Donovan’s Reef — While filming “Donovan’s Reef”, an action-comedy made on Kaua‘i during July and August of 1962, the cast was rehearsing one day in the banquet room of the old Kauai Inn on Rice Street when actor John Wayne
Donovan’s Reef — While filming “Donovan’s Reef”, an action-comedy made on Kaua‘i during July and August of 1962, the cast was rehearsing one day in the banquet room of the old Kauai Inn on Rice Street when actor John Wayne spoke the line, “Ann, bring me some coffee.”
Director John Ford, not pleased with Wayne’s delivery, asked Wayne several times to repeat the line, which Wayne did, but louder each time.
Wayne’s last reading was a shout so loud that Ida Lovell, working in the adjacent bar and hearing a yell for coffee, went to the kitchen to fix a pot to bring to the rehearsal.
When Ford saw her walk in with the coffee and cups a while later, he asked her what was going on and she replied, “I heard someone hollering, ‘Ida, bring some coffee,’ so I brought it.”
Ford burst out laughing and Lovell suggested that since she’d already made the coffee, they might as well take a coffee break.
John Wayne piped in, “We certainly will have a coffee break. We are entitled to it. This is the first time this so and so Ford has so much as smiled, since he got on the island.”
And patrons later joked that the incident surely proved the point that if you holler loud and long enough, you will get service.
“Donovan’s Reef” starred John Wayne, Elizabeth Allen, Lee Marvin, Jack Warden, Cesar Romero, and Dorothy Lamour.
Film sites included the Allerton estate at Lawa‘i-Kai, Ko‘olau, the Horner house in Waipouli, Waimea Canyon, Hanama‘ulu beach park, Smith’s Wailua River boat landing and the Ahukini pier.
After a day’s filming, Lee Marvin relaxed at the old Club Jetty nightclub in Nawiliwili, and John Wayne was seen buying, of all things, a coffee pot at Kress Store on Rice Street.
