Lorna Gray : “Duke could see I didn’t know what I was doing but he was terribly, terribly nice to me anyway

n one corner, there’s John Boyega playing Jake Pentecost, the son of the late war hero Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba). In the other corner there’s Scott Eastwood, the son of real-life film legend Clint Eastwood, playing Jake’s tightwad counterpart Nate Lambert.

While Boyega fleshes out Jake by channeling Elba’s lionhearted spirit as occasion demands, Eastwood fleshes out Nate simply by being his father’s kid. He lacks Boyega’s easy charisma, but makes up for it with family resemblance; maybe he doesn’t mean to, or maybe he can’t help it, but his every line read in the film, his every expression, echoes of his father’s grizzled, tough guy swagger, which is guaranteed entertainment for anyone with an abiding love of Clint’s work. (If you didn’t know Scott is an Eastwood going into Pacific Rim Uprising, you’d figure it out pretty quickly.)

The Western star John Wayne, who featured in more than 100 films and TV productions, remains a huge hit with Hollywood fans old and new, thanks to his incredible back catalogue. His career, which saw him claim an Oscar in 1972 for True Grit, is among the most cherished in film history, and he is regularly ranked the biggest star of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Such was his significance, in 1999, the American Film Institute selected Wayne as one of the greatest male stars of classic American cinema.

His career in Tinsel Town nearly didn’t become a reality, as Wayne, often referred to by his nickname Duke, wanted to originally be an American Football player.

Eyman wrote: “Lorna Gray/Adrian Booth was paired up with Wayne and the Mesquiteers for a film called Red River Range, which was shot in October 1938, and released in December.

“She had told the studio that she knew how to ride, which was a barefaced lie.”

The day before shooting the scene in which Gray was expected to ride, the actress rented a horse and took it to a nearby park to begin learning.

But, Eyman noted, Gray’s inexperience had left her “so sore she could barely move” when it came to the film’s first day of shooting.

The actress remarked: “Duke could see I didn’t know what I was doing. But he was terribly, terribly nice to me anyway.

“He was a man who was interested in his career. He didn’t play around.

“And I was scared to death; I was just hoping my shaking wouldn’t show up on camera.

“But he helped me get through it, and on the strength of Red River Range I did a lot more pictures for Republic.”

How John Wayne helped a ‘scared to death’ Lorna Gray: ‘He didn’t play around’

by CLIVE HAMMOND

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