|
|
|
|
| Birth Name(s) : Marion Michael Morrison |
Date of Birth: May 26, 1907 |
| Status:
Married
|
Partner:
Pilar Wayne |
| Profession:
Actor |
| << Add John Wayne To Your Favorites |
|
Full John Wayne Biography
His father Clyde was a pharmacist with a lung condition which required him to move wife Mary and son Marion to the warmer climate of southern California where they tried ranching near the Mojave desert.
Till the ranch failed he and his younger brother Robert swam in an irrigation ditch and rode a horse to school.
Next the family moved to Glendale where Marion delivered medicines for his father, sold newspapers, and had an Airedale dog named "Duke" (the source of his own nickname). He did well at school both academically and in football. When he narrowly failed admission to Annapolis he went to USC on a football scholarship 1925-7.
Tom Mix got him a summer job as a prop man in exchange for football tickets. On the set he became close friends with director John Ford for whom, among others, he began doing bit parts, some billed as John Wayne.
His first featured film was Men Without Women (1930). After more than 70 low-budget adventures, mostly oaters, Ford cast him in Stagecoach (1939), the movie through which he emerged as a major star. He appeared nearly 250 movies, many of epic proportions. From 1942-3 he was in a radio series "The Three Sheets to the Wind" and in 1944 he helped found the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, later becoming its president.
His right-wing political stance was also reflected in Alamo, The (1960) which he produced, directed and starred in. His superhawk stand was enshrined in Green Berets, The (1968) which he co-directed and starred in.
In 1963 he had a cancerous lung removed; in 1978 there was open-heart surgery; in 1979 his stomach was removed. He received the Best Actor nomination for Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and the Oscar for his role as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (1969). A Congressional Medal was struck in his honor. He is perhaps best remembered for his parts in the cavalry trilogy -- Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950). |
|
|
Additional John Wayne Biography
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Wayne thirteenth among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time. A Harris Poll released in 2007 placed Wayne third among America's favorite film stars, the only deceased star on the list and the only one who has appeared on the poll every year.
After two years working as a prop man at the Fox Film Corporation for $75 a week, his first starring role was in the 1930 movie The Big Trail. The first western epic sound motion picture established his screen credentials, although it was a commercial failure. Before this film, Wayne had only been given on-screen credit once (in Words and Music), as "Duke Morrison". The director Raoul Walsh, who "discovered" Wayne, suggested giving him the stage name "Anthony Wayne", after Revolutionary War general "Mad Anthony" Wayne. Fox Studios chief Winfield Sheehan rejected "Anthony Wayne" as sounding "too Italian." Walsh then suggested "John Wayne." Sheehan agreed and the name was set. Wayne himself was not even present for the discussion. His pay was raised to $105 a week.
Wayne continued making westerns, most notably at Monogram Pictures, and serials for Mascot Pictures Corporation, including The Three Musketeers (1933), a French Foreign Legion tale with no resemblance to the novel which inspired its title. Coincidentally, he also appeared in some of the Three Mesquiteers westerns whose title was a play on the Alexander Dumas classic. He was tutored by stuntmen in riding and other western skills. He and famed stuntman Yakima Canutt developed and perfected stunts still used today.
In 1949, director Robert Rossen offered the starring role of All the King's Men to Wayne. Wayne refused, believing the script to be un-American in many ways. Broderick Crawford, who eventually got the role, won the 1949 Oscar for best male actor, ironically beating out Wayne, who had been nominated for Sands of Iwo Jima.
Batjac, the production company co-founded by Wayne, was named after the fictional shipping company Batjak in Wake of the Red Witch. (A spelling error by Wayne's secretary was allowed to stand, accounting for the variation.) Batjac (and its predecessor, Wayne-Fellows Productions) was the arm through which Wayne produced many films for himself and other stars. Its best-known non-Wayne production was the highly acclaimed Seven Men From Now, which started the classic collaboration between director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott.John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn in 1975
In 1964, Wayne was diagnosed with lung cancer, and underwent successful surgery to remove his entire left lung and four ribs. Despite efforts by his business associates to prevent him from going public with his illness (for fear it would cost him work), Wayne announced he had cancer and called on the public to get preventive examinations. Five years later, Wayne was declared cancer-free. After his operation he chewed tobacco and began smoking cigars.
The foregoing facts clearly influenced the direction of Wayne's later life. By all accounts, Wayne's failure to serve in the military during World War II was the most painful experience of his life. Clearly, there were some other stars who, for various reasons, did not enlist. But Wayne, by virtue of becoming a celluloid war hero in several patriotic war films, became the focus of particular disdain from both himself and certain portions of the public, particularly in later years. The rampant patriotism with which he was so identified in the decades to come sprang, it appears, not from hypocrisy but from guilt. Wayne's third wife, Pilar, wrote, "He would become a 'superpatriot' for the rest of his life trying to atone for staying home."
On June 9, 1980, Wayne was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter (at whose inaugural ball Wayne had appeared "as a member of the loyal opposition", as Wayne described it in his speech to the gathering). Thus Wayne received the two highest civilian decorations awarded by the United States government.
Wayne's rise to being the quintessential movie war hero began to take shape four years after World War II when Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) was released. His footprints at Grauman's Chinese theater in Hollywood were laid in cement that contained sand from Iwo Jima. His status grew so large and legendary that when Japanese Emperor Hirohito visited the United States in 1975, he asked to meet John Wayne, the symbolic representation of his country's former enemy.
Various public locations have been named in memory of John Wayne. They include John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, where his life-size statue graces the entrance; the John Wayne Marina near Sequim, Washington; John Wayne Elementary School (P.S. 380) in Brooklyn, NY, which boasts a 38 foot mosaic mural commission by New York artist Knox Martin entitled "John Wayne and the American Frontier"; and a 100-plus mile trail named the "John Wayne Pioneer Trail" in Washington state's Iron Horse State Park. A larger than life-size bronze statue of Wayne was erected at the corner of La Cienega Blvd. and Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills, California at the offices of the Great Western Savings & Loan Corporation, for whom Wayne had done a number of commercials. (The building now houses Larry Flynt Enterprises.) |
|
| Add John Wayne Biography (SuperUSERS) + |
John Wayne Quote(s)
| I never trust a man that doesn't drink. |
|
| Add John Wayne Review/Comment
|
HQ John Wayne Pictures (10) | Random John Wayne Picture
|
| << Back to the John Wayne Homepage |
|
