John Wayne was ‘coughing up blood’ on set of World War II epic with Kirk Douglas | Films | Entertainment | EUROtoday

It’s been 59 years for the reason that launch of In Harm’s Way, one of many final black and white World War II epics and John Wayne’s remaining movie not in color.

Duke starred as Captain Rockwell Torrey reverse Kirk Douglas and Patricia Neal, within the blockbuster that featured Henry Fonda in a prolonged cameo.

Directed by Otto Preminger, the film adopted US naval officers based mostly in Hawaii, from the evening earlier than Pearl Harbor by the next yr of the Second World War.

This was the primary of three films that co-starred Wayne and Douglas (additionally Cast a Giant Shadow and The War Wagon), who received alongside professionally regardless of their polarising political affiliations.

Yet Duke’s “low-key performance” within the movie turned out to be as a result of he was very in poor health with lung most cancers.

By the tip of filming on In Harm’s Way, it was so dangerous that Wayne was coughing up blood on set. Yet regardless of this, the heavy-smoking Hollywood star would proceed to puff away on his six packs of cigarettes a day.

Shortly after the shoot concluded in September 1964, Duke was identified with lung most cancers and a month later had his whole left lung and two ribs eliminated. Following the information, Wayne had advised Douglas he may play his function of Eddington in The Sons of Katie Elder, his subsequent image co-starring Dean Martin.