 Becoming
Duke
by Chris Enss
He
was bigger than life, the
consummate cowboy star, and he was and is the veritable
symbol
of heroic action and the Code of the West. Of
this country’s noted personalities and public figures,
living or deceased, John Wayne stands foremost as the
embodiment of what it means to be cowboy and American.
As
President Jimmy Carter remarked, “It was because
of what John Wayne said about what we are and what
we can be that his great and deep love of America can
be
returned in full measure.”
Wayne’s
friend, President Ronald Reagan, also had fond words: “Although
it would take the critics 40 years to recognize what
John Wayne was, the movie going public knew all along.
In this country and around the world, Duke was the
most popular box-office star of all time. For an
incredible 25 years he was rated at or around the
top in box-office
appeal… Yet John Wayne was more than an actor;
he was a force around which films were made.”
Every
era has its favorite. What is singular about Wayne
is that his appeal has endured far beyond anyone
else’s
in maintaining a place in the public’s hearts
and minds.
Every
year Harris Polls conducts a survey of America’s “Most Favorite
Movie Star.” In
2004, Wayne stood at number 7, and the surveyors
offered this thought:
“ The continuing popularity of John Wayne is, of course,
quite extraordinary. It is now 25 years since he
died in 1979. No other dead movie star has ever made it into
the top 10 since Harris Interactive began asking
this question 11 years ago.”
Painting by Wayne McLoughlin
courtesy: Blue Loon Fine Arts
In
the most recent survey, released in January 2006, Wayne’s
ranking went up. He came in at number 3, behind only
Tom Hanks and Johnny Depp.
Humble Beginnings
It was in the Midwest, in Winterset, Iowa, where
the boy who would become John Wayne got his start
in life.
Shy,
thoughtful, and modest—these terms don’t
evoke the image most have of the star who trod a very
public stage in the 1960s and ’70s. But interviews
conducted early in his career suggest John Wayne grew
up as a not-so-confident, no-so-outspoken young man.
Born on May 26, 1907, he was given the name Marion
Michael Morrison. When he was seven his parents left
the Midwest
and moved to a ranch in the Mojave Desert in California.
Marion spent much time outdoors, often hiking through
the valley and or teaching himself to ride, straddling
one of the plow horses his father owned. Just as
the young boy was adjusting to life in the rural
area,
the family relocated to Glendale.
According
to an interview Wayne did with Motion Picture Magazine
in February 1931, his parents were an unhappy
couple who had frequent, heated arguments. He avoided
the disharmony by staying away from home. He took
a part-time job delivering medicines and supplies
for
the pharmacy
where his father worked and joined the Boy Scouts
and YMCA.
A bit of a loner, he spent long hours exploring
the neighborhood with his Airedale, Duke. The firefighters
Marion befriended
in the area took to calling Marion “Big Duke” and
the Airedale “Little Duke.” The nickname
stuck, and his given name Marion, which he had
always disliked, was replaced with one more fitting
his independent
personality.
An
exceptional football player, Duke was class president
and a member of the drama club. He took
another part-time
job, delivering handbills for the Palace Grand
Movie Theatre.
Three or four times a week Duke would escape into the world of
motion picture cowboys, watching films starring his idols, Tom Mix
and Harry Carey. His other interest, besides sports, was the military,
and young Duke Morrison was keenly disappointed when his application
to the Naval Academy was denied in 1925. A football scholarship
to the University of Southern California momentarily shifted his focus off his misfortune. He tackled this new direction with gusto,
training hard under the Trojan's legendary coach Howard Jones.
Duke was a popular figure on campus. Handsome, smart, and easygoing,
he was happy whether he was attending one of his fraternity's
events or working at one of two jobs he held. College life was a welcome
respite from the tension-filled home life he had known. His
parents, meanwhile, divorced after 20 years of marriage.
In 1927, at the age of 20, Duke would be denied another career
opportunity. A severe shoulder injury cost the college sophomore his
athletic scholarship. He found work as a prop boy at Fox Films
Corporation. Cowboy star Tom Mix, whom Duke now knew personally,
had recommended him for the job.
Using his pull, Mix had Duke cast as a bit player in a few of his films
and on occasion hired him to work as a stuntman, a job at which the
gutsy natural athlete excelled. It would be another movie-maker,
Director John Ford, who would make the most of it. Ford hired Duke
to work in his action picture Men Without Women, and afterwards told
the young man he would cast him in a bigger, starring role.
Before Ford could make good on his promise, Director Raoul
Walsh wanted to cast Duke as the lead in the epic western The Big
Trail. Before the Fox executives would approve the deal, they wanted
him to change his name. Duke Morrison, now known as John Wayne,
galloped into theatres on October 2, 1930.
The Big Trail was not a huge money maker for the studio, but
John Wayne's performance did not go overlooked. Fox Films
signed him as a regular contract player and for nine years Wayne
twirled six guns and foiled cattle rustlers in a series of low-budget,
quickie Westerns. During that time he honed his skills as an action
star, training with Hollywood's best-known stuntman, the former
rodeo champion Yakima Canutt. Together the two created a technique
that made on-screen fight scenes more realistic.
By the time John Ford offered Wayne his breakthrough part as
the Ringo Kid in the now-classic Stagecoach, the Duke had made
more than 80 films. Stagecoach was released in March 1939 to glowing
reviews. The critics singled out Wayne's performance for special mention.
After the success of Stagecoach, the 32-year-old matinee idol and
veteran of the B-Western world was given the opportunity to make
pictures other than Westerns. In 1940, he again worked with Ford,
this time playing a sailor who is drugged and shanghaied on a tramp
freighter. Eugene O'Neill's dreamy tragedy, The Long Voyage Home,
was the vehicle for another strong performance by Wayne, proving
he had range as an actor.
During this time Duke was paired with some of Hollywood's
most compelling leading ladies-Marlene Dietrich, Paulette
Goddard, and Clair Trevor being among his costars. The on-screen
chemistry he shared with those stars and his own growing appeal
made classics of films like Reap the Wild Wind, Dark Command, and
A Lady Takes a Chance.
From 1943 to 1945, Wayne divided his time between Westerns
and war epics. His portrayal of Sergeant Stryker in Sands of Iwo Jima
earned him an Academy Award nomination and his work in Ford's
cavalry picture She Wore a Yellow Ribbon was hailed by critics as
"spectacular and noble."
With 1948 came what would be one of the most challenging roles
that Wayne or any other actor of his time could have confronted:
the part of Thomas Dunson, the driven, forbidding, uncompromising,
relentless cattleman in Red River. Director Ford, after seeing
Howard Hawks' handling of Ford's own find, admitted that he had
underestimated Duke's capabilities. He quipped to Daily Variety, "I
didn't know the SOB could act."
Something happened in Red River-something not just pivotal in
the career and art of John Wayne, but something that bespoke a
broader change in the moviemaking realm. That film, with its darker,
deeper portrayals and its determinedness to assert themes
beyond those traditionally associated with Westerns, themes
touching on the human condition in general, ushered in a new age
not just for Westerns but for American cinema at large. The 1950s
were looming and in John Wayne audiences glimpsed the first flickers
of an intensity that would be felt not only in Wayne but in
moviemaking on the whole.
Ford, impressed by what Duke had done in Red River, rewarded
his favorite performer with a starring role in what would be known
not just as Wayne's best picture to that point in his career, but
Ford's as well. The film promised to be a something bigger, bolder
than "cowboy" films had hitherto been. As with the Dunson role,
this one would be a study in complexity and intensity. It would
push Wayne to a level he had never before attained or attempted.
That part, the role of Ethan Edward in The Searchers, would put
at risk Wayne's rising popularity, for in the part of Edwards he
would give the public a hero-some would call him an anti-hero-
whose behavior wavered between the admirable and the forbidding,
a man who was at once strong and wounded, principled and
lawless, vulnerable and indomitable.
Wayne took that chance. It marked the biggest step in his career,
and the moment when he would step from leading man to largerthan-
life legend.
The Wayne Mystique
A conversation on the appeal of the Duke with critic Terry Teachout.
A.C. O.K., let's get down to business: what are John Wayne's ten best
Westerns?
T.T. The obvious ones, for the most part: The Searchers, Rio Bravo, Red River, El
Dorado, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Shootist, Hondo (the
most insufficiently appreciated of his major films), Stagecoach, and Rio Grande,
probably in that order. True Grit, The War Wagon, and McClintock! are too
inconsistent in quality to make the list, but Wayne is great in all three. I also have
a special fondness for Angel and the Badman, The Dark Command, and Tall in
the Saddle.
A.C. And what were his best non-Western performances?
T.T. The Quiet Man, Sands of Iwo Jima, They Were Expendable, In Harm's Way,
and (surprise) Trouble Along the Way. As a rule, I think he did his best acting in
Westerns, but that may simply mean that the Westerns tended to be better
movies. You certainly couldn't ask for more convincing performances than the
ones he gave in these five films.
A.C. How does his work stack up against that of the other greats of his
era, in any film genre?
T.T. I rank him alongside Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, James Stewart, and
Robert Mitchum-at the very top of the heap, in other words.
A.C. Why has the public's appreciation for Wayne held up when its
appreciation of so many other movie stars of his generation has faded
or diminished?
T.T. I think a considerable part of his continuing appeal has to do with the fact
that he made so many Westerns. The Western genre has a purity and clarity-a
classicism, if you like-that makes it timeless. Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy
were wonderful actors, but most of their films now seem old-fashioned, whereas
Rio Bravo feels as though it could have been made yesterday.
A.C. What separated Wayne from Stewart, Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott,
and the other top Hollywood leading men who acted in Westerns?
T.T. Gary Cooper was an equally big personality, but Wayne was more complicated,
especially in films like The Searchers that require him to behave in a
morally ambiguous way. Cooper could never have played Ethan Edwards-
you wouldn't have believed for a moment that he was capable of killing
Natalie Wood simply because she'd slept with an Indian. James Stewart, on
the other hand, was more complicated than Wayne, but his personality was
smaller in size. (Whose wasn't?)
Randolph Scott is a special case. I think he was as good as Wayne when it
came to playing Western heroes, but he wasn't nearly as careful when it came to
picking scripts. Except for Coroner's Creek, Hangman's Knot, Ride
the High Country, and the films he made with Budd Boetticher at the
end of his career, most of Scott's Westerns are second-rate or worse,
which is why he's largely (and wrongly) forgotten today.
A.C. What makes Rio Bravo stand up as well as it has?
T.T. The humor. Wayne was a strong man who could laugh at himself, and
Howard Hawks, whose great gift was for weaving comedy and drama into a
seamless fabric, took full advantage of that rare gift, both in Rio Bravo and El
Dorado. Needless to say, Rio Bravo is the better film, but I never get tired of
watching Wayne and Robert Mitchum strike comic sparks off one another in El
Dorado. How I wish they'd made another film together!
A.C. Are Wayne's politics the main reason why feelings have been so
divided about him?
T.T. Yes, if by "Wayne's politics" you also include what might be called the politics
of masculinity. I doubt that many people under the age of 40 are aware that
he was a political conservative, but you don't have to know anything about his
private life or political views to suspect that he wasn't the kind of guy you'd want
to bring to a fancy East Coast cocktail party. (Actually, he's exactly the kind of guy
I'd like to bring to a fancy East Coast cocktail party, but that's another story.)
A.C. Finish this sentence: John Wayne was.
T.T. .the perfect embodiment of America's self-image at mid-century: plain, proud,
unpretentious, and decisive. He once said that he'd played the kind of men he wanted
to be. I think he also played the kind of man many of us wish we were.
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