John Wayne, Hollywood Giant
For 25 years John Wayne,'Duke',was rated at or around the top in Hollywood movies box-office appeal. His films grossed $700million - a record no performer has come close to matching. Yet he was more than that. He was an icon, a magnetic force around which films were made and he gave an image of American strength, determination and moral courage for the whole world to aspire to.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Wayne thirteenth among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time. A Harris Poll released in 2007 placed Wayne third among America's favorite film stars, the only deceased star on the list and the only one who has appeared on the poll every year.
Biography
He was born and Marion Michael Morrison in Winterset, Iowa, on May 26, 1907 and later the family settled in Glendale, where his father opened a pharmacy. The store was in the same building as a theater, 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. He had an Airedale Terrier, called Duke, and it is from the dog that his nickname derived.After various part time jobs he became 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 at the university, Wayne, along with many of his fellow athletes, began working at 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, who provided most of those bit parts. Early in this period, Wayne appeared with his USC teammates playing on-screen football in The Dropkick and Brown of Harvard, and was one of the featured football players in Columbia Pictures' Maker of Men (filmed in 1930 and released in 1931). In 1930 in a movie called The Big Trail he changed his name to John Wayne. The journey to major stardom had begun.
From his job in the Props department Wayne started learning the business and gradually worked his way into real acting roles. Between 1933 and 1939, he made more than 40 films, mainly westerns, until John Ford finally convinced United Artists to give him the role of the Ringo Kid in his classic film Stagecoach. Wayne by now was a major star.
After Stagecoach Wayne quickly established his versatility in a variety of major roles: a young seaman in Eugene O'Neill's The Long Voyage home, a tragic captain in Reap the Wild Wind, a rodeo rider in the comedy A Lady Takes a Chance.
With America's entry into World War II the majority of male leads left Hollywood to serve overseas. John Wayne saw his just-beginning stardom at risk. Despite enormous pressure from his inner circle of friends, he put off enlisting but eventually, when he did try he was refused because of an old football injury. So he poured himself into the war effort by making inspirational films such as The fighting Seabees and They Were Expendable.
He also became a popular visitor to the war zones in World War II and aferwards in Korea and Vietnam. By the 1950s, perhaps in large part due to the military aspect of films such as the Sands of Iwo Jima, Flying Tigers, They Were Expendable, and the Ford cavalry trilogy, Wayne had become an icon to all the branches of the U.S. Military, even in light of his actual lack of military service. Many veterans have said their reason for serving was in some part related to watching Wayne's movies.
By the late 1940's, 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," he 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.
Beginning in the late 1940s, Wayne began to produce his films as well as star in them, and in 1960, he made his directorial debut with THE ALAMO, a film which he also produced and starred in (as Davy Crockett)
When he wasn't producing or directing, Wayne continued to act in a variety of different films throughout the 1960s, among them Hatari! (1962), Donovan's Reef (1963), El Dorado (1967), The Green Berets(1968) and True Grit (1969), for which he won his first and only Best Actor Oscar. By the 1970s however, he found himself playing prototypes of his established slow-talking, straight-walking screen persona in a series of westerns which succeeded financially, if not critically, because of the star's enduring box-office appeal. Reminding audiences of the actor behind the personality however, in his final film, The shootist (1976) (the story of an aging gunslinger who, like Wayne himself, finds out he's dying of cancer), the icon gave one of his greatest film performances.
John Wayne died of lung cancer on June 11, 1979 and was interred in the Pacific View Memorial Park cemetery in Corona del Mar, Orange County, California. Before his death, Duke wanted a simple epitaph carved on his headstone, "Feo, Fuerte y Formal". Translated it means "He was Ugly, Strong, and had Dignity". His wishes were never carried out. His headstone is a bronze plaque featuring an image of John Wayne astride a horse, near the Alamo. Its inscription reads:
"Tommorow 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 learnt something from yesterday."
