John Wayne, an actor who came to epitomize the American West, is born in Winterset, Iowa.
Born Marion Michael Morrison, Wayne’s family moved to Glendale, California, when he was six years old. As a teen, he rose at four in the morning to deliver newspapers, and after school he played football and made deliveries for local stores. When he graduated from high school, he hoped to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. However, after the school rejected him, he accepted a full scholarship to play football at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
In the summer of 1926, Wayne’s football coach found him a job as an assistant prop man on the set of a movie directed by John Ford. Ford started to use Wayne as an extra, and he eventually began to trust him with some larger roles. In 1930, Ford recommended Wayne for Fox’s epic Western The Big Trail. Wayne won the part, but the movie did poorly, and Fox let his contract lapse.
During the next decade, Wayne worked tirelessly in countless low-budget western films, sharpening his talents and developing a distinct persona for his cowboy characters. Finally, his old mentor John Ford gave Wayne his big break, casting him in his brilliant 1939 western, Stagecoach. Wayne played the role of Ringo Kid, and he imbued the character with the essential traits that would inform nearly all of his subsequent screen roles: a tough and clear-eyed honesty, unquestioning valor, and a laconic, almost plodding manner.
After Stagecoach, Wayne’s career took off. Among the dozens of Westerns he appeared in—many of them directed by Ford-were memorable classics like Tall in the Saddle (1944), Red River (1948), Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). In all these films, The Duke, as he was known, embodied the simple, and perhaps simplistic, cowboy values of decency, honesty, and integrity.
Besides Westerns, Wayne also acted in war films. It was a small leap from the valorous cowboy or cavalry soldier to the brave WWII fighters of films like Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and Flying Leathernecks (1951). Deeply conservative in his politics, Wayne also used his 1968 film, The Green Berets, to express his support of the American government’s war in Vietnam.
By the late 1960s, some Americans had tired of Wayne and his simplistically masculine and patriotic characters. Increasingly, western movies were rejecting the simple black-and-white moral codes championed by Wayne and replacing them with a more complex and tragic view of the American West. However, Wayne proved more adaptable than many expected. In his Oscar-winning role in True Grit (1969), he began to escape the narrow confines of his own good-guy image. His final film, The Shootist (1976), won over even his most severe critics. Wayne—who was himself battling lung cancer—played a dying gunfighter whose moral codes and principles no longer fit in a changing world.
Three years later, Wayne died of cancer. To this day, public polls identify him as one of the most popular actors of all time.
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My wife and I were watching America in Color on Smithsonian Channel the other night. They were covering late 1800’s/early 1900’s old west. The OK Corral was one of the topics since it became a tourist destination.
Wyatt Earp eventually had made his way to Hollywood and was a consultant for early western movies. One of the up and coming actors he worked with was Marion Morrison. He taught him to talk, walk, and act in an authentic manner.
“I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I require the same of them:”
………………. John Bernard Books, “The Shootist”
Wayne’s fictional portrayals had a large impact on leading edge boomers such as myself in forming our codes of conduct and morality. As difficult as that may be to grasp for today’s younger people it’s nevertheless true.
John Wayne the ultimate cowboy! But his son said the Duke “didn’t particularly like horses and preferred suits and tuxedos to chaps, jeans and boots,” and his dad much more preferred the sea over the prairie.
The guy who played a bad-ass GI soldier did everything possible to avoid the draft during WWII, applied for multiple deferments, and wouldn’t even reply to letters from the Selective Service system. This “hero” never served a day in the military.
This supposed Commie hater by his own admission considered himself a socialist during his college years, and voted for Roosevelt during the Depression. He actually met with Nikita Khrushchev.
A warmonger …. Concerning Vietnam anti-war protestors — “As far as I’m concerned, it wouldn’t bother me a bit to pull the trigger on one of ’em.”
Was there ever a Native American the cowboy didn’t want to kill? The only good Injun is a dead Injun. What a piece of shit he was. John Wayne merely played the part of a hero in Tinseltown’s back lot. But, in real life, he was mostly a fraud.
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https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/making-of-john-wayne
After Sands of Iwo Jima the marines hated him for the fake he was.
My stepdad said Wayne never acted a day in his life . The man on the screen was him everyday .
When my nephews were growing up they could answer questions for 25 cents. One of the questions was, ” Who’s the greatest actor to ever live ” ? Answer…John Wayne .