Posted on 05/28/2012 6:56:20 PM PDT by re_tail20
The first time I saw him, he was striding toward me out of the burning Georgia sun, as helicopters landed behind him. His face was tanned a deep brown. He was wearing a combat helmet, an ammo belt, carrying a rifle, had a canteen on his hip, stood six feet four inches. He stuck out his hand and said, "John Wayne." That was not necessary.
Wayne died on June 11, 1979. Stomach cancer. "The Big C," he called it. He had lived for quite a while on one lung, and then the Big C came back. He was near death and he knew it when he walked out on stage at the 1979 Academy Awards to present Best Picture to "The Deer Hunter," a film he wouldn't have made. He looked frail, but he planted himself there and sounded like John Wayne.
John Wayne. When I was a kid, we said it as one word: Johnwayne. Like Marilynmonroe. His name was shorthand for heroism. All of his movies could have been titled "Walking Tall." Yet he wasn't a cruel and violent action hero. He was almost always a man doing his duty. Sometimes he was other than that, and he could be gentle, as in "The Quiet Man," or vulnerable, as in "The Shootist," or lonely and obsessed, as in "The Searchers," or tender with a baby, as in "3 Godfathers."
He worked all the time. In the 1930s alone, he made 69 movies. Between 1928 and 1963, he made 21 films with John Ford, the man he called "Pappy." He had an effect on people that few other actors ever had. Gene Siskel was interviewing him in the middle of the night during a Chicago location shoot. The Duke had been doing some drinking, to keep warm...
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.suntimes.com ...
BTTT
My folks loved John Wayne.
True then. True now.
RIP
If Hollywood had even a handful of true John Wayne’s, the entire U.S. would be a much better place and our Arizona Sheriff Joe would have lots of help and at least we would have some decent movies for the whole family to see.
I'm not naive, I know he was an actor. But he projected a strong, positive image. In private (and yes, I know his foibles) as well as public.
Hollywierd, today, has very few that did what Wayne and the other old guys did.
I love all of his flicks. But of the later ones...I'll never forgive Bruce Dern for shooting him (The Cowboys) and I will stay up and watch True Grit every stinkin’ time to see him put the reigns in his teeth and ride.
(As an aside, I tried that once. I didn't notice how loosely the reigns were held. Darn near pulled my teeth out and gave myself whiplash,lol)
That was a very good article from Roger.
In case anyone was wondering, yes, read it.
One of my all-time favorite human beings, that John Wayne. What a better world it would be if we had more like him.
I did as well...and yes I was somewhat surprised it was such a good article.
I grew up watching “The Duke”. I like all his movies but “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” is my favorite.
John Wayne was the greatest movie actor of all time.
I loved his westerns (naturally) but also enjoyed his war films. There were a handful of miscasts, I think, but a John Wayne movie was a John Wayne movie and it couldn’t be bad. ‘The Sons of Katie Elder’ and ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ were always favorites of mine, but ‘Trouble Along the Way’, where Wayne played a football coach at a Notre Dame-type college, may be at the top of my personal list.
No, Roger, he would not. We didn't change, you did.
LOL how SO very TRUE!
It also reminds us that, although Ebert can profess some flaky ideas at times, the man knows movies- why they are important and how they work in our society; and he can write.
Thanks re_tail20.
GOP won by planting seeds of deception
by Roger Ebert
December 14, 2000
Now that the adventure is over, it might be instructive to consider some of the ideas that seeped into the general consciousness. How and why, for example, did it become established in so many minds that Bush was the presumptive winner and Gore the apparent loser?
What the Republicans did, cleverly, was to establish effective “memes” in the minds of the public and the pundits...
True, as much as it pains me to praise Ebert that was an excellent bit of writing.
Indeed. Informative. Very well written.
Frankly, i’m shocked that Ebert wrote this.
“Red River” is a great movie no doubt, one of my favorites, but “The Searchers” is the greatest western ever made...
Wow, awesome read about the Duke! Long article, but worth it.
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