Wayne strongly supported Hollywood's anti-communist drivePosted on 08/03/2003 2:17:57 PM PDT by Destro
Last Updated: Thursday, 31 July, 2003, 20:53 GMT 21:53 UK
Stalin 'tried to kill John Wayne'
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was so angered by John Wayne's anti-communism that he plotted to have him murdered, according to a new biography of the Hollywood legend.
Wayne strongly supported Hollywood's anti-communist drive
John Wayne: The Man behind the Myth, by British writer Michael Munn, says there were several attempts on the actor's life in the 1950s.
In one instance, the book says, two Russian hit men posing as FBI agents visited Wayne at his office in Hollywood - but were foiled by real agents who knew about the plot.
Mr Munn told BBC News Online that he pieced together the truth about the various attempts through interviews with Hollywood figures - including Orson Welles and Wayne himself - over the past 30 years.
Mr Munn said Stalin was enraged when he heard about Wayne's anti-communist activities in the late 1940s - when Hollywood blacklisted those perceived as Soviet sympathisers.
"Stalin decided Wayne had to die," Mr Munn says.
However, he adds, the FBI got wind of a Soviet plot and was prepared when two hit men called at Wayne's office at Warner Brothers studios in 1951, posing as federal agents.
The book says the would-be killers were captured, and later requested asylum in the US.
It also says the Soviet campaign was cancelled after Stalin's death in 1953, because his successor Nikita Khrushchev was a fan of the film star.
"That was a decision of Stalin during his last five mad years. When Stalin died I rescinded that order," the book quotes Khrushchev as telling Wayne during a private meeting in 1958.
Burbank battle
Stalin, unlike Khrushchev, was no fan of the Duke's
But the book says American communists took up the cudgels against Wayne - who was also known as the Duke.
Mr Munn says that in 1955 a group of communists based in Burbank, near Hollywood, plotted to kill him.
However, he adds, a group stuntmen loyal to the Duke raided the premises of his Burbank enemies and "ran them out of town".
Mr Munn also says Wayne told him in 1974 that he survived another attempt by a sniper during a visit to US troops in Vietnam in 1966.
Wayne died of cancer in 1979.
The book, published in London by Robson Books, covers many other aspects Wayne's life and career - including his meteoric rise, unsuccessful marriages and difficult relationship with his children.
How true. A story contemporaneous with this one proves it: When Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia publicly defied Stalin in 1948, and Stalin vowed "I will move my little finger, and there will be no more Tito!!!"
Sure enough, within the year, Tito had been assassinated by Stalin's agents.
And remember Victor Kravchenko---the wartime defector from the Soviet embassy in DC? Just my "Grut" feeling, but I think that guy had more to fear from the Democrat Administration and the pro-Soviet American press than from Stalin once he defected. It was only his publication of "I Chose Freedom" that saved him from being handed back to Stalin, who did want him dead at that point.
*BLUSH!* Yes, he actually lived until 1980, surviving Stalin by almost 30 years. But believe me, more than anyone except Trotsky, Stalin wanted Tito dead.
My post #3 was a sarcastic "confirmation" of the doubt "Grut" tried to cast on the story in the article. Nice to see FReepers can see through liberal dezinformatsiya.
If JW outlived Stalin, it was because Stalin wasn't interested.Doesn't necessarily mean Stalin didn't want the Duke dead at one time or the other. But, the life of a dictator being what it is, one crisis drives out the other, and unless it had really, really high national priority (like the Trotsky assasination) it would be eventually forgotten. I think John Wayne was a hard enough target that a casual Stalin remark 'I want him dead', which would have been good enough to finish some poor Russian or even American man-in-the-street, would have been insufficient.
I just saw an interview with him a couple of weeks ago, talking about his brother Michael.
There's much more we know about Stalin and his methods and predilections that make this story believable. For now, it suffices to cite the example of Tito as disproving the canard that "if he really wanted to, Stalin always got his man."
Sorry, but I think my needle skipped a groove, here; I do believe 'the Duke' outlived Stalin by a large margin, which indicates either that Wayne (OK, Hargroves) was blessed by fate or that Stalin misfired badly....
You have a scoop.
Meanwhile John Wayne was a great man and Mason.
If Stalin was "helped" to the grave, the "last straw" was probably the "Doctors' Plot" allegations he engineered beginning ca. January 1953, supposedly "unmasking" the plans of some Kremlin doctors (curiously, all of whom were Jewish) to assassinate various Soviet leaders at the behest of western intelligence services. There is evidence that Stalin planned a simultaneous removal of Soviet Jews to the new "Jewish homeland" of "Birobidzhan" in the Soviet Far East, in the remotest place in the world, where they could be murdered out of the sight of prying eyes. (See, "Stalin Against the Jews," by Arkady Vaksberg, published ca. 1994).
BTW, "folk singer," Clinton Administration honoree, and unrepentant communist Pete Seeger wrote a little "folksong" at the time about what a great place this "Birobidzhan" was, bless his little heart...The chorus went: " 'Dzhan! 'Dzhan! Birobidzhan! Gonna pack my stuff, goin' to a new land!" (Can't you just hear him playing that on his banjo...?)
That's why I don't have the least bit of trouble believing Stalin did a crazy-@$$ed thing like ordering John Wayne's death. :)
Yes, sort of like Joe McCarthy did, huh, leftie?
I should have said --- Masonry is not a sign if you are bad or good person. Clinton is a FreeMason is he not? So I have heard are lots of Saudi Shieks.
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