Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

John Wayne (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979),
nicknamed "Duke," was an American film actor whose
career spanned the evolutionary phase of American
cinema, appearing in silent movies and "talkies"
alike. He remains, by many accounts, the most
popular star in the history of American film.

==Life and career==
He was born Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset,
Iowa in 1907, but the name became Marion Michael
Morrison when his parents decided to name their
next son Robert. His 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.

After nearly gaining admission to the United
States Naval Academy|U.S. Naval Academy, he
attended the University of Southern California,
where he was a member of the Trojan Knights and
Sigma Chi Fraternity.  Wayne also played on the
University of Southern California|USC American
football|football team under legendary coach
Howard Jones (football 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. 

While at the university, Wayne began working
around the local film studios. Western
movie|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. His first starring role was in the movie The
Big Trail; it was the director of that movie,
Raoul Walsh, who gave him the stage name "John
Wayne," after American Revolutionary
War|Revolutionary War general Anthony Wayne|"Mad
Anthony" Wayne.

His friendship with John Ford|Ford led them to
work together on films which featured some of
Wayne's most iconic roles. Beginning with three
minor parts in 1928, Wayne would appear in over
twenty of Ford's films in the next 35 years,
including Stagecoach (movie)|Stagecoach (1939),
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man
(1952), The Searchers (movie)|The Searchers
(1956), The Wings of Eagles (1957) and The Man Who
Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

Wayne appeared in many strong masculine roles in
western films and war films, but he also had a
down-to-earth sense of humor that allowed him to
appear in a pink bunny suit for an episode of
Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, as well as in comedy
movies. According to the Internet Movie Database
Wayne played the male lead in 142 of his film
appearances, an as yet unsurpassed record. 

One of Wayne's best roles was ironically in one of
the few films he made that wasn't a Western or war
picture, The High and the Mighty (film)|The High
and the Mighty, released in 1954. The movie was
directed by William Wellman and based on a novel
by Ernest K. Gann. Wayne played the co-pilot of a
plane that develops serious engine problems in
flight. His portrayal of the heroic airman won
widespread acclaim. 

Although appearing in many war films and
frequently being eulogized as an "American hero,"
Wayne never served in the Armed Forces. Between
1940, when the military draft was reinstated and
the end of World War II in 1945, he remained in
Hollywood and made 21 movies. (Among them was
Cecil B. DeMille's Reap the Wild Wind (1942), in
which he portrayed one of the few
less-than-honorable characters in his career.) He
was of draft age (34) at the time of Pearl Harbor
in 1941, but asked for and received a deferral for
family dependency, a classification of 3-A.  This
was later changed to a deferment in the national
interest, 2-A.

Despite his prolific output John Wayne won only a
single Academy Award for Best Actor|Best Actor
Academy Award|Oscar, for the 1969 movie True Grit.
He received a nomination for Best Actor in Sands
of Iwo Jima, and another as the producer of
Academy Award for Best Picture|Best Picture
nominee The Alamo (1960 movie)|The Alamo, which he
also directed. In 1973, he released a best-selling
spoken word album titled America, Why I Love Her,
that was nominated for a Grammy award|Grammy, and
re-released with similar success in 2001.

Wayne was well known for his far right-wing
political views. In 1968 he directed The Green
Berets, the only feature film of the time to
openly support the Vietnam War. It was produced in
close collaboration with the Armed Forces.  At one
point in 1968 it was rumored that third-party
presidential candidate George Wallace was about to
choose Wayne as his vice-presidential running
mate. It was also ironic that he appeared in an
episode of the TV series Maude, created by
ultra-liberal Norman Lear, and starring the
liberal actress Bea Arthur, who stood 5'9" and to
whom Wayne referred as "little lady".  Wayne
seemed to enjoy acting with actresses of a liberal
bent, such as Lauren Bacall, Colleen Dewhurst, and
Katharine Hepburn.

The High and the Mighty is one of four films (the
others are Hondo, Island in the Sky, and
McLintock!) that are owned outright by Batjac
Productions|Batjac, a production company
co-founded by Wayne and named after the fictional
shipping company in The Wake of the Red Witch.
Batjac now belongs to the Wayne family estate.
Because of lawsuits and copyright issues with the
estate, these films, with the exception of
McLintock!, have not been seen for many years.
Hondo was not shown from Wayne's death in 1979
until 1994, a fifteen-year hiatus. As of the
summer of 2005, however, Batjac has allowed The
High and the Mighty and Island in the Sky to be
reissued on television and video in digitally
remastered versions.

John Wayne died of lung cancer on June 11, 1979 in
Newport Beach, California, and was interred in the
Pacific View Memorial Park cemetery in Corona del
Mar, California|Corona del Mar, Orange County,
California. Some trace his cancer back to his work
in The Conqueror (movie)|The Conqueror, filmed
about 100 miles downwind of Nevada nuclear-weapons
test sites. However, it should also be noted that
until 1964 Wayne was a chain smoker, which was
more likely to have caused his cancer. Other
actors who worked on that movie and later died of
cancer were also heavy smokers, including Dick
Powell, Agnes Moorehead and Susan Hayward. He had
converted to Roman Catholicism shortly before his
death.

Wayne was married three times, always to
Spanish-speaking Latinas; to Josephine Alicia
Saenz, Esperanza Baur, and Pilar Palette. He had
four children with Josephine, three with Pilar,
most notably Patrick Wayne. All but one of his
children went on to have minor Hollywood careers.

He is the most celebrated utterer, and apocryphal
coiner, of the tmesis expletive
infixation|"ri-goddamn-diculous."

=====In memoriam John Wayne=====
* There is an airport named after him, John Wayne
Airport, in Orange County, California. 
* John Wayne was entered into the Hall of Great
Western Performers of the National Cowboy and
Western Heritage Museum in 1974.

====John Wayne in modern pop culture====
=====Movies and television=====
Characters in numerous other movies and television
shows have made imitations of John Wayne. Easily
imitated, with his signature swaggered walk,
especially the use of the word “pilgrim,” and
famous lines like, “fill your hands you
son-of-a-bitch,” have made their way into other
performances. 

* Jonathan Winters imitated Wayne on several
occasions, and Robin Williams has even imitated
Winters imitating Wayne (including in the film
Good Morning Vietnam). 

* In the 1978 French comedy "La Cage aux Folles",
the more masculine-acting of the two gay lovers
attempts to teach his friend how to imitate John
Wayne in order to intimidate an outsized pest in a
bar.

* Sheriff Cooper, played by Wally Flaherty, in the
movie “The Capture of Bigfoot” (1979) does
both Wayne and Columbo impressions.

* Clyde Kusatsu played eccentric Honolulu
Detective Gordon Katsumoto on two episodes of
Magnum P.I., titled "This Island Isn't Big
Enough...." and "A.A.P.I." (both 1986), in which
he imitated John Wayne throughout the show. The
imitation went so far as to have a bronze bust of
Wayne and a white cavalry hat (like the one Wayne
wore in movies “Rio Grande,” “Fort
Apache,” and  “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,”)
in his office.

* In the 1986 John Carpenter film, “Big Trouble
in Little China,” Kurt Russell tries his hand at
imitating John Wayne.

*“Full Metal Jacket”, the Stanley Kubrick 1987
effort has Matthew Modine doing his Wayne
imitations.

* 1989: Holly Hunter and Brad Johnson both
attempt, although poorly, to imitate "The Duke" in
the movie Always (movie)|Always.

The persona that Wayne portrayed in numerous
movies has become part of Americana. Like Cary
Grant and Humphrey Bogart, Archibald Leach, Marion
Morrison, and Bogart were different men in real
life than their screen portrayals. In all three
cases, their screen characterizations have taken
on lives of their own. In real life Morrison was a
quiet man who enjoyed his yacht, fishing, playing
cards, smoking, and drinking. It was the screen
John Wayne, however, that became an American icon.
Tough, rugged, larger-than-life, taming the West,
and saving democracy from fascism, his characters
represented the spirit of the men who built the
country.

=====Song lyrics=====
* Wayne is mentioned in the Paula Cole song Where
Have All the Cowboys Gone
(http://www.musicfanclubs.org/paulacole/lyrics.htm
l lyrics) from the 1996 in music|1996 album "This
Fire". In the song, sung from the female point of
view, the singer is both: wanting a man, or men,
that act like they did in the John Wayne Westerns
("Where is my John Wayne"), and at the same time
making fun of, both the men of today, and the
falseness of the men in the movies.

*  In a uncomplimentary light in the Public Enemy
(P.E.) song Fight the Power
(http://www.publicenemy.com/index.php?page=page5&i
tem=10&num=33 lyrics), from the 1990 in music|1990
album "Fear of a Black Planet". The lyrics state
that Elvis Presley was an evil racist, then seems
to lump Presley and Wayne together. Wayne has come
under fire for comments he reportedly made in a
1971 interview with Playboy, when he stated that
he believed in "white supremacy" until blacks were
educated enough to take a more prominent role in
American society. His statement: "that blacks were
not yet qualified to hold high public office
because discrimination prevented them from
receiving the kind of education a political career
requires."; was not an indication that he was
racist, but was a statement of fact as to how he
felt the system operates. Public Enemy is not
saying that Wayne is a racist, but instead is
responding to the idiom that John Wayne, and the
characters he portrayed on film, are iconic heroes
of America and the American way of life. P.E. is
saying, Wayne is NOT our hero, he doesn’t speak
for us, he doesn’t inspire us. He is the
“white-mans” hero, not ours.

* Jimmy Buffett mentions John Wayne prominently in
his song Incommunicado
(http://www.margaritaville.com/discography/cocotel
.htm#INCOMMUNICADO lyrics), on the "Coconut
Telegraph" album of 1981 in music|1981. Jimmy is
lamenting his loss and remembering such films as
"Red River" and (The man who shot) "Liberty
Valence".

==Character deaths==
spoiler

A frequently asked trivia question is: In how many
films did John Wayne's character die? The answer
is as follows: 

His death is seen in the following films:

# The Shootist - He is killed in a gunfight in at
the end of the film.
# The Cowboys - He is killed by Bruce Dern's
character.
# The Alamo (1960 movie)|The Alamo - Playing Davy
Crockett, he is killed by a Mexican soldier's
lance. 
#Sands of Iwo Jima - He is killed by a sniper's
bullet at the end of the film. 
#Wake of the Red Witch - He dies as the ship
sinks.
#The Fighting Seabees - He is shot by a sniper.
#Reap the Wild Wind - He is trapped inside the
wreck of a sunken ship after a fight with a giant
squid and drowns.

His character death is not shown in the following:

#The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance -  His character
is dead at the beginning of the film and the story
is told in flashback by James Stewart
(actor)|James Stewart who is attending his
funeral. 
#The Sea Chase - Lana Turner and Wayne are on a
ship when it sinks, but the possibility that the
characters survived is left open. 
#The Deceiver - Ian Keith's character died, but
the corpse was played by John Wayne.
#Central Airport - John Wayne has a very minor
role as the co-pilot of an aircraft that crashes
into the ocean.

==Filmography==

===1920s===
*Brown of Harvard (1926)
*Bardelys the Magnificent (1926)
*The Great K & A Train Robbery (1926)
*Annie Laurie (1927)
*The Drop Kick (1927)
*Mother Machree (1928)
*Four Sons (1928)
*Hangman's House (1928)
*Speakeasy (1929)
*The Black Watch (1929)
*Noah's Ark (1929)
*Words and Music (1929)
*Salute (1929)
*The Forward Pass (1929)
===1930s===
*Men Without Women (1930)
*Born Reckless (1930)
*Rough Romance (1930)
*Cheer Up and Smile (1930)
*The Big Trail (1930)
*Girls Demand Excitement (1931)
*Three Girls Lost (1931)
*Arizona (1931)
*The Deceiver (1931)
*Range Feud (1931)
*Maker of Men (1931)
*The Voice of Hollywood No. 13 (1932) (short
subject)
*Running Hollywood (1932) (short subject)
*The Shadow of the Eagle (1932)
*Texas Cyclone (1932)
*Two-Fisted Law (1932)
*Lady and Gent (1932)
*The Hurricane Express (1932)
*The Hollywood Handicap (1932) (short subject)
*Ride Him, Cowboy (1932)
*That's My Boy (1932) 
*The Big Stampede (1932) 
*Haunted Gold (1932)
*The Telegraph Trail (1933)
*The Three Musketeers (1933)
*Central Airport (1933)
*Somewhere in Sonora (1933)
*His Private Secretary (1933)
*The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933)
*Baby Face (1933)
*The Man From Monterey (1933)
*Riders of Destiny (1933)
*College Coach (1933)
*Sagebrush Trail (1933)
*The Lucky Texan (1934)
*West of the Divide (1934)
*Blue Steel (1934)
*The Man from Utah (1934)
*Randy Rides Alone (1934)
*The Star Packer (1934)
*The Trail Beyond (1934)
*The Lawless Beyond (1934)
*Neath the Arizona Skies (1934)
*Texas Terror (1935)
*Rainbow Valley (1935)
*The Desert Trail (1935)
*The Dawn Rider (1935)
*Paradise Canyon (1935)
*Westward Ho (1935)
*The New Frontier (1935)
*Lawless Range (1935)
*The Oregon Trail (1936 movie)|The Oregon Trail
(1936)
*The Lawless Nineties (1936)
*King of the Pecos (1936)
*The Lonely Trail (1936)
*Winds of the Wasteland (1936)
*Sea Spoilers (1936)
*Conflict (1936)
*California Straight Ahead! (1937)
*I Cover the War (1937)
*Idol of the Crowds (1937)
*Adventure's End (1937)
*Born to the West (1937)
*Pals of the Saddle (1938)
*Overland Stage Raiders (1938)
*Santa Fe Stampede (1938)
*Red River Range (1938)
*Stagecoach (1939)
*The Night Riders (1939)
*Three Texas Steers (1939)
*Wyoming Outlaw (1939)
*New Frontier (1939)
*Allegheny Uprising (1939)
===1940s===
*Meet the Stars: Cowboy Jubilee (1940) (short
subject)
*Three Faces West (1940)
*The Long Voyage Home (1940)
*Seven Sinners (1940)
*A Man Betrayed (1941)
*Lady from Louisiana (1941)
*The Shepherd of the Hills (1941)
*Meet the Stars: Past and Present (1941) (short
subject)
*Lady for a Night (1942)
*Reap the Wild Wind (1942)
*The Spoilers (1942)
*In Old California (1942)
*Flying Tigers (1942)
*Pittsburgh (1942)
*Reunion in France (1942)
*A Lady Takes a Chance (1943)
*In Old Oklahoma (1943)
*The Fighting Seabees (1944)
*Tall in the Saddle (1944)
*Flame of Barbary Coast (1945)
*Back to Bataan (1945)
*They Were Expendable (1945)
*Dakota (1945)
*Without Reservations (1946)
*Angel and the Badman (1947) (also producer)
*Tycoon (1947)
*Red River (1948 movie)|Red River (1948)
*Fort Apache (1948)
*3 Godfathers (1948)
*Wake of the Red Witch (1948)
*The Fighting Kentuckian (1949) (also producer)
*She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
*Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Rodeo (1949) (short
subject)
*Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)
===1950s===
*Rio Grande (movie)|Rio Grande (1950)
*Screen Snapshots: Reno's Silver Spur Awards
(1951) (short subjects)
*Operation Pacific (1951)
*The Screen Director (1951) (short subject)
*Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Awards (1951) (short
subject)
*Flying Leathernecks (1951)
*Miracle in Motion (1952) (short subject)
(narrator)
*The Quiet Man (1952)
*Big Jim McLain (1952) (also producer)
*Trouble Along the Way (1953)
*Island in the Sky (1953) (also producer)
*Hondo (1953) (also producer)
*The High and the Mighty (film)|The High and the
Mighty (1954) (also producer)
*The Sea Chase (1955)
*Screen Snapshots: The Great Al Jolson (1955)
(short subject)
*Blood Alley (1955) (also director and producer)
*The Conqueror (1956)
*The Searchers (1956)
*The Wings of Eagles (1957)
*Jet Pilot (film)|Jet Pilot (1957)
*Legend of the Lost (1957)
*I Married a Woman (1958) (Cameo)
*The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958)
*Rio Bravo (movie)|Rio Bravo (1959)
*The Horse Soldiers (1959)

===1960s===
*The Alamo (1960 movie)|The Alamo (1960) (also
director and producer)
*North to Alaska (1960)
*The Challenge of Ideas (1961) (short subject)
(narrator)
*The Comancheros (1961) (also director)
*The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
*Hatari! (1962)
*The Longest Day (movie)|The Longest Day (1962)
*How the West Was Won (1962)
*McLintock! (1963)
*Donovan's Reef (1963)
*Circus World (1964)
*The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
*In Harm's Way (1965)
*The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)
*Cast a Giant Shadow (1966)
*El Dorado (film)|El Dorado (1966)
*A Nation Builds Under Fire (1967) (short subject)
(narrator)
*The War Wagon (1967)
*The Green Berets (movie)|The Green Berets (1968)
(also director)
*Hellfighters (movie)|Hellfighters (1968)
*True Grit (1969)
*The Undefeated (1969)

===1970s===
*No Substitute for Victory (1970) (documentary)
*Chisum (1970)
*Rio Lobo (1970)
*Big Jake (1971) (also co-director)
*Directed by John Ford (1971) (documentary)
*The Cowboys (1972)
*Cancel My Reservation (1972) (Cameo)
*The Train Robbers (1973)
*Cahill U.S. Marshall (1973)
*McQ (1974)
*Brannigan (1975)
*Rooster Cogburn (1975)
*Chesty: Tribute to a Legend (1976) (documentary)
(narrator)
*The Shootist (1976)

==Quotes==
"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."

"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 expect the same from them."

"Courage is being scared to death - but saddling
up anyway."

==Further Reading==
*Campbell, James T. "Print the Legend": John Wayne
and Postwar American Culture" in: Reviews in
American History - Volume 28, Number 3, September
2000, pp. 465-477 

==External links==
* imdb name|id=0000078|name=John Wayne
* http://www.jwci.org/ John Wayne Cancer Institute
* http://www.wayneenterprises.com/ Wayne
Enterprises, the sole and exclusive licensor of
the John Wayne name, image, and
Wiktionary:likeness|likeness
* http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_016.html
Did John Wayne die of cancer caused by a
radioactive movie set? (from The Straight Dope)

==See also==
*Notable figures in Western films|Other notable
figures in Western films
*Johnny Wayne (comedian)