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This week marks the 78th anniversary of the release of 1945’s They Were Expendable, a film set during the Battle of the Philippines which took place just a couple of years prior.
The film’s cinematic debut was pushed back to late December 1945 since the Japanese had surrendered earlier that year.
Yet despite good reviews, there was a low turnout at the box office with John Wayne later noting: “People had seen eight million war stories by the time the picture came out, and they were tired of them.”
It’s well known that Duke didn’t manage to serve in World War II and so was constantly insulted by director John Ford on set.
The filmmaker had commanded a naval photographic unit as a Captain and considered his star a coward for staying home.
Months went by with Ford vocally abusing Wayne, who put up with it because the director had made him a star in 1939’s Stagecoach. Yet this all stopped when Duke’s co-star Robert Montgomery got involved and approached the filmmaker.
The actor, who had also served as a naval officer in the war, told Ford that if he was insulting Wayne for his benefit then he must cease immediately. The notoriously hard director was reduced to tears by this and stopped berating Duke from then on.
In an Instagram post marking They Were Expendable’s 78th anniversary, Wayne’s estate defended his lack of World War II service.
The post read: “Though many had questioned John Wayne’s getting an exemption from military service during World War II, it was not entirely his fault. Duke was exempted from service due to his age (34 at the time of Pearl Harbor) and family status, classified as 3-A (family deferment). He repeatedly wrote to John Ford, asking to be placed in Ford’s military unit, but Ford consistently postponed it until after he had finished one more film.
“John Wayne did not attempt to prevent his reclassification as 1-A (draft eligible), but Republic Pictures was emphatically resistant to losing him; Herbert J. Yates, President of Republic, threatened Duke with a lawsuit if he walked away from his contract and Republic intervened in the Selective Service process, requesting his further deferment.”
