Ron Howard on John Wayne says filming The Shootist in 1976 was uncomfortable because John Wayne and Don Siegel were feuding on set. Howard was still studying to become a director at USC Cinema School, so he watched the conflict while trying to learn how a set works when the people in charge are not aligned.
Howard’s line-read with Wayne
Howard said, “I also had the guts to say, ‘Hey, do you want to run lines?’ No one really would talk to him in between setups.” Wayne answered, “Yeah, I’d like to run lines.” Howard added, “He was perfectly friendly to me, and he said, ‘Yeah, I’d like to run lines.’ And we had a lot of scenes together, heavy dialogue, and it was very interesting to see him take a scene and shape it into a John Wayne performance in the most positive ways.”
Howard also said Wayne kept a small circle around him on set. “He had a couple of people: a guy he would play chess with, who was the still photographer who had worked with him on a lot of films. But it was a very closed little bubble that he was operating in.”
Don Siegel and Wayne
Howard said, “I also learned a lot in a rather uncomfortable way, because Wayne and Siegel were feuding. They did not get along. And I was getting along with both of them separately, just fine.” That split mattered on a production built around a star-director relationship, especially with Siegel also known for Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz.
Howard said the working method that came out of the experience has stayed with him: “The strategy that I’ve followed over the years is when there’s a difference of opinion, go right into it.” He added, “You don’t have to make it a fight, but you’re there to achieve something together and talk it through.”
Howard’s set lesson
Howard’s takeaway was not about a single argument but about what happens when disagreement is left to harden. “I felt that the key was that a lot of things were allowed to fester for a long period of time,” he said, then added, “Don’t let it become something that’s petty and emotional when, in fact, it’s a creative concern or a neurotic concern.”
For anyone watching a set from the inside, that is the practical lesson: keep the conversation open before frustration turns into a production problem. Howard’s account turns The Shootist from a final Wayne film into a case study in how quickly a working set can split into separate camps.
