I’m watching an interesting John Wayne movie I’d never seen before: “The Fighting Kentuckian.” Oliver Hardy is in the supporting cast. According to both IMDb and Ben Mankiewicz’ introduction on TCM, Wayne and Hardy were good friends — which I’d never heard before — and Wayne asked him to be in the movie. Hardy resisted, for fear people would think Laurel & Hardy had broken up, but Stan Laurel encouraged him to do the movie, and so he finally agreed.

The movie is set in an area of Alabama which was settled (I also had never heard about this) by exiled French supporters of Napoleon.

There was a scene just now where the Duke — a soldier in a Kentucky regiment from the war of 1812, who passes through Alabama on his way home from the Battle of New Orleans — makes a decision to muster out and stay in Alabama, so that he can win the hand of the fair Fleurette (Vera Hruba Ralston). We then see him staring into space, and we hear him in a voiceover dialogue going back and forth about the decision — did he do the right thing by giving up his military career, the only life he’s ever known? It’s so strange to think of John Wayne as having an internal dialogue! He’s always so sure of himself in every other movie.

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