Andrew V. McLaglan’s 1963 film “McLintock!” is a loose Western adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” (c. 1592), a problematic play to say the least. The story of Shakespeare’s play involves a willful and bitter young woman named Kate who refuses to settle down and get married. This upsets Kate’s younger sister Bianca, as she will not be permitted to marry until Kate is married. A man named Petruchio is hired to, as the title says, tame the shrew, transforming an outspoken and willful woman into a dutiful wife. By the end, he does. One can easily see the play’s misogynist leanings. Critically speaking, one might be able to see a satire at play, however. Or perhaps it’s merely sexist.
“McLintock!” is equally tetchy, with John Wayne playing the Petruchio role, and Maureen O’Hara playing Kate. The story was altered somewhat to explain that Kate and Petrucho, called G.W. in the film, were once married, and she left their home to live a rich life in a big city. They never officially divorced, and there was some latent attraction. This was, it seems, meant to take the curse off of the scene wherein the Petruchio character playfully tormented Kate ostensibly for her own benefit. A lot of “McLinktock!” is devoted to a deal with the local Comanche tribe and the romantic dealings of G.W.’s and Kate’s daughter Becky (Stefanie Powers), but the reconciliation between the two adults is where the film’s drama pivots.
The middle of “McLintock!” involved a brawl in the town, a mud slope, a lot of stunt performers, and Wayne and O’Hara getting coated in glop. On a 1976 episode of “Donahue,” Wayne talked about how he and O’Hara took the dive, and how he had to literally push his co-star into it.
The mud scene
The scene in question was to feature Wayne and O’Hara standing on the edge of a muddy precipice while all of the film’s comedic and romantic shenanigans were exacerbated thanks to an attempting lynching (yes, the film is quite problematic). The lynching luckily doesn’t happen, and the attempted attackers were to fall into the mud pit, getting as dirty on the outside as they are on the inside. The many townsfolk who did fall into the mud were pl ayed by stunt performers, and O’Hara was prepared to step aside and let her double do the dirty work.
Wayne explained on “Donahue” that it was a special kind of plaster that the filmmakers used for mud, and that many were reluctant to do the stunt because it was a cold day, and one of the stunt performers had already injured themselves on a barbed wire fence. He said:
“Not only I actually did it, Marine O’Hara actually did it. And I’ll explain something to you. The stuntmen, we had taken this place and put some plaster in these things and then put that kind of mud they use in oil wells, and then on … ooh, it’s slimy! And it was about 54 degrees, the wind blowing from the north, and somebody had let the barbed wire fence down, so it was cold. And one of these stuntmen went down and tried it and he cut his head.”
Of course, after an injury a lot of renegotiation immediately began to occur. Some of the stunt performers reconsidered their daily wage, and began asking for higher wages. Wayne didn’t declare his motivation for doing so, but he did seem to overhear the financial discussions, and seemed to feel that Maureen O’Hara could do a better, cheaper job than her double.
‘Stick me with a hatpin.’
Wayne said:
“Now they’re all standing around talking about, ‘Well I don’t know, I think I’ll do $150 for this…’ And I said, ‘Maureen, you ready?’ and she said, ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘Get over there!’ She got over there I said, ‘Stick me with a hatpin!’ She did and I went ‘Wham!’ Down she went, cursing at me all the way down, and the stuntmen had to change the amount that they felt that stunt was worth.”
The hatpin gesture may have been Wayne trying to get his own motivation going.
It was a way to negotiate with stunt performers, one might suppose, but not one that O’Hara was happy about. Indeed, O’Hara seems to have shouldered a lot of abuse for “McLintock!” On the film’s DVD special features, she recalled a later scene wherein Wayne spanked her with a shovel, and recalled that he didn’t bother to hit her softly. In her words, “My bottom was black and blue for weeks!” O’Hara wasn’t blindsided by Wayne’s gruff behavior, luckily. Indeed, the two actors has previously starred together in “Rio Grande,” “The Quiet Man,” and “The Wings of Eagles.”
They would go on to star opposite each other in 1971’s “Big Jake,” and they were said to be good friends who had similar political opinions — they were two of the most right-leaning people in Hollywood — so the mud and shovel incidents were, one would hope, mere professional exchanges.