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Back in 1949, John Wayne and Janet Leigh began an 18-month shoot on the Howard Hughes-produced Jet Pilot.
The high-stakes Cold War romantic spy thriller was set to be the eccentric billionaire’s Hell’s Angels for the jet-age.
The Aviator was intended to showcase the latest aircraft technology. Yet, by the time the movie hit the big screen years later in 1957, the planes were already obsolete.
The chaotic production went through at least six directors, from Josef von Sternberg to Hughes himself, who obsessively re-edited the film for years, with the last day of shooting taking place in 1953.
What would be his final movie was also his favourite and he would watch it over and over again in his last years.
Despite Hughes’ enthusiasm for Jet Pilot, Wayne and his fellow lead actors thought the screenplay “silly”. In fact, Duke only took the role to make a political statement. Yet he later came to the realisation it was much worse than he thought.
According to Michael Munn’s John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth, Duke would later call Jet Pilot “one of the worst films” he ever made. The Hollywood star recalled: “The final budget was something like four million dollars. It was just too stupid for words.”
