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John Wayne, Sacheen Littlefeather & The 'Six Security Men'

Yithian

Yithian

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The New Yorker, March 1994


This well-know anecdote about the 1972 Academy Awards Ceremony ('The Oscars') to which Marlon Brando sent a young Apache woman to refuse his award for Best Actor (for The Godfather) has entered the realm of Hollywood folklore--fittingly, perhaps.

The tale runs, roughly, that John Wayne was so incensed by Sacheen Littlefeather's speech, in which she decried the industry's treatment of Native Americans, that he had to be physically restrained from rushing onto the stage by the seemingly totemic 'Six Security Men' that are regularly invoked.

As the forensic research beneath describes, the popular account of this affair is, at best, a tall tale that has grown in the telling; at worst a slanderous fabrication that is internally inconsistent and plays on caricatures of the supposed protagonists--regardless of one's beliefs about the rights and wrongs of native representations on the big and small screens.

Furthermore, whether or not one agrees with Duke's views--on race or anything--and whether or not one thinks Littlefeather is a good person (she's still with us today), it looks highly likely that she herself has consciously or unconsciously furthered the calumny against Wayne with her own accounts.


For this allegedly violent night at the Oscars in 1973, the order of the last three award presentations had been Best Actor, which is what we’re investigating; Best Actress (presented by Gene Hackman and Raquel Welch); and Best Picture, presented by Clint Eastwood—a planned presenter of the award, but he had already had a jittery evening as a last-minute substitute for Charlton Heston, whose car had broken down on the freeway. [see endnote] Finally, John Wayne came out to say a few words, gather the remaining stars and dancers, and lead off a rousing final chorus of “You Ought to Be in Pictures.”

Here is John Wayne coming out for the finale of the 1973 Oscars. He’s a little slow getting down the steps and over to the podium. His gait isn’t exactly athletic. But that’s not surprising. John Wayne, then 65 years old, had undergone lung-cancer surgery in 1964. The surgeons made a 28-inch incision, removing two ribs and the entire upper lobe of his left lung. The operation saved his life, but left Wayne with daily breathing problems that he worked mightily to conceal, despite requiring a supplemental oxygen tank on the sets of some subsequent movies.

Wayne looks pretty calm for a man who caused backstage mayhem moments ago. Dapper, too. I do appreciate that the Oscar security men were careful not to rumple his tux.

Much more to follow. You really need to read it all to understand the evolution of the tale (it's well written):
https://selfstyledsiren.substack.com/p/john-wayne-and-the-six-security-men?utm_source=twitter&sd=pf

Knocks Snopes' breezy insouciance into a cocked hat.​
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Such detail as we have about the incident has come from Littlefeather and Pasetta, both of whom were eyewitnesses, with no one coming forward in the decades since to contradict these accounts.​
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Source:​
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If you're interested in Brando's motivations--which are not the topic of this thread--he puts the point persuasively here:

"They were booing at me because they thought 'this moment is sacrosanct'; you're ruining our fantasy with the intrusion of a little reality."

​
 
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Thanks for this thorough dive... I have indeed suspected the Littlefeather/Wayne incident was pure UL, yet it has been treated as mostly fact for years because IMO people wanted it to be true. Oddly, I've seen that New Yorker cartoon about the allegations as much as the story itself as well, maybe more so.
 
The LA Times reports in great detail about this and also comes to the conclusion that this is a UL perpetrated by the producer of the Oscars as he kept telling the story over time:
https://www.latimes.com/business/st...at-the-1973-oscars-debunking-a-hollywood-myth

The revival of the Wayne story caught the attention of one of our most learned and entertaining cineastes and film historians, Farran Nehme, who writes an indispensable film blog under the pseudonym Self-Styled Siren.

“Once again,” Nehme writes, “we’re flooded with the tale of John Wayne and the Six Security Men, the lousy variety act many people believe played the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion back in 1973.”

Her conclusion, after considerable reporting and research, is: “Never happened.” Rather, she says, the story began as an exaggerated yarn that Oscar telecast director Marty Pasetta started telling interviewers a year or so after the fact “that got more exciting each time it was told” until it became “a persistent urban legend.”

Nehme’s effort deserves to be acknowledged because it’s a terrific model of how to debunk a story that has been cemented into history. Writers of historical nonfiction have often encountered this problem; I know I have. In researching almost every one of my own books, I’ve found myself trying to track down a cherished historical “fact” and discovering that it has absolutely no basis in reality. It’s a chore that almost counts as an occupational hazard.

In this case, Nehme has to deal not only with Pasetta’s version but also one offered by Littlefeather herself on several occasions, including in a 2020 documentary about herself. There, as Nehme reports, she states, “I was escorted off of that stage by some armed guards.... And luckily so because John Wayne was waiting in the wings ready to go on to pull me off the stage, and he had to be held back by six security men because he was so outraged about what I had said.”

Nehme starts her inquiry by noting the evolution of Pasetta’s own story. In 1974, he told an interviewer that on hearing Littlefeather speak, “John Wayne [is] backstage and he’s in an uproar and I had to calm him down.” In 1984, he told another interviewer that “John Wayne was in the wings and was so angry he wanted to go and pull her offstage.”

The six security men (a suspiciously precise number, Nehme observes) first make their appearance in 1988, when he told a third interviewer, “We had a fight is what we had.... John Wayne wanted to go out there and physically yank her off the stage. It took six men to hold him back.”

Then there’s the circumstantial evidence. When Littlefeather took the stage, no one knew what she would say — including Howard Koch, the Oscars producer, who had merely told her she would have 60 seconds to speak and then the stage would be darkened and she would be escorted off.

A clip of her appearance shows that she actually appeared on stage for about one minute and 20 seconds. She spends the first half-minute or so introducing herself as an Apache and the president of the Native American Affirmative Image Committee. Only then does she say that Brando is declining the award and why. Then she demurely follows the presenters, Roger Moore and Liv Ullman, offstage.

As Nehme observes, that would suggest that in the space of 45 seconds, John Wayne heard her words, decided that they were infuriating, got up to mount an attack, and drew the resistance of six security guards.

It’s worth keeping in mind, as she points out, that nine years earlier Wayne had undergone lung cancer surgery in which two of his ribs and part of his left lung were removed. He was never entirely hale and hearty after that. Indeed, at the closing set piece of the telecast, when Wayne arrives onstage to invite all the winners to come out for a wan mass rendition of “You Oughta Be in Pictures,” he’s noticeably gasping for breath.

Wayne never criticized Littlefeather personally; his general comment when asked about Brando’s refusal is that the actor should have come out and done it in person.

Littlefeather suffered years of ridicule, which the academy alludes to in its apology. But she conducted herself with poise and calm; after her stage appearance she was brought by Moore to the Oscars press room, where she read out the long statement Brando had written.

And of course, Brando was right to be critical of Hollywood’s treatment of Native Americans, then and now. The academy has been trying to make amends, in its way. Among other efforts, it created an Indigenous Alliance whose co-chair, producer Bird Runningwater, will conduct the conversation with her next month. Native Americans have benefited from a slow evolution of inclusiveness in American movies in recent years, but much more needs to be done to erase its stereotypical treatment of the past.

As for the John Wayne story, it’s an insult both to the academy and to Wayne himself. We’ve been critical in the past of the tendency to accept Wayne’s on-screen persona of a rough-and-tough American frontiersman, including, yes, as an Indian-killer, as true to life — notably in the naming of Orange County’s airport for him and the installation of a big statue of the Hollywood version of Wayne in front of its terminal.

Wayne was a dyed-in-the-wool political conservative, but according to his biographer, Scott Eyman, in real life he was a “well brought up Edwardian man” who would never think of assaulting a woman. Nehme elicited that insight from Eyman directly, noting that he didn’t even mention the episode in his book about Wayne.

“Nobody I talked to who knew Wayne,” Eyman told her, “ever referred to or, apparently, believed that story.” It would be justice to retire it forever.
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I wonder if the UL was started not by his detractors but by his followers.
Firstly, what was he angry about? That a Native American Indian was on the stage? That the Oscar was being refused? That the whole Hollywood machine's morality was being criticised?
Yeah, he was a 65 year old man with medical conditions to suit. By all accounts, even his chums said he was a bigoted ... er ... 'old fashioned' man who had no patience with anyone who didn't match up to his standards i.e. everyone not him. I can imagine he'd be angry at the snub ... but physically capable of violence to the point of security to be involved?
This sounds more like one of his characters - a grizzled old in'jun hunter to took no cheek from some squaw who got uppity! This sounds more like a wish-fulfilment of his fans who couldn't accept that The Duke was an old, privileged white guy whose world was on the way out.
I never rated his acting. He didn't act. In every single film, he played a character with the same personality - an impatient curmudgeon with a determination to do the Right Thing as he saw it. No range, no depth.
 
Stormkhan said:
I never rated his acting. He didn't act. In every single film, he played a character with the same personality - an impatient curmudgeon with a determination to do the Right Thing as he saw it. No range, no depth.
Click to expand...
That may have been his own personality.
 
brownmane said:
I'm not sure that Stormkhan was disagreeing that it is UL. As I read his post, he is positing that it was Wayne's fans that pushed the UL.
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That wasn't how I read it. But if that was the case, I'd still disagree that his fans pushed it, as I've only ever seen this story relayed as a hit-piece on Wayne's reputation.
 
I do not deny it was a false rumour (a form of UL surely).

I'm wondering - not asserting - about the source of it.

And as far as a hit-piece on his rep, this might be the case. But as we've seen with named politicians, it might also be supporters who proudly boast of something while others go "Eh ... what? You think this is a good thing?"

Hypothetical statement:
"Power is fantastic - you can rape anyone you like as long as you are a billionaire!"

One set of folks saying "WTF? That's revolting! That is not a good thing!" Another set of folks saying "So what? He's telling it like it is!" So a supporter would see publicising the statement as a 'good thing'.
 
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That kind of scenario is certainly the grotesque world of today, but I don't think things worked quite like that back then, not in a rose-tinted glasses kind of way, but more of a way of decorum and propriety. I think the modern world's actions [removed political reference] in regards to vehement insane defence of reprehensible actions has been due to social media almost entirely.
 
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I've edited two posts above to save the need to remove them.

Whether your examples are fair or unfair, the issue is much broader than one politician.

As soon as you use a politician as an example—and none is required here—the conversation runs the risk of veering sideways.
 
John Wayne in real life was a very prosperous somewhat cranky short-tempered guy who wore really nice suits and spent a lot of time on his yacht. This story was clearly a PR fabrication, and fans picked it up for their imaginary lives. I recently saw a clip of an interview with a well-known American performer whose fame came from her portrayal of a fast-moving, incisive, quick-witted professional on a TV program. In real life she is a bit more of a blunt pencil (and doesn't dress nearly as well as did her persona.) That's why it's called acting.
 
I disagree - this is a UL that was not propagated by Wayne fans, but is simply a UL that came about through a producer's escalating personal story, which Littlefeather apprears to have taken for the truth.
 
MrRING said:
I disagree - this is a UL that was not propagated by Wayne fans, but is simply a UL that came about through a producer's escalating personal story, which Littlefeather apprears to have taken for the truth.
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I didn't read through all the posts but something has kept the story active. As you said, people wanted it to be true.
 
Speaking of urban legends, I always bought into the myth that Sacheen Littlefeather was not a Native American, and her presence in costume was Brando poking fun at people who criticized movies like The Godfather for their portrayal of Italian Americans.

In truth the former Marie Louise Cruz was of approximately half European and half Apache and Yaqui descent. She changed her name as she learned more about her Indian roots. I now know her appearance and her message at the ceremony were sincere. I probably wouldn't have learned that if this thread hadn't reignited my curiosity.
 
GerdaWordyer said:
Dead heat. Brando and Wayne seemed pretty much dicks in real life.
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Well, The Island of Doctor Moreau proved that ... with Val Kilmer losing the plot in real life adding to the sh*tfest on that particular production.

Sometimes it's best if a legend stays just that ... a legend.
 
Yithian said:
Sacheen Littlefeather has died. John Wayne does not feature in the CNN obituary; the Grauniad, naturally repeat the dubious claim in theirs:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...h-his-oscar-secret-life-sacheen-littlefeather
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"What is this person famous for?"
"Well, there was this story that ..."
"Well, is it true?"
"Does it matter? It's what they're famous for."
"Meh."
I cite Boris Johnson's Straight Banana nonsense as evidence for this disregard of facts. Others are availble.
 

Sacheen Littlefeather's Sisters Claim She Lied About Native Ancestry: 'She Lived in a Fantasy'​


Sacheen Littlefeather's legacy has been called into question by her family.

After the actress, model and Native American civil rights activist died at age 75 earlier this month, Littlefeather's two sisters claimed that she lied about her indigenous ancestry and was previously known by the family as "Deb" in a bombshell interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.

"It's a lie," Trudy Orlandi said of her sister. "My father was who he was. His family came from Mexico. And my dad was born in Oxnard."

Littlefeather's other sister Rosalind Cruz added: "It is a fraud. It's disgusting to the heritage of the tribal people. And it's just … insulting to my parents."

Littlefeather, who claimed to belong to the White Mountain Apache and Yaqui tribes on her father's side, rose to infamy in 1973 at the 45th Academy Awards, where she turned down the Oscar for Best Actor on behalf of Marlon Brando, in protest of the film industry's treatment of Native Americans.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/sacheen-littlefeathers-sisters-claim-she-220346088.html

maximus otter
 
I must admit the six security guards always seemed a little OTT to me, I suppose six could have been on hand in a hypothetical similar situation but only two, perhaps even one need to do any restraining. Generally when there's trouble or even potential trouble security will move to that spot in number. Same with police.
 
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