HORSES IN HISTORY

HORSE HISTORY

Dollor, the horse with true grit

In a career spanning just over half a century, John Wayne appeared in approximately seventy Westerns, writes N. G. QUINLAN. What a lot of people don’t know is that for those movies, the filmstar had a favourite horse.

After a broken collarbone ended his football scholarship at the University of Southern California, the lanky young John Wayne got his start in the movie business working as a prop boy for legendary director John Ford and cowboy star Tom Mix. His good looks and 6’4” frame were soon noticed and he was cast in his first starring role in The Big Trail (1930).

John Wayne – or ‘Duke’, as he was known – rode dozens of horses throughout his movie career, yet his horsemanship was the subject of some debate. Although his son Patrick called him ‘a terrific horseman’, it has been said that his handling of animals could be heavyhanded at times. In many of his movies, Wayne could be seen to jerk his horse’s reins and otherwise manhandle the animals in quite a rough manner. This may have been due to the nature of moviemaking and the demand to make a horse pull up on a certain mark so that the camera stays in focus and the shot works; however at least one professional horse trainer, R. Deremo, has described Wayne’s riding skills as ‘questionable’.

Well-known horse trainer Lester Hilton (1906-1976), who trained many animals for the movies including Flicka, Mister Ed, Fury and Francis the Talking Mule, would not allow Wayne to ride any horse he had trained. When asked why, Hilton reportedly said, “Just watch his hands.”

Even so, footage exists from Wayne’s home movies showing him riding horses around his ranch in Arizona – and what is known to be true is that of all the horses he rode in his movies, the Duke had a particular fondness for a chestnut gelding named Dollor. Starlight, Banner, Sammy, Steel, Alamo, Beau and Cochise – some of whom he also owned – Wayne was cast in the role of one-eyed U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn in the 1969 film True Grit, for which he won his only Academy Award. It was during the making of True Grit that Wayne came across a sorrel Quarter Horse gelding named Dollor (whose name came from dolor, the Spanish word for sorrow). The horse was two

Above: John Wayne and Dollor, the horse that won his heart. Right: The Duke and Dollor’s life-long partnership began in True Grit.

years old at the time and belonged to a company called Dick Webb Movie Productions. Wayne was so enamoured of Dollor that he signed a contract with the company giving him exclusive movie rights to the chestnut horse. Dollor worked with Wayne for the next ten years, until the actor’s death in 1979.

No one else was permitted to ride him during the Duke’s lifetime, although after Wayne’s death Robert Wagner saddled him up and rode him in one segment of his television show Hart To Hart.

Dollor – or Ol’ Dollor, as he was sometimes called – lived out his life on a seventy-acre ranch in Midlothian, Texas and died in 1995 at the age of twentyseven. He can be seen in seven of John Wayne’s movies made between 1969 and 1976, including True Grit, Big Jake, The Cowboys, Chisum, The Train Robbers and Rooster Cogburn. The Duke liked Dollor so much that when he came to make his last film The Shootist in 1976, he demanded changes to the script so that his character, ageing gunfighter J. B. Books, could refer to Dollor by his real name.

While there might be debates about the level of John Wayne’s horsemanship, the evidence well and truly shows that Ol’ Dollor at least won the Duke’s heart.