The Shocking Reason For John Wayne And Frank Sinatra’s Ugly Feud

The Shocking Reason For John Wayne And Frank Sinatra’s Ugly Feud

Nobody makes it to the top of Hollywood without ruffling a few feathers along the way, and it’s not a coincidence that John Wayne made most of his enemies once his status as a superstar was secured, even if it was decidedly one-way traffic in several cases.

The reasons why ‘The Duke’ viewed Gene Hackman as the single worst actor in the industry remain unclear even to those who knew him best, while Clint Eastwood was convinced the evolving nature of the cinematic Western was behind Wayne’s disdain for several of his breakthrough movies.

In the case of Frank Sinatra, though, it was largely political. The legendary performer was a noted supporter of the House of Un-American Activities Committee, and found himself furious when ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ drafted in the openly-Communist screenwriter Alfred Maltz to pen the screenplay for The Execution of Private Slovik, which didn’t even end up getting made with those two involved.

Dragging John F. Kennedy and his perceived close friendship with Sinatra into the mix, too, Wayne took aim at both one of his contemporaries and the most powerful man in the country. “I don’t think my opinion is too important,” he said, “Why don’t you ask Sinatra’s crony – who’s going to run our country for the next few years – what he thinks of it?”

Further friction was to come, with Sinatra said to have criticised Wayne for “blasting off his mouth” when they attended the same benefit gala, which almost resulted in fisticuffs. The latter is even alleged to have given one of the former’s bodyguards a swift backhand to the chops when he went down to make a noise complaint when they were staying at the same hotel in Las Vegas, only to be told by the minder, “Nobody talks to Mr. Sinatra that way.”

Eastwood inadvertently found himself dragged back into the orbit, when the casting process for Dirty Harry began drawing the attention of some seriously big names. According to Sinatra’s friend Robert Davi, the part was his for the taking. “They also wanted him for Dirty Harry,” he told Express. “John Milius told me this story. They had a meeting with Sinatra at Warner Bros.”

Rather incredibly, one of Sinatra’s main reasons for declining is that his hands weren’t big enough to wield Harry Callahan’s firearm of choice. “They brought the .357 Magnum with him to show Sinatra. They were telling him the story and they go, ‘And this is going to be your gun,'” Davi continued. “And Sinatra picked up the gun and said, ‘I’m afraid it’s a little too big for my hands’ and that’s why he turned it down.”

When Wayne was considered for the role, he flatly stated that he “didn’t like being offered Sinatra’s rejections.” The two eventually made peace in their later years, but for a while the animosity between the iconic pair was burning at an almost nuclear level.