter with her), "G.W." McLintock lives in happy drunken peace with
his voluptuous cook and her two children on his enormous ranch among the
friendly villagers and even friendlier natives on whose land he’s built his
self-named and titular town. Then
Katherine resurfaces, asking for a divorce – and custody of their daughter,
Becky…who’s eighteen, but never mind.
Becky herself is already engaged to a cheerful, banjo-picking
fella. But in Wayne’s World because he
won’t ‘rein in’ Becky’s ‘high handed’ behavior then they’re not destined.
According to Wayne, who proclaimed that this movie dealt in his personal
philosophy for life, how does G.W., who founded an entire town and basically
runs it like a friendly oligarchy? Why by spanking the shit out of her! That’s how he knows Becky’s meant for the
cook’s son, and how G.W. knows he’s meant for Katherine. The entire last half of the movie degenerates
into a mud fight that turns into a creepy scene in which Katherine, desperate
to escape G.W., is cornered by the entire town and spanked by G.W. With the
same shovel as her daughter was previously spanked. While the whole town looks on and cheers.
Since this is John Wayne’s little Instruction Book For Life, we can
pretty much deduce from what he tells us that he believes men should rule their
roosts with a literal iron fist. This
is, perhaps, why he cycled through three marriages and numerous affairs in his
lifetime. The best lesson to
take away from the whole experience is that there’s no such thing as perfect
advice and every marriage is different.
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