I have heard rumors that John Wayne was afraid of horses or that he hated horses? Is there any truth to the rumor? There was another part of the rumor that he would request that certain horses be drugged before he would go near them.
Other actors have said that Wayne was a pretty good horseman and often gave them tips on how to ride. You can’t really do that with a general fear of horses.
Now, it’s possible he had trouble with certain horses, but that’s typical – there are always horses that are harder to ride.
One thing that you notice after being a horsewoman for most of your life, is that many actors in Westerns look like they couldn’t ride a horse on a merry-go-round. Some are ridiculous, some are pretty good, some are naturals. John Wayne was pretty good. Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves, and the guy who played Aragorn in LOTR were very skilled. I can’t think of any horrible ones right now, lots of people in the Clint Eastwood ones were pretty bad, and he wasn’t that great himself, but he was passable.
I’d never heard that rumor about John Wayne- I HAD heard that about the entire cast of “Bonanza,” and years later, Michael Landon pretty much confirmed the rumors on “The Tonight Show.” I heard him telling Johnny Carson some hilarious stories about what hopelessly inept raiders they all were when “Bonanza” first aired.
Johnny expressed surprise, to which Landon laughed, “I’m a Jew from New Jersey, what’d you expect?”
The rest of the cat thought Lorne Greene, being Canadian, might be better. Nope. Greene was a city boy, a Jewish newscaster from Ottawa, and couldn’t ride any better than Landon did.
Not surprisingly, Dan Blocker’s horse (ironically, a horse named Chubby!) had the worst time of it!
In his last couple of films John Wayne was not that comfortable “on” horses, but he never hated them that I know of. He respected them, but was not averse to other (more comfortable) forms of travel either. When you are in the saddle for about four or five or more hours, any other place to sit looks good.
As I have mentioned before, I appeared in a couple of films that were John Wayne flicks as did my mother before me. (we both could handle horse teams and we lived near locations at which the films were being shot - we both also held union cards). I was in a few others that didn’t have Wayne and the subject of actors who couldn’t ride (or hated to) would regularly come up when those of us hired to ride or handle wagons or horses in general got together. Wayne was not one of those whose names came up. The entire cast of Young Guns and much of the cast of Silverado was another matter.