The pose – with the one arm holding the other – was quite distinctive, and so un-John-Wayne-like that Bogdonavich once asked him about it. “You know how you stand in the doorway in that last shot? And how you have your arms? Was that on purpose? Did you choose that pose, or …”
And John Wayne’s answer is enough to bring tears to my eyes. He said, “I knew a guy who stood like that all the time. And the pose always seemed so lonely to me. I thought it would work well in that last shot.”