John Wayne’s tragic feud with Christopher Mitchum who desperately tried to reconcile
JOHN WAYNE co-starred opposite Christopher Mitchum, Robert Mitchum’s son, in a couple of Westerns before the pair had a complete falling out. The actor even tried reaching out to Duke as he was dying from cancer.
John Wayne’s Rio Bravo remake, 1966’s El Dorado, saw him co-starring opposite Robert Mitchum and the two became good friends. When the director of both movies Howard Hawks wanted to make the film about a sheriff defending his office from outlaws for the third time, he hoped could convince his starring pair to return. When the filmmaker first approached Duke, , about 1970’s Rio Lobo, the Hollywood star replied: “Do I get to play the drunk this time?”
Hawks also wanted Mitchem to reprise his drunken sheriff, but the actor said he was retired. Despite this, his son Christopher Mitchem had a role in the movie, his second with Wayne that year after Chisum.
The young actor would go on to co-star with the A-lister in 1971’s Big Jake, playing one of Duke’s sons alongside the Western legend’s actual kid Patrick Wayne.
Sadly, this was the last movie that Christopher would act in opposite Wayne after a terrible feud that saw them never speak again.
Soon after Big Jake was released, Wayne and Christopher appeared together on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on June 7, 1972.
Duke was well known as a staunch and uncompromising conservative and during the TV interview, they disagreed on a political issue of the day.
Their conversion ended by talking about environmentalism, which the Western legend wasn’t in favour of.
It was his belief that if you were an environmentalist, then you were against business. And if you were against business, then you were a liberal.
Over the years, Christopher desperately tried to get back in contact with Wayne to reconcile. However, Duke didn’t let go and never responded to the attempts, even when he was dying from cancer in 1979.
PROC. by Movies
