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Epitaph reads:- Tomorrow is the most important thing in
life. Comes into us at midnight very clean.
It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've
learned something from yesterday.
John Wayne, popularly known as "The Duke," was an Academy Award winning, American film actor whose career began in silent movies in the 1920s. He was a major star from the 1940s to the 1970s. He is most famous for his Westerns and World War II epics, but he also made a wide range of films from various Genres, biographies, romantic comedies, police dramas, and more. He epitomized a certain kind of rugged individualistic masculinity, and has become an enduring American icon.
John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa in 1907, but his name was changed to Marion Michael Morrison when his parents decided to name their next son Robert. His family was Presbyterian; father Clyde Leonard Morrison was of Irish and Scottish descent and the son of an American Civil War veteran while mother Mary Alberta Brown was of Irish descent. Wayne's family moved to Glendale, California in 1911; it was neighbors in Glendale who started calling him "Big Duke" because he never went anywhere without his Airedale Terrier dog, who was Little Duke. He preferred "Duke" to "Marion", and the name stuck for the rest of his
life. Duke Morrison's early life was marked by poverty; his father was a man who did not manage money well. Duke was a good and popular student. Tall from an early age, he was a star football player for Glendale High School and was recruited by the University of Southern
California. As a teen, Wayne also worked in an ice cream shop for an individual who shoed horses for local Hollywood studios. He was also active as a member of the Order of DeMolay, a masonic youth organization run by the Freemasons, the later of which he would also became a member of.
Wayne applied to the U.S. Naval Academy, but was not accepted. He instead attended the University of Southern California, where he was a member of the Trojan Knights and joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity. Wayne also played on the USC football team under legendary coach Howard Jones. An injury while supposedly swimming at the beach curtailed his athletic career, however; Wayne would later note that he was too terrified of Jones' reaction to reveal the actual cause of his injury. He lost his athletic scholarship and with no funds was unable to continue at
USC. While at the university, Wayne began working around the local film studios. Western star Tom Mix got him a summer job in the prop department in exchange for football tickets, and Wayne soon moved on to bit parts, establishing a long friendship with director John Ford. During this period, Wayne appeared with his USC teammates as one of the featured football players in Columbia Pictures' Maker of Men (filmed in 1930 and released in 1931), which starred Richard Cromwell and Jack Holt. In the film, Wayne was billed with his given name of Marion Morrison.
After two years working as a prop man at the William Fox Studios for $35 a week, his first starring role was in the 1930 movie The Big Trail; the director of that movie, Raoul Walsh, (who "discovered" Wayne) gave him the stage name "John Wayne", after Revolutionary War general "Mad Anthony" Wayne. His pay was raised to $75 a week. He was tutored by the studio's stuntmen in riding and other western
skills. The Big Trail, the first "western" epic sound motion picture, established his screen credentials, although it was a commercial failure. Nine years later, his performance in the 1939 film Stagecoach made him a star. In between, he made westerns, most notably at Monogram Pictures, and serials for Mascot Studios, where he played the role of d'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers, set in modern North Africa, with co-stars Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune. In this same year (1933), Wayne had a small part in Alfred E. Green's succes de scandale Baby
Face. Beginning in 1928, Wayne appeared in more than twenty of John Ford's films over the next 35 years, including Stagecoach (1939), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), The Searchers (1956), The Wings of Eagles (1957), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).
According to the Internet Movie Database, Wayne played the male lead in 142 of his film appearances. One of Wayne's most praised roles was in The High and the Mighty (1954), directed by William Wellman and based on a novel by Ernest K. Gann. His portrayal of a heroic airman won widespread acclaim. Island in the Sky (1953) is related to it, and both films were made one year apart with the same producers, director, writer, cinematographer, editor, and distributor.
In 1949 Robert Rossen, the director of All the King's Men, offered the starring role to Wayne. Wayne indignantly refused, finding the script of the projected film to be un-American in many ways. Broderick Crawford, who eventually took the role, won the 1950 Oscar for best male actor, beating out Wayne, who had been nominated for his role in The Sands of Iwo
Jima. John Wayne won an Best Actor Oscar in True Grit (1969). The award was fitting but belated as he had previously been ignored for performances in movies such as Red River (1948) and The Searchers (1956). Wayne was also nominated for Best Actor in Sands of Iwo Jima, and as the producer of Best Picture nominee The Alamo, one of two films he directed. The other was The Green Berets (1968), the only film made during the Vietnam War to support the
conflict. The Searchers continues to be widely regarded as perhaps Wayne's finest and most complex performance. In 2006 Premiere Magazine ran an industry poll in which his portrayal of Ethan Edwards was rated the 87th greatest performance in film history.
Wayne was known for his conservative ideals. He took part in creating the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, and was the president of that organization at one time. He was an ardent anti-communist, and was a vocal supporter of HUAC and the blacklisting of actors and actresses that were accused of being sympathetic to communist
ideals.
In 1964 Wayne was diagnosed with lung cancer, and underwent surgery to remove his entire left lung and two ribs. Despite rumors that the cancer was caused by filming The Conqueror in Utah where the US government had tested nuclear weapons, Wayne himself believed his three pack a day cigarette habit was the cause. After the operation he smoked cigars.
Perhaps due to his sheer popularity, or his status as the most famous Republican star in Hollywood, the Republican Party asked Wayne to run for President in 1968. He declined because he did not believe the public would seriously consider an actor in the White House. He did support his friend Ronald Reagan's runs for Governor of California in 1966 and 1970, however. In 1968 Wayne was also asked to be conservative Democratic governor George Wallace's running mate in the presidential election, however, this too did not come to
pass.
John Wayne died of stomach cancer on June 11, 1979, and was interred in the Pacific View Memorial Park cemetery in Corona del Mar. Rumours regarding Duke's death bed conversions to Catholicism circulated for a brief while following his death. However, many close to John Wayne including Dave Grayson and Duke's daughter Aissa have dismissed these allegations stating that Duke was not conscious when the alleged conversion actually took place. Although Wayne was a Freemason, his family did not request a Masonic funeral.
Wayne was married three times, always to Spanish-speaking brides; to Josephine Alicia Saenz, Esperanza Baur, and Pilar Palette. He had four children with Josephine and three with Pilar, most notably actor Patrick Wayne and Aissa Wayne, who wrote a memoir of her life as the daughter of John Wayne.
His romance with Josie Saenz began when he was a college student and continued for seven years before their marriage. Miss Saenz was 15 or 16 at their first meeting at a beach party at Balboa. The daughter of a successful Spanish businessman, Josie resisted considerable opposition from her family to maintain her relationship with Duke. In the years prior to his death, Wayne was happily involved with his former secretary Pat
Stacy.
At the time of his death, John Wayne resided in a bayfront house in Newport Beach, California. The site of his last residence remains a point of interest in Newport Harbor. After his death, his house was torn down and replaced by the new owners.
Various things have been named in memoriam of John Wayne. They include John Wayne Airport, in Orange County, California, and the 100-plus mile trail named the "John Wayne Pioneer Trail" in Washington state's Iron Horse State Park.
In his own lifetime, John Wayne rose far beyond recognition as a famous actor to that of an enduring American icon. Wayne sought to maintain his idealized image off screen by what he did on screen. In his last film The Shootist (1976), Wayne refused to allow his character to shoot a man in the back as was scripted, since this countered his lifetime's work of film portrayals as a more honorable
hero. This contrasts with other famous actors including Clint Eastwood and Humphrey Bogart who willingly played hero and anti-hero roles.
Wayne's rise to a quintessential icon of a patriotic war hero began to take shape five years after World War II when Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) was released and for which Wayne got a Best Actor nomination. His status grew so large and legendary that when Japanese Emperor Hirohito visited the United States in 1975 he asked to meet John Wayne. However, Wayne never actually served in the military and in 1941 was given a deferral rating of 3-A for family dependency (Wayne was 34 and had 4 children at the time), and this was later changed in 1944 to 2-A deferral based on national interest. This decision was unlike many famous Hollywood actors who did enlist including Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, and Tyrone Power as well as many less established actors including Eddie Albert and John Agar. As a result, Wayne had several run-ins with U.S. servicemen who wondered why Wayne was also not in uniform.
In one occurrence, John Wayne in a cowboy outfit including a ten-gallon hat appeared before soldiers recuperating at a naval hospital in Hawaii. He was initially greeted with silence and soon booed off the stage for he represented a patriotic hubris that they came to despise after being confronted with the realities of war.
John Wayne's iconic status as a war hero served in rallying support during the Vietnam War where he contributed his acting and co-direction to the popular box-office hit The Green Berets (1968), although the film was critically panned for its highly idealized, fictionalized depiction of war.
In an interview, Oliver Stone credited his own gung-ho patriotic enlistment to fight in the Vietnam War to being inspired by the "John Wayne image of America". However, while Stone returned from the war as a decorated veteran he had become an embittered anarchist, eventually creating Platoon, a movie that starkly counters the heroic and patriotic images idealized by the John Wayne icon and the The Green Berets.
John Wayne's birthplace in Winterset, Iowa
