(Credits: Far Out / TCM)
Sat 13 December 2025 17:45, UK
Once Marion Morrison had fully embraced the persona that he’d created for himself and become John Wayne on a permanent basis, his rise up the Hollywood ladder coincided with an increased amount of creative control, which frequently saw him installed as the most important person on a production.
Sometimes, it didn’t matter who the director was; they knew they were playing second fiddle to ‘The Duke’. The more successful he became, the more leeway the actor was given to choose which filmmaker helmed his latest picture, who wrote or rewrote the script, and who would star alongside him in the cast.
It’s never a good idea to give one person so much power, especially when their behind-the-scenes knowledge paled in comparison to the directors and producers he collaborated with, but since he was John Wayne, he became accustomed to having a heavy hand in developing anything he attached himself to.
Of course, that wasn’t the case when he was still an up-and-comer, and it’s cruelly ironic that the person who foisted an unwanted co-star upon him twice would turn out to be his defining arch-nemesis. ‘The Duke’ didn’t like a lot of people in Hollywood, but it’s hard to think of anyone he loathed more than Herb Yates, the founder and president of Republic Pictures.
For almost two decades, their working relationship was solid, with one hand feeding the other to he benefit of both men. However, when things soured, Wayne swore he’d never work for Yates or appear in a Republic-backed film ever again, and he was true to his word, which hastened the decline of the studio.
In the late 1940s, Yates left his wife for Vera Ralston, a former figure skater who’d competed at the Winter Olympics. Naturally, the mogul had designs on turning his new flame into a much bigger name in the business, and what better way to do it than partnering her with ‘The Duke’ in 1945’s western, Dakota?
“Vera was attractive, and she never pushed her weight around just because she was about to marry Yates,” Wayne told Michael Munn. “As a human being, she was OK. But she was no actress.” The star’s confidant, Paul Fix, revealed that his friend “was dissatisfied with Vera’s performance,” summing both her and the film up as “lousy,” adding that “nobody was interested in seeing Vera Ralston except Herbert Yates.”
Four years later, the studio head insisted that she play the female lead in The Fighting Kentuckian, much to the actor’s chagrin. “Damn it, Herbert, I know you love the gal, but she just can’t act,” Wayne declared. He only acquiesced because he wanted Republic to help him produce The Alamo, so he relented in the face of obvious blackmail.
Echoing his long-time pal’s opinion, Fix wasn’t sold on Ralston, either: “A really nice lady, but, boy, she was just a disaster.” Ever the optimist, at least as much as he could be, Wayne was confident that the biggest takeaway from the movie would be his scenes with comedy legend Oliver Hardy, and that audiences “won’t remember Vera because she’ll soon be forgotten.” He wasn’t wrong, either, since she’d only make a dozen or so more movies before retiring from acting by the end of the 1950s.
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