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Biography
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. ~ Bruce Eder, All
Movie Guide
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