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Orson Welles was just 25 years old when he co-wrote, directed and starred in Citizen Kane.
That’s an incredible feat given that the 1941 drama is frequently cited as the greatest film ever made and even more so when considering that this was the actor’s first-ever film and directorial debut.
And to prepare to helm his masterpiece, he watched John Ford’s Stagecoach over 40 times.
Welles said of the 1939 Western that made John Wayne a star: “As it turned out, the first day I ever walked onto a set was my first day as a director. I’d learned whatever I knew in the projection room—from Ford.
“After dinner every night for about a month, I’d run Stagecoach, often with some different technician or department head from the studio, and ask questions. ‘How was this done?’ ‘Why was this done?’ It was like going to school.”
Aside from Ford’s amazing talent as a director one of the tragic reasons Stagecoach was so good is because the filmmaker was a notorious bully.
Throughout his career, he would treat his actors terribly to get better performances out of them.
On the set of this Western, the director would call Duke “a big oaf and “dumb “b***ard”, constantly criticising his delivery of lines, his manner of walking and even how he washed his face on film.
Dallas star Claire Trevor claims that at one point the director grabbed Duke by his chin and shook him saying: “Why are you moving your mouth so much? “Don’t you know you don’t act with your mouth in pictures? You act with your eyes.”
And yet Wayne put up with all this as “Pappy” had made him a star with Stagecoach having had to lobby hard to cast him as Ringo Kid since he was a B-movie actor.
In the end, Ford told producer Walter Wanger that he would refuse to make the movie without Duke and the rest is history.