John Wayne Almost Walked Out on Box Office Disaster Over a Director He Couldn’t Stand Working With
Actor John Wayne saw his performance at the box office above film criticism and all else. After all, he wanted to serve the image that he had built over the course of his career. However, Wayne wasn’t always a success at the box office. He nearly walked off The Barbarian and the Geisha set, which was a major financial disappointment and a critical failure.
John Wayne starred in ‘The Barbarian and the Geisha’
The Barbarian and the Geisha takes place on the night before the Meiji Restoration, when Japan continues to distrust Western culture. As a result, the American government sends Townsend Harris (Wayne) to Shimoda as the U.S. consul to Japan. However, the locals push back against him and his interpreter, Henry Heusken (Sam Jaffe), who refuse to accept his diplomatic title. Harris meets a geisha named Okichi (Eiko Ando), who has the possibility of bridging the cultural gap.
Wayne sought to bring in box office familiarity with a role audiences were already accustomed to seeing him in. However, he worked with a different filmmaker in director John Huston, rather than his usual collaborators, such as John Ford.
The actor almost walked off ‘The Barbarian and the Geisha’ because of director John Huston’s style
Pilar Wayne and Alex Thorleifson’s book John Wayne: My Life With the Duke went through the actor’s box office successes and failures. The Barbarian and the Geisha provided a very different set than he was accustomed to working on. Directors such as Ford had every scene under control, but Huston allowed his actors to go “loose,” which Wayne hated.
“I have done everything but stand on my head to get near this man’s thinking,” Wayne once wrote to Pilar ahead of filming. “Just have to hope and pray that he’s good.”
Wayne continued: “I can’t work with the son of a b****. I ask him what’s on tomorrow’s shooting schedule, and he’ll tell me to spend more time absorbing the beauty of the scenery and less time worrying about my part. When I tell him I can’t memorize the script unless I know what we’ll be shooting, the bastard says, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll improvise.'”
However, Wayne believed the making of any box office success included a director who would actually direct.
“He can quote chapter and verse on the price of a goddamn piece of Japanese porcelain, but he won’t tell me how to do a scene,” Duke said. “The son of a b**** can’t make a good movie without his father or [Humphrey] Bogart to carry him.”
Wayne wanted to leave The Barbarian and the Geisha early, but he didn’t want the blowback that would come with it.
John Wayne movie ended as box office failure
Wayne would ultimately find The Barbarian and the Geisha to be one of his box office failures. It only brought in $2.5 million against a $4 million budget, making it a financial loss for the studio.
The Barbarian and the Geisha currently sits at 40% on the critics’ scale on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomato-meter. One critic even called it one of the actor’s “worst and most embarrassing” roles in his career. Meanwhile, it’s currently at a 42% audience score.
