John Wayne

John Wayne (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), 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.


Arguably the most popular -- and certainly the busiest -- movie leading man in Hollywood history,
John Wayne entered the film business while working as a laborer on the Fox lot during summer
vacations from U.S.C., which he attended on a football scholarship.


He met and was befriended by John Ford, a young director who was beginning to make a name for
himself in action films, comedies, and dramas. Wayne was cast in small roles in Ford's
late-'20s films, occasionally under the name Duke Morrison. It was Ford who recommended Wayne
to director Raoul Walsh for the male lead in the 1930 epic Western The Big Trail, and, although it
was a failure at the box office, the movie showed Wayne's potential as a leading man.


During the next nine years, be busied himself in a multitude of B-Westerns and serials -- most
notably Shadow of the Eagle and The Three Mesquiteers series -- in between occasional bit parts in
larger features such as Warner Bros.' Baby Face, starring Barbara Stanwyck. But it was in
action roles that Wayne excelled, exuding a warm and imposing manliness onscreen to which both men
and women could respond.



In 1939, Ford cast Wayne as the Ringo Kid in the adventure Stagecoach, a brilliant Western of modest
scale but tremendous power (and incalculable importance to the genre), and the actor finally showed
what he could do. Wayne nearly stole a picture filled with Oscar-caliber performances, and his
career was made.


He starred in most of Ford's subsequent major films, whether Westerns (Fort Apache [1948], She
Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949], Rio Grande [1950], The Searchers [1956]); war pictures (They Were
Expendable [1945]); or serious dramas (The Quiet Man [1952], in which Wayne also directed some of
the action sequences).


He also starred in numerous movies for other directors, including several extremely popular World
War II thrillers (Flying Tigers [1942], Back to Bataan [1945], Fighting Seabees [1944], Sands of Iwo
Jima [1949]); costume action films (Reap the Wild Wind [1942], Wake of the Red Witch [1949]); and
Westerns (Red River [1948]).


His box-office popularity rose steadily through the 1940s, and by the beginning of the 1950s
he'd also begun producing movies through his company Wayne-Fellowes, later Batjac, in
association with his sons Michael and Patrick (who also became an actor). Most of these films were
extremely successful, and included such titles as Angel and the Badman (1947), Island in the Sky
(1953), The High and the Mighty (1954), and Hondo (1953).


The 1958 Western Rio Bravo, directed by Howard Hawks, proved so popular that it was remade by Hawks
and Wayne twice, once as El Dorado and later as Rio Lobo. At the end of the 1950s, Wayne began
taking on bigger films, most notably The Alamo (1960), which he produced and directed, as well as
starred in. It was well received but had to be cut to sustain any box-office success (the film was
restored to full length in 1992).



During the early '60s, concerned over the growing liberal slant in American politics, Wayne
emerged as a spokesman for conservative causes, especially support for America's role in
Vietnam, which put him at odds with a new generation of journalists and film critics. Coupled with
his advancing age, and a seeming tendency to overact, he became a target for liberals and leftists.
However, his movies remained popular.



McLintock!, which, despite well-articulated statements against racism and the mistreatment of Native
Americans, and in support of environmentalism, seemed to confirm the left's worst fears, but
also earned more than ten million dollars and made the list of top-grossing films of 1963-1964.
Virtually all of his subsequent movies, including the pro-Vietnam War drama The Green Berets (1968),
were very popular with audiences, but not with critics.


Further controversy erupted with the release of The Cowboys, which outraged liberals with its
seeming justification of violence as a solution to lawlessness, but it was successful enough to
generate a short-lived television series.


Amid all of the shouting and agonizing over his politics, Wayne won an Oscar for his role as marshal
Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, a part that he later reprised in a sequel. Wayne weathered the Vietnam
War, but, by then, time had become his enemy.


His action films saw him working alongside increasingly younger co-stars, and the decline in
popularity of the Western ended up putting him into awkward contemporary action films like McQ
(1974). Following his final film, The Shootist (1976) -- possibly his best Western since The
Searchers -- the news that Wayne was stricken ill with cancer (which eventually took his life in
1979) wiped the slate clean, and his support for the Panama Canal Treaty at the end of the 1970s
belatedly made him a hero for the left.


Wayne finished his life honored by the film community, the U.S. Congress, and the American people as
had no actor before or since. He remains among the most popular actors of his generation, as
evidenced by the continual rereleases of his films on home video.