The Duke Takes Harvard
Barron, Fred
THE DUKE TAKES HARVARD FRED BARRON It could have been a scenario from any one of a number of John Ford movies: John Wayne, as the aging colonel, fearlessly enters enemy territory with...
...I think they have the right to work anywhere they want...
...THE DUKE TAKES HARVARD FRED BARRON It could have been a scenario from any one of a number of John Ford movies: John Wayne, as the aging colonel, fearlessly enters enemy territory with only a handful of soldiers from the Fifth Cavalry to stand alone against 5,000 screaming savages...
...Army Reserves made Wayne an honorary colonel, a gesture politely applauded by the "most traditionally radical students in the most hostile territory on earth...
...Army Reserve, whose splashy yellow ascots of the New Army provided the only color, "Nice guns you got there...
...Is that a toupee you're wearing or is it real hair...
...No telling how he would have fared in a less hostile territory inhabited by more docile people, say Wounded Knee, South Dakota...
...Who gave a damn about John Wayne anyway...
...John Wayne and the U.S...
...Hiss) "If you want to get serious for a moment," said the Duke in his most sincere gravel tones, "I've always given the Indian human dignity in any picture I've ever played in...
...One could not help but feel, as she was indifferently jostled by the socially aware Harvard students, that on this day hers was a lost cause...
...A serious day, as opposed to fun time...
...the audience knew, morally, that such a question had to be asked, and that Wayne had to have an acceptable answer to soothe their consciences...
...Laughter, applause) Of course he didn't mean it...
...We'll make a serious day some other time and talk about that...
...Outside Harvard Square itself, however, huddled around the Lampoon building, about 500 people were gathered—a number that grew appreciably into the thousands by the time the parade reached the theater for the free screening of McQ—waiting for the Duke to appear...
...Very efficient, just like in the Harvard strike of 1968...
...Word has it that the American Indian Movement is going to stage a demonstration in front of the Harvard Square theater...
...Wayne was then presented with The Harvard Lampoon's Brass Balls Award, and the tone of the afternoon was clearly set...
...His producers, Warner Brothers, were apparently delighted (the event made all the national networks that night) and even the U.S...
...John Wayne, the only director with "the guts"—or bad taste—to make a movie in praise of American involvement in Vietnam...
...The Lampoon's president and other staff members dressed in motley and shabby tuxedos began their John Wayne testimonial with all the savage bite of a televised Friars Club roasting...
...Suddenly the band struck up the theme from The Magnificent 7, and out of nowhere a large old man in a gray top coat appeared, eyes squinting, face ruddy and thick like a piece of meat, waving to the chanting, crushing crowd which was being pushed back by the Cambridge police who grabbed coats and moved obstructing bodies like sacks of feathers...
...Sincere, noble, foolish, a costumed anachronism like Wayne himself, trying to symbolize an idea...
...It comes out of our public relations funds...
...but Wayne apparently didn't hear him and The Lampoon's MC rephrased the question for him as: "Do you wear a normal truss...
...In speech after speech, Wayne was taken to task for being a dimwit and a lousy actor, and for punching lots of people...
...Lampoon building near the corner of Bow and Arrow Streets...
...The armored personnel carriers, Ml-13's, equipped with fifty-caliber machine guns, stood by as long haired students studied them—the symbol of last year's enemy—with a perverse fascination...
...Hard questions, from the radical depths of Harvard University: "Is it true that since you've lost weight your horse's hernia has cleared up...
...I don't know...
...Only briefly were references made to his politics: "Throughout the years," said an unintroduced speaker, "John Wayne has stood out as a spokesman for the far right...
...Three years ago it would have been unthinkable, and riot police would have been put on alert...
...Were you ordered to come here...
...Something was missing, though, as I wandered into Harvard Square at high noon and headed for the Fred Barron, a Boston-based free lance writer, has contributed to The Boston Phoenix, The Real Paper, Take One, and Penthouse...
...In these times, any hero will do, so they offered up their dignity, in the name of good fun, as if it meant nothing...
...Is Warner Brothers paying for you and your tanks—" "Armored personnel carriers...
...I didn't have any trouble today...
...One person managed to get off the question: "What is your feeling now about having turned people in during the McCarthy era...
...No...
...The tension that a great director would have built around such an event was totally absent...
...armored personnel carriers, to be here...
...A sixty-six-year-old, 250-pound actor who had made a dozen or so good films, and about 160 mediocre and downright bad ones...
...We were asked, and we volunteered...
...They were willing to accept any platitudes to preserve the sense of camaraderie with their new-found hero, so they warmly cheered his answer...
...The story, however, was not set in Arizona in the 1870s or in the South Pacific during World War II, nor was it directed by anyone with the artistry of a John Ford or a Howard Hawks...
...The U.S...
...but in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the biggest frauds were indeed exposed...
...Still, there were certain questions the Duke answered head on: "What do you think of Women's Lib...
...How many children do you have...
...In a well publicized letter, the Lampoon challenged Wayne to test his true grit in "the most intellectual, the most traditionally radical, in short, the most hostile territory on earth," and Wayne —eager to publicize his latest film, McQ—promptly accepted...
...But now the Square was bleak and raw, and people crowded in the slushy snow, bundled up in their cocoon-like coats against the biting rain...
...We're getting a little too serious, don't you think...
...Everyone in the audience, and Wayne himself, roared with laughter...
...Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke," they chanted, and strained their eyes to see the man whose films they had assiduously avoided for years, in a desire to submit to the charisma of the only hero left...
...Who was he...
...Army was invited in on the act, providing two thirteen-ton armored personnel carriers and members of the Fifth Cavalry (Wayne's own company in Rio Grande and Fort Apache), now fully motorized and stationed in Wollaston, Massachusetts...
...Inside the Harvard Square theater, which many hoped would be packed by members of the American Indian Movement who had been staging a small demonstration outside, the carnival atmosphere continued...
...I had plenty of Indians out front, pulling...
...Outside, the scattered demonstrators of AIM had gone home in disgust...
...I hate Wayne as much as you do, but the best way to debunk a myth is to mock it...
...Instead, this showdown took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 15 under the direction of Harvard University's satirical magazine, The Harvard Lampoon, which had invited Wayne to town to "have it out, head on, with the young whelps here who would call the supposedly unbeatable John Wayne the biggest fraud in history...
...They draped themselves over the personnel carriers, playing out childhood fantasies, dressed up in clown suits and other outlandish outfits, so that through their disguises they could pretend that they were only pretending...
...How much gasoline did they use for your personnel carrier...
...And twenty grandchildren...
...I'm doing this because I have to...
...No," she replied...
...Are you with AIM...
...Newspaper people, ankle deep in wet snow, talked among themselves or to the dozen soldiers of D Troop, Fifth Cavalry, 187th Infantry Brigade, U.S...
...Lampoon pranksters ran through the crowd with plastic machine guns, top hats and tails, and the Harvard University Band oom-pahed its way through Home on the Range...
...Then the questions came from the floor: the showdown that promised to expose the fraud and reveal John Wayne for what he is...
...Army in Harvard Square, at the invitation of the left-liberal press...
...No...
...I'm not with any group...
...After all, he just finished saying he's always given the Indian human dignity...
...So John Wayne, without firing a shot or punching a mouth, had won the great showdown with the inhabitants of "the most intellectual, the most traditionally radical, in short, the most hostile territory on earth...
...The applause that followed was filled with relief...
...Those students who didn't rush back to their dorms to swallow goldfish remained to watch McQ and applaud their new hero...
...It's only a put-on...
...he said with a frozen smile...
...John Wayne, whose every public statement was a denigration of the left...
...It was twenty-two degrees in Cambridge, and everyone had somewhere to go...
...500 rounds a minute...
...The left-liberal audience had fallen under the Duke's spell, and began reacting like a group of toothless golden-agers after a Rotary Club luncheon...
...Only the police, standing in the wings, did not look amused...
...How much fuel will you use in today's events...
...John Wayne, the superpatriot Indian fighter, extolling the virtues of law and order and private property...
...He has articulated these opinions not out of cheap, flimsy conviction, but rather because he never had the benefit of a private school education...
...John Wayne, the last defender of the American Dream based on uncomplicated Right and Wrong...
...Don't take it so seriously," a bearded young man said to his disgusted friend...
...Do you think Richard Nixon should be impeached...
...Applause) "Would you defend yourself against the charge that you're a racist in your movies with Indians...
...As long as they have dinner ready when you get home...
...A young woman standing alone in the crowd, dressed as an Indian with her face painted death-white with black streaks of war paint, silently held up a placard reading: "John Wayne, with the Help of The Harvard Lampoon, Killed Me," hoping to catch the selective eyes of the television cameras...
...Events like this make for better Army-community relationships, and even though we're not actively recruiting here, I think it helps our image...
...Are you really going to make a movie with Linda Lovelace...
...Who really gave a damn any more...
...This was met by wild applause and the showdown came to a climactic finale with a standing ovation...
...Seven...
Vol. 38 • March 1974 • No. 3
