John Wayne
1907 - 1979
 

American actor John Wayne played characters who typically exuded decisiveness, virility, and an American "can-do" spirit in over 75 films.
 

John Wayne was born Marion Mitchell Morrison on May 26, 1907, in Winterset, Iowa. He received his nickname "Duke" while still a child, because of his love for a dog of that name. The family's circumstances were moderate. His father was a pharmacist whose business ventures did not succeed. The family moved to California in 1914. His parents were divorced in 1926.

From the age of 12 he was forced to help support himself. He did so with a variety of odd jobs, including stints as a delivery boy and as a trucker's helper. A star football player on the Glendale High School team, he was accepted at the University of Southern California on a football scholarship. An accident ended his playing career and scholarship; without funds to support himself he left the university in 1927 after two years there.

He had spent some time while at college working at the Fox studio lots in Los Angeles as a labourer, prop boy, and extra. While doing so he had met John Ford, the director, who took a shine to him (and would over the years have a major impact on his career). In 1928, after working at various odd jobs for some months, he was again employed at the Fox studios, mostly as a labourer but also as an extra and bit player. His efforts in the main went unbilled, but he did attain his first screen credits as Duke Morrison.

His first real break came in 1929, when through the intervention of Ford he was cast as the lead in a major Fox production, the Western movie The Big Trail. According to some biographers Fox executives found his name inappropriate and changed it to John Wayne, the surname being derived from the American Revolutionary general "Mad Anthony" Wayne.

The Big Trail was not a success, and Fox soon dropped him. During the 1930s he worked at various studios, mostly those on what was known as "Poverty Row." Wayne appeared in over 50 feature films and serials, mostly Westerns. He even appeared in some films as "Singing Sandy." Tall, personable, able to do his own stunts, it appeared that he was doomed to be a leading player in low-budget films.

However, thanks to Ford, with whom he had remained friends, Wayne was cast as the lead in that director's film Stagecoach, a 1939 Western that became a hit and a classic. This film was a turning point in Wayne's career. And although it took time for him to develop the mythic hero image which propelled him to the top of the box office charts, within a decade he was voted by movie exhibitors one of the top ten box office attractions of the year, a position he maintained for 23 of the next 24 years.

Wayne appeared in over 75 films between 1939 and 1976 when The Shootist, his last film (and appropriately enough a Western), was released. In the vast majority of these films he was a man of action, be it in the post Civil War American West or in contemporary U.S. wars. As an actor he had a marvelous sense of timing and of his own persona, but comedy was not his forte. Action was the essence of his films. His characters exuded decisiveness, confidence, virility, strength, and an American "can-do" spirit. Indeed, critics have emphasized over and over again the manner in which he represented a particular kind of "American Spirit."

As a box-office superstar he had his choice of roles and vehicles, but he chose to remain with the genre he knew best. As the years passed his only concession to age was the gradual elimination of romance from the roles he played. He went from wooing leading ladies such as Marlene Dietrich (Pittsburgh, 1942), Gail Russell (Angel and the Badman, 1947), and Patricia Neal (Operation Pacific, 1951) to more mature roles as a rowdy pater familias (McClintock, 1963), an older brother (The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965), and an avuncular marshal (Rio Lobo, 1970).

Wayne's politics were not always right-of-centre, but in the latter part of his life he became known for his active anti-Communism. His ultra conservatism began in the mid-1940s. He served as head of the extremist anti-Communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals; supported various conservative Republican politicians, including Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon; and spoke out forcefully on behalf of various causes such as American participation in the Vietnam War.

His politics also influenced his activities as a producer and director. Wayne's production companies made all kinds of films, but among them were Big Jim McClain (1951), in which he starred as a process server for the House Un-American Activities Committee fighting Communists in Hawaii, and Blood Alley (1955), in which he played an American who helps a village to escape from the Communist Chinese mainland to Formosa. The two films that Wayne directed also are representative of his politics: The Alamo (1960) is an epic film about a heroic last stand by a group of Texans in their fight for independence against Mexico and included some sermonizing by the Wayne character about democracy as he saw it; The Green Berets (1968), in which Wayne played a colonel leading troops against the North Vietnamese, was an outspoken vehicle in support of America's role in the war.

Wayne was married three times. He had four daughters and three sons by two of his wives (Josephine Saenez, 1933-1945, and Pilar Palette Weldy, after 1954). His second wife was Esperanza Diaz Ceballos Morrison (1946-1954). Wayne was the recipient of many awards during his career, including an Oscar for his role as the hard-drinking, one-eyed, tough law man in True Grit (1969) and an Academy Award nomination for his playing of the career marine noncom in Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). Plagued by various illnesses during the last few years of his life, he publicly announced his triumph over lung cancer in 1964. But a form of that disease claimed him on June 11, 1979.
 

~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~
 

In more than 200 films made over 50 years, John Wayne saddled up to become the greatest figure of one of America's greatest native art forms, the western.

The movies he starred in rode the range from out-of-the-money sagebrush quickies to such classics as "Stagecoach" and "Red River." He won an Oscar as best actor for another western, "True Grit," in 1969. Yet some of the best films he made told stories far from the wilds of the West, such as "The Quiet Man" and "The Long Voyage Home."

In the last decades of his career, Mr. Wayne became something of an American folk figure, hero to some, villain to others, for his outspoken views. He was politically conservative and, although he scorned politics as a way of life for himself, he enthusiastically supported Richard M. Nixon, Barry Goldwater, Spiro T. Agnew, Ronald Reagan and others who, he felt, fought for his concept of Americanism and anti-Communism.

But it was for millions of moviegoers who saw him only on the big screen that John Wayne really existed. He had not created the western with its clear-cut conflict between good and bad, right and wrong, but it was impossible to mention the word "western" without thinking of "the Duke," as he was called.

By the early 1960's, 161 of his films had grossed $350 million, and he had been paid as much as $666,000 to make a movie--although in his early days on screen, his salary ran to no more than two or three figures a week.

It was rarely a simple matter to find a unanimous opinion on Mr. Wayne, whether it had to do with his acting or his politics. Film critics were lavish in praise of him in some roles and shrugged wearily as they candled his less notable efforts; one critic, apparently overexposed to westerns, angered him by commenting, "It never Waynes, but it pours."

Mr. Wayne was co-director and star of "The Green Berets," a 1968 film that supported the United States action in Vietnam. The movie was assailed by many major critics on all grounds, political and esthetic, but the public apparently did not mind; in only six months, it had earned $1 million above its production cost of $7 million.


Won Growing Respect

As the years passed, Mr. Wayne was recognized as some sort of American natural resource, and his various critics, political and film, looked on him with more respect. Abbie Hoffman, the radical of the 1960's paid tribute to Mr. Wayne's singularity. Reviewing "The Cowboys," made in 1972, Vincent Canby, film critic of The New York Times, who did not particularly care for it, wrote, "Wayne is, of course, marvellously indestructible, and he has become an almost perfect father figure."

But years before he became anything close to a father figure, Mr. Wayne had become a symbolic male figure, a man of impregnable virility and the embodiment of simplistic, laconic virtues, packaged in a well-built 6-foot-4-inch, 225- pound frame.

He had a handsome and hearty face, with crinkles around eyes that were too lidded to express much emotion but gave the impression of a man of action, an outdoor man who chafed at a settled life. He was laconic on screen. And when he shambled into view, one could sense the arrival of coiled vigour awaiting only provocation to be sprung. His demeanour and his roles were those of a man who did not look for trouble but was relentless in tackling it when it affronted him. This screen presence emerged particularly under the ministrations of John Ford and Howard Hawks, the directors.


Overcame Great Odds

Appearances were not altogether deceiving. Mr. Wayne loved adventure and the outdoors. He did believe that things were either right or wrong, and he came back against great odds. In 1964, a malignant tumour was removed from his chest and left lung, and within several months he was on location making another movie.

More recently, he found himself the target of much hate mail from the right wing, whose political idol he had been, after he supported President Carter's espousal of the Panama Canal treaties. He did not mind. Although his basic views had not moderated, his tolerance, it seemed, had. He had even shown up at a function to congratulate Jane Fonda, who was to the left what he was to the right, on winning a screen award.

Mr. Wayne made his last public appearance at the Academy Awards ceremony in April, where he drew an emotional standing ovation when he strode out on stage to present the Oscar for best picture.

He was recently presented with a special Congressional medal of the kind given to such national figures as the Wright Brothers.

Between his first starring role in "The Big Trail" in 1930, and his last one, as the most celebrated gunslinger in the West who finds he is dying of cancer in "The Shootist," in 1976, Mr. Wayne shot his way through generations of film fans with little change in style or personality. He had consciously adapted his posture for that first movie and retained it. He was sometimes inseparable from it in the flesh.


Watched Movies Being Made

"When I started, I knew I was no actor and I went to work on this Wayne thing," he once recalled. "It was as deliberate a projection as you'll ever see. I figured I needed a gimmick, so I dreamed up the drawl, the squint and a way of moving meant to suggest that I wasn't looking for trouble but would just as soon throw a bottle at your head as not. I practiced in front of a mirror."

His entrance into films was as fortuitous as any made by a young fellow who grew up near the Hollywood badlands. But the Wayne saga actually started much farther east, in the small town of Winterset, Iowa, where he was born May 26, 1907, and was named Marion Michael Morrison.

His father, Clyde L. Morrison, had a drugstore, but when Marion was 6 years old, his father, because of ill health, moved the family to Southern California and became a homesteader with an 80-acre farm. Not long after, the family settled in Glendale, where Mr. Morrison again went and opened a pharmacy. His store was in the same building as a theatre, and young Marion, who rose at 4 A.M. to deliver newspapers and then, after school and football practice, delivered orders from the store, went to the movies four or five times a week, free.

Even earlier, when he was 7, he had learned about horses and played cowboy. In Glendale, he saw movies being made at the Triangle Studios, where they often shot outdoor scenes. The link between horse and camera was yet to be forged, but the influences were there from the beginning. Along the way he had acquired the nickname "Duke." It came from an Airedale terrier he had had, he used to say as he debunked press releases that tried to explain the moniker as some sort of rubbed-off nobility.


Came to Ford's Attention

He worked as truck driver, fruit picker, soda jerk and ice hauler and was an honour student and a member of an outstanding football team at high school. His athletic talents brought him a football scholarship at the University of Southern California, but in his second year he broke an ankle and dropped out.

While he was still at school, he got a job, as other football players did, as a scenery mover at Fox Films. John Ford was attracted to the youth's hulking physique and made him a "fourth-assistant prop boy." When Mr. Ford was making a submarine film on location in the channel off Catalina Island, the regular stuntmen refused to go into the water because of rough seas. Mr. Ford asked the prop boy if he would. He did, immediately, and became part of the Ford team.

In an early film, Republic Pictures gave him a screen credit as Michael Burn and, in another, as Duke Morrison. When Raoul Walsh cast him as the star of "The Big Trail," his expensive, $2 million western, the director thought that Marion was too sissified a name for a western hero, and "John Wayne" was born.


Rode in 40 Westerns

The movie was a flop. It had been shot as a talking picture on 72-millimeter film, a "superwestern" designed for large screens that required protection equipment that few movie houses were equipped with.

After two non-westerns, Mr. Wayne retreated into short-order horse operas. Between 1933 and 1939, he made more than 40 westerns, all Grade B or C undertakings, interspersed with several that took him off the range but not into any particular recognition.

Then, like a good guy riding in to relieve the oppressed, his old benefactor, Mr. Ford, came along to cast Mr. Wayne as the Ringo Kid in the Oscar-winning "Stagecoach," the 1939 movie that took westerns from the Saturday afternoon for-kids-only category and attracted the attention of more intellectual film critics. It was a turning point also for Mr. Wayne.

His next major role found him in a milieu far from the cactus sets. He played a simple Swedish lad in the crew of a freighter in "The Voyage Home," Mr. Ford's 1940 film based on the sea plays of Eugene O'Neill.

Mr. Wayne's work from that point reads like a bill of lading of popular Hollywood wares. He starred with Marlene Dietrich in three films: "Seven Sinners" (1940), "Pittsburgh" (1943) and "The Spoilers" (1942). Others included Cecil B. De Mille's "Reap the Wild Wind" (1942), as well as a slew of World War II movies that embraced Mr. Ford's "They Were Expendable" in 1945.

Later came "Fort Apache" and "Red River," in 1948, and "Three Godfathers" and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," both in 1949. In 1952, Mr. Wayne showed off to best effect as the young Irish-American returned to Ireland in Mr. Ford's "The Quiet Man." It was a much-acclaimed film and is still a frequent feature on television.


Invested in 'The Alamo'

By the late 1940's, Mr. Wayne had already been transformed from a dashing young adventurer to an older one, no less dashing, but in a somewhat more restrained tempo. In "Red River," directed by Mr. Hawks, Mr. Wayne portrayed a ruthless cattle baron, not altogether a good guy, but one with some depth to him. In this instance, Montgomery Clift, the co-star, represented the forces for good.

Mr. Wayne invested $1.2 million in 1960 to make "The Alamo," about the fight between the Americans--the good guys--and the Mexicans--the bad guys. He played Davy Crockett. The picture was very dear to his heart because, he said, "We wanted to re-create a moment in history that will show this generation of Americans what their country still stands for . . what some of their forebears went through to win what they had to have or die*liberty and freedom."

He was bitterly disappointed when the film failed. However, he quickly went on to other work: "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "Hatari" and "The Longest Day," all in 1962; "How the West Was Won" in 1963, and "El Dorado" in 1967, another film directed by Mr. Hawks.

In 1969, Mr. Wayne was almost universally hailed when he starred in "True Grit," directed by Henry Hathaway. Mr. Wayne played a disreputable, one-eyed, drunken, fat old man who was a Federal Marshal called Rooster Cogburn. In 1970, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him an Oscar for his portrayal.

The success of "True Grit" led to "Rooster Cogburn," in 1975, in which he co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in her first western.

Mr. Wayne starred in his first television special, "Swing Out, Sweet Land," a paean of patriotism, in 1970, and later became well-known for various television appearances. He never made a television series and had deep reservations about the medium's approach to the western.

"Television has a tendency to reach a little," he observed, referring to television westerns' propensities for psychological insights. "In their westerns, they are getting away from the simplicity and the fact that those men were fighting the elements and the rawness of nature and didn't have time for this couch-work."

His anti-Communist sentiments led Mr. Wayne to help found the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals in 1944, and he was its president for two terms.

The organization, which eventually disbanded, was accused of having given the names of suspected Communists in the film industry to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, although Mr. Wayne said later that he had never been party to any such thing.

Once, interviewed about civil rights, he said: "I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to the point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people."

He said that when he was in school, he was a "socialist," but not for long. He said that he was a rebel, but not one like the youngsters of the late 60's.

"Mine is a rebellion against the monotony of life," he said. "The rebellion in these kids*particularly the S.D.S.'ers and those groups*seems to be a kind of dissension by rote."

In his later years, Mr. Wayne, who had invested in oil and also in a shrimp business in Panama, among other things, became more financially conservative than he had been. He had not kept a very tight hand on his money earlier, and at one point realized he was not as well off as he had thought.

However, he was not impoverished. He lived with his third wife, Pilar Palette Wayne, who was born in Peru, in an 11-room, seven-bathroom, $175,000 house in Newport Beach, Calif., where he had a 135-foot yacht. He owned cattle ranches in Stanfield and Springerville, Ariz.

Mr. Wayne's first two marriages, to Josephine Saenz and Esperanzo Bauer, also Latin Americans, ended in divorces. He had seven children from his marriages, and more than 15 grandchildren.

JACANA HOME PAGE | CLASSIC VIDEO CLIPS | JACANA ASTRONOMY SITE

JACANA PHOTO LIBRARY | OLD MAUN PHOTO GALLERY | MAUN PHONE DIRECTORY

FREE FONTS | PIC OF THE DAY | GENERAL LIBRARY | MAP LIBRARY | TECHNICAL LIBRARY

HOUSE PLANS LIBRARY | MAUN E-MAIL, WEBSITE & SKYPE LIST | BOTSWANA GPS CO-ORDINATES 

MAUN SAFARI WEB LINKS | FREE SOFTWARE | JACANA WEATHER PAGE

  JACANA CROSSWORD LIBRARY | JACANA CARTOON PAGE | DEMOTIVATIONAL POSTERS

This web page was last updated on: 17 December, 2008