I agree, Bob, that it isn't outside the realm of possibility that he did some extra work while he was in school. These were tough times for many people and the work would have paid well. Plus the physical comedy evident in Careful Please is perfect for the athletic. Not to mention that many people in Hollywood were USC fans.
I found it interesting that Wayne, according to actor Iron Eyes Cody, even screen tested for MGM and "didn't pass". It makes me wonder what else he may have done on the MGM lot.
As quoted previously, Wayne worked as a general handyman for Raoul Walsh and Frank Borzage while at Fox. Looking into things, I see that Borzage worked exclusively for Fox around this time. But Raoul Walsh was working on the Paramount lot until What Price Glory, so Wayne probably was a prop man on that Fox film. Although released in August 1927, it premiered in November 1926; production itself would probably tie in with the summer of 1926. So many of the films from this time were held back and modified for general release with the advent of sound.
Posts from RoughRider in thread „WHEN did JW Meet FORD?“
-
-
Elly,
Here's a paragraph from John Wayne: American by Randy Roberts and James S. Olson:
-----------
Abandoned by Mix, Duke soon met a more valuable benefactor. One day John Ford saw Duke working on a set. Ford called out to him, "You one of Howard Jones's bright boys?" Duke said, "Yes," and Ford then said, "Let's see you get down in position." Duke had barely got into a three-point stance before Ford kicked out both of his hands and sent him sprawling in the dirt. Ford laughed and said, "And you call yourself a football player. I'll bet you couldn't even take me out." Duke said, "I'd like to try." In the next ten seconds, Duke ran at Ford, drove his leg into the director's chest, and sent him sprawling. The set was absolutely quiet. Everybody waited for the explosion of Ford's legendary wrath, for Duke to be banished forever from Hollywood. Instead Ford burst out laughing, taking an immediate liking to the young man who would not be intimidated. The encounter changed both of their lives.
-----------
Now here's the same story as told in Searching for John Ford by Joseph McBride:
-----------
Morrison began working at Fox in the summer before his sophomore year of 1926, lugging around furniture and other props and serving as a general handyman for such directors as Raoul Walsh and Frank Borzage. He soon caught the eye of Ford.
Tall, ruggedly handsome, and incongruously graceful for a football lineman, Morrison struck the kind of effortlessly impressive male figure that the former "Bull" Feeney wished he could have been. Ford found his physical ideal in the Duke, his cinematic equivalent of Michelangelo's David. So, naturally, Ford had to mask his true feelings and all they might have implied by playing the tough guy and cruelly tormenting the young man. An avid fan of USC football and a friend of the team's coach, Howard Jones, Ford encountered Duke working on a set and immediately put him through a macho hazing ritual.
"You one of Howard Jones's bright boys?" the director asked. Let's see you get down in position."
As Duke assumed a tackle's three-point stance, Ford suddenly kicked his hand, knocking him into the dirt. "And you call yourself a football player," the director sneered. "I'll bet you couldn't even take me out."
Wayne recalled what happened next: "So, not being interested in a motion picture career at the time, I said, 'Let's try it again.'" When Ford assumed his position, Wayne "kicked him and hit him in the chest. He looked up with a little surprise and there was a deadly silence. And right then was the deciding point in my career in motion pictures."
Ford finally said they should get back to work: "That's enough of this bullshit."
The director hired Morrison as a propman on Mother Machree and Four Sons. Ford later recalled, "I could see that here was a boy who was working for something--not like most of the other guys, just hanging around to pick up a few fast bucks. Duke was really ambitious and willing to work. Inside of a month or six weeks we were fast friends, and I used to advise him and throw him a bit part now and then."
-----------
It's obvious from the wording that this was the first time Ford and Morrison met.
More evidence, this time from the PBS American Masters episode John Ford/John Wayne: The Filmmaker & the Legend. John Ford: "Duke was an undergraduate at USC when I first saw him...." This is probably the introduction quoted above, although Morrison enrolled at USC in the fall of 1925. Perhaps they had only seen each other previously on the Fox lot, a place where Morrison was working fulltime during the summer of 1926.
If John Ford asked Ham Hamilton to give Morrison bit parts, perhaps something was lost with time and the recollections were distorted. John Wayne remembered it that way but maybe -- since Ford was an avid USC fan and a friend of the coach -- Ford put word out to the USC team via the coach, Howard Jones, to visit Hamilton for work. In other words, the advice was not specific to Morrison but to the team in general.
Wayne even said, "Ham Hamilton was the director of those films.", yet that wasn't true. This illustrates how time can distort the facts.
There's also the chance that Morrison doesn't even appear in Careful Please, and that we are all mistaken by someone who resembles him.
