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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.
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.
Source:
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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