“I would like to know your citation for that remark.”
Oh good question. It was in a book on the history of film I read years ago. It listed that film and a Hitchcock film where Cary Grant killed his wife but the studio forced them to change the ending to something happier.
I’ll see if I can find it. But right off hand I don’t remember
Those might have been in the original scripts but I cannot imagine for one minute that Wayne or Grant would have ever accepted films with that kind of ending.
The last time I saw an ending with that kind of ending was “The Fog” and it still gives me nightmares. Haven’t seen a horror movie since then.