December 2, 2011
A Howard Hawks Mystery: Case of the ‘Red River’ Buckle
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
LOS ANGELES — In the 1948 film “Red River,” there is a scene in which John
Wayne traces the outlines of a new cattle brand in the dirt. He draws a “D” for
Thomas Dunson, the rough and rowdy rancher he portrays, next to two wavy lines,
for the banks of the Red River.
But has somebody been rustling that brand?
This week Heritage Auctions, a prominent brokerage for movie memorabilia,
suddenly pulled its offer of a silver belt buckle with a gold inlay of the Red
River brand, just as the bidding reached $17,000. It was one of a handful of
buckles commissioned in 1946, when the film was shot, as gifts by its director,
Howard Hawks.
A Heritage representative called the buckle’s owner, Mara Alexandru, who had
been given it by her father, Norman Cook, the production manager on “Red
River.” The representative told her it had vanished — the same fate that had
befallen at least two of the other “Red River” buckles over the years.
The buckles had been embossed with the initials of their original owners. Long
ago, Hawks and Wayne, in a friendship ritual, swapped theirs. Wayne then wore
the Hawks buckle, marked “H W H,” while performing in a long string of
Westerns, including “Rio Bravo.”
But the “J W” buckle, owned by Hawks, disappeared, either lost or stolen,
according to various accounts. Wayne’s was stolen in 1981 from a silversmith
who was supposed to be making copies for the Wayne family, and it has not
turned up since.
“My head is melting right now,” Ms. Alexandru said. Her missing buckle,
embossed with her father’s initials, “N C,” is one of perhaps 15 from the
original set. Since her father’s death 30 years ago, Ms. Alexandru said, she
had kept the buckle in a safe-deposit box, aware that it had value but
unwilling to sell because of sentiment. She changed her mind recently, though,
as her own son turned 18. A single mother who works as a skin-care specialist,
she wanted to build a college fund and saw the buckle as a start.
A representative of Christie’s referred her to Heritage, which has offices in
Dallas and Beverly Hills, Calif., and might be better positioned to sell a
piece of film memorabilia with Southwestern connections. “Take care of this,
it’s all I’ve got,” she recalled telling a Heritage representative, as she
handed over the buckle in California, where she lives, for shipment to Texas.
“It was received in Beverly Hills, and packed up with other items” for auction,
Paul Minshull, an executive vice president at Heritage in Dallas, said in a
telephone interview on Thursday. And now, Mr. Minshull said, “we’re unable to
locate it.”
Heritage, he added, sells hundreds of thousands of items annually, with a
combined value of about $800 million, and has very rarely lost any. “At the
moment, it’s a mysterious disappearance,” Mr. Minshull said.
On Thursday Ms. Alexandru filed a police report on the disappearance in Beverly
Hills. Mr. Minshull said he expected to file one in Dallas on Friday.
Mr. Minshull acknowledged that Heritage was responsible for the buckle, and
said he expected to pay a settlement if it does not soon reappear. “I’m happy
to write a check,” he said.
But price may be an issue. While an independent evaluation is in order, Mr.
Minshull said, the ultimate value, by his reckoning, will be close to the
$17,000 offer that was already on the table. Heritage, he added, has not to his
knowledge previously sold one of the original buckles.
Ms. Alexandru contends that additional weeks of online bidding and an eventual
live auction would have pushed the price much higher. Though her father, who
also worked on films like “Mister Roberts” and “MASH,” was not well known to
the general public, the buckle’s association with “Red River,” Hawks and Wayne
was certainly a draw. Charles Morgan, a lawyer for Ms. Alexandru, said it was
too soon to speculate how the problem might be resolved.
Wayne’s missing buckle — the one with Howard Hawks’s initials — was valued at
$100,000 or more in a police bulletin reporting its theft in 1981. And
Heritage’s recent auction of John Wayne memorabilia, including his eye patch
from the original “True Grit,” took in $5.4 million, stunning even members of
his family, who sold the goods partly to benefit the John Wayne Cancer Center.
“It was overwhelming, such a surprise,” said Patrick Wayne, Mr. Wayne’s son, in
a telephone interview this week. Ethan Wayne, another son, said that just this
week he had discussed placing his family’s Red River buckle on the Art Loss
Registry, a database of missing art maintained by the International Foundation
for Art Research.
Mr. Morgan said that Ms. Alexandru ideally would like to have her property
returned. “If the buckle shows up, we’ll take it back from Heritage,” he said.
“She doesn’t trust them.”
As for what became of Hawks’s buckle — the one with John Wayne’s initials —
Kitty Hawks, a daughter of that long-dead director, said, “I don’t have a clue.”
But she does have a similar buckle from “Rio Bravo,” which Hawks shot in 1958.
“It’s worth less,” Ms. Hawks said. But, she added, “it’s got Dean Martin’s
initials.”
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