(Note: This is Fifth in a series of articles following the career on John Wayne in Lone Pine)

John Wayne's western career was linked with Lone Pine, and it was fitting that he would appear before the cameras here one final time in a Great Western Savings commercial. As he rides out into the Alabama Hills, he does not look bad, an old man yes, but appropriately strong. He was not. He was terminally ill with cancer that would finally take his life on June 11, 1979.

John Wayne's last feature film appearance in Lone Pine was in North to Alaska (1960). The rollicking comedy was well received by the critics and marked Wayne's accomplishments as a comic actor, something that typified many of his films in the last productive part of his career.

Most of the location work for North to Alaska was done at Hot Creek near Mammoth, but director Henry Hathaway brought Wayne and Stewart Granger to Lone Pine for the scene where the two men are defending a pal's claim from claim jumpers. The set had an extended series of sluices which inevitably led to a rough and tumble fight in the mud, collapsing wooden channels and cascadng water. Lone Pine

Creek was used to create the effect and it worked quite effectively on the screen. The stunts in Lone Pine typified the style and playful fun of the film.

The preparations that led to the cameras rolling on the project were anything but smooth. There were problems with the script, the main problem being there wasn't one. Charles Feldman, who was putting the project together, hired Richard Fleischer to direct. Fleischer had just finished the film Compulsion and remembers when he learned he would be working with Wayne, "My heart gave a little jump. John Wayne! Doing a picture with John Wayne is important!"

When Fleischer asked to see the script, he discovered there wasn't one. Feldman represented the men writing it, but when Fleischer met with them, they couldn't even tell him the story or furnish an outline. Now Feldman was living with actress Capuchine. When Fleischer went to their house for a meeting, he discovered Capuchine barely spoke English. Fleischer stated "In fact she hardly spoke at all. I felt in her case still waters ran shallow. Although she was beautiful, there was no spark of personality to back it up. I wondered how this bland, rather shy beauty was going to portray a spirited prostitute in a whorehouse opposite John Wayne. It worried me."

His reservations grew, but Feldman reported that Wayne had approved Fleischer. Fleischer did not want to make a bad picture, but felt if he alienated Feldman he would have trouble finding work in the future. A friend helped him devise a plan to escape without terrible fallout. He told the studio he didn't think Capucine was right for the part. Feldman wanted Capucine to play the part of Angel. In fact, he had already promised her the part and didn't want his domestic bliss upset. Fleischer was off the project and Feldman hired Henry Hathaway to direct.

Unfortunately, when Wayne arrived at Point Magu to begin work, there still was no final script and along with much improvising, there were many delays. The writers strike added to the problems. The film was finally completed and tells the story of the redemption of a prostitute, a theme Wayne had first dealt with in Stagecoach, many years earlier. At one point, Sam McCord played by Wayne, states, "My only politics is anti-wife."

The film ends predictably happy, an ending marked by true love discovered, the rewards of hard work established, and the bad guys, such as they are, punished. Wayne's character is both likeable and fashionably goofy about love and women, with an almost childlike male naiveté. Wayne had insisted his character wouldn't have sex with a prostitute in the movie no matter how much that behavior was hinted at in the plot.

Allen Eyles wrote of the film: "This is a bouncy, richly enjoyable comedy that set a pattern for most of Wayne's films since showing him fully at ease with humorous material and marking the beginning of a much broader style to his playing." The Variety reviewer commented "…the sort of easy-going, slap- happy entertainment that doesn't come around so very often anymore in films…. Wayne displays a genuine flair for the light approach." In Shoot-Em-Ups, writers Les Adams and Buck Rainey wrote, "Wayne is amusing in his by now famous role of a man's man, experiencing pangs of unrequited love. With a virility and an enthusiasm that belies his age, he adeptly combines fast action with mild comedy…."

The picture of John Wayne wrapped in a blanket during a break in shooting, with director Hathaway and Mt. Whitney in the background is a wonderful way to remember Lone Pine's long relationship with the Duke.

One time I remarked to my son Matthew it was too bad he had never met John Wayne when he was here that last time. He responded, "What makes you think I didn't? I went up with Bobby Fink and his Mom to be on the set." Matthew was not the only one for many locals remember the fine series of photographs that Paul Lauten took of the shoot.

When I asked Matthew, in preparation for this article, what he remembered of that day, he had to admit it was a long time ago. He wasn't a big Wayne fan. "I remember mostly that he was frail. He seemed frail." Indeed, he probably was.

Film actors have their lives on the screen, and their private lives. Wayne's screen persona was generally that of the all-American hero: strong, honorable, brave, stubborn and accepting of a man's responsibility in a man's world. Wayne the man was not perfect. He drank too much, caroused with his male friends a lot, had failed marriages, championed the soldier's sacrifice but never fought in a war himself. He was strong to the point of unbending about what a man's role was, and what a woman's role was.

For his generation, he was the very image of a hero, for the next generation much less so. He was one of a kind on screen. Now there really is no one in films like him. Depending on what you think a hero should be, that is either a great loss or a relief from outmoded ironclad gender roles.