John Wayne

Did You Know?

• Wayne turned down the lead role in High Noon (1952) because he felt the film was an allegory against blacklisting, which he supported.
• The role of Major T. J. "King" Kong in Dr. Strangelove (1964) was originally written with Wayne in mind, but he turned it down.
• In 1974, The Harvard Lampoon invited Wayne to receive the Brass Balls Award, and he accepted, arriving at Harvard Square on an armored personnel carrier.

Career

Wayne began working for Fox Film Corporation after losing a football scholarship due to a bodysurfing accident. He took small parts and was credited as "Duke Morrison" only once, in Words and Music (1929). Director Raoul Walsh saw him moving furniture as a prop boy and cast him in his first starring role in The Big Trail (1930). For his screen name, Walsh suggested "Anthony Wayne", but Fox chief Winfield Sheehan rejected it as sounding "too Italian"; Walsh then suggested "John Wayne", and Sheehan agreed.

The Big Trail was an early widescreen epic costing $1.25 million, filmed in standard 35 mm and 70 mm Grandeur. Few theaters could show the widescreen version, and the film was a box-office failure. Wayne played leading roles in numerous B movies during the 1930s without becoming a major name. John Ford's Stagecoach (1939) made him a mainstream star.

He later starred in 142 motion pictures, including Red River (1948), The Searchers (1956), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and True Grit (1969), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. His final screen performance was in The Shootist (1976).

Personal life

Wayne was married three times and divorced twice. His wives were Josephine Alicia Saenz, Esperanza Baur, and Pilar Pallete. With Josephine he had four children: Michael, Mary Antonia "Toni", Patrick, and Melinda. With Pilar he had three: Aissa, John Ethan, and Marisa.

Several of his children worked in film and television; Ethan appeared in the 1990s update of Adam-12 and on Pawn Stars. Granddaughter Jennifer Wayne is a member of Runaway June. In 1973, Wayne built the John Wayne Tennis Club in Newport Beach, California, later sold and renamed Palisades Tennis Club. His divorce from Baur was stormy; she believed he was having an affair with Gail Russell and attempted to shoot him.

Wayne had a long affair with Merle Oberon from 1938 to 1947. After separating from Pilar in 1973, he lived with former secretary Pat Stacy until his death. Wayne began wearing a hairpiece by the end of the 1940s; when asked at Harvard if his toupée was real mohair, he replied it was real hair, not his.

Political and social views

Wayne was a prominent conservative Republican in Hollywood and an ardent anti-communist. He voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 and admired Harry S. Truman, but supported Thomas E. Dewey in 1948. He helped create the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals in 1944 and was elected its president in 1949. He made Big Jim McLain (1952) as a HUAC investigator and acted as an inside enforcer of the Black List.

Joseph Stalin allegedly said Wayne should be assassinated for his anti-communist politics. Wayne supported Senator Joseph McCarthy and Vice President Richard Nixon in 1960, but said of John F. Kennedy: "I didn't vote for him, but he's my president." He produced, co-directed, and starred in The Green Berets (1968) to support the Vietnam War. He joined the John Birch Society in 1960 but quit after it denounced water fluoridation as a communist plot. He campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Legacy

Film critic Charles Champlin wrote in 1974 that Wayne defined what a motion picture actor means. John Ford said Wayne was not governed by acting rules but portrayed a rugged American guy naturally. Lee Strasberg compared him to Spencer Tracy and Gary Cooper, who tried not to act but be themselves. Andrew Sarris wrote in 1979 that Wayne thought of himself as a reactor rather than an actor.

Wayne explained that in a good picture actors react logically to a situation so the audience can identify with them. He disliked method acting, saying he read dramatic lines undramatically and reacted normally. Howard Hawks, who directed Wayne in five films, felt that after losing one of his lungs, Wayne became a better actor because he paused in strange places due to reduced breath. Raoul Walsh noted that Wayne underacted effectively because he could not overact.

Wayne received the Academy Award for Best Actor for True Grit (1969) and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.