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WHERE IS JOHN WAYNE’S AMERICA? by Don Bendell I grew up in Ohio watching and idolizing John Wayne and all the cowboy hero figures and dreamed of becoming an American cowboy. When I became an adult and a Green Beret serving in the Vietnam War, who was the one man who consistently and staunchly went against the grain and stood up for all my fellow vets and me in those days? Oddly enough, it was my old hero John Wayne who played a Green Beret in the movie of the same name. Have we actually progressed since those thrilling days...

John Wayne explains the damaging use of the hyphen in our American name.

ONE OF THE great joys of the movies is their ability to convince us that we know the people on screen. Even the varied performances of the most versatile stars are often not strong enough to prevail against the overarching image we’ve formed of them. When Joan Didion met John Wayne on the set of the 1965 The Sons of Katie Elder, she wrote of having the sense that his face was more familiar to her than her husband’s. And yet Wayne, whose centenary occurred this past spring, remains in some ways the most undefined of iconic movie stars. When...

Mock election pronounced a success Published: March 13, 2008 By DAVID BATES Of the News-Register John Wayne, the iconic figure of the American movie western, was tapped by voters Tuesday as Yamhill County's next entertainment director - even though he died in 1979. He edged Paul Newman, who is still alive but whose liberal politics no doubt cost him in conservative Yamhill County. Voters faced only one serious question, and that one was strictly advisory: Should the county commissioners seek approval of a home-rule charter? Voters have repeatedly rejected that structure for county government over the years, but they went...

He was arguably the greatest hero in the history of American cinema, a leader of men who beat the bad guys and symbolised patriotic values. But here in the birthplace of John Wayne, in the snowy wilds of an Iowa winter, the US is picking another leader - a president to command the respect of modern America and deal with the world's villains, who have swapped Stetsons and Colt 45s for suicide bomb belts. (snip) The challenge Mrs Clinton faces is clear in Winterset, where Wayne was born in 1907 at the heart of Madison County, whose covered bridges gave...

I have been following the Republican candidates for President. I am not impressed, overall. May people ahve their favorites, of course, but there is no passion for any of them. There is always "He is great!....but". Usually in the social area. Today my favorite, Fred Thompson ducked the Washington Press corps. I thought "Big deal. He wasn't going to get a fair shake from these folks." Then I got to thinking (always dangerous) WWRD(What Would Ronnie Do?). He would take the bull by the horns and gave a question and answer session that would have changed minds an made front...

Clint Eastwood once said, "I feel very close to the western. There are not too many American art forms that are original. Most are derived from European art forms. Other than the western and jazz or blues, that's all that's really original." People these days don’t really care for westerns anymore, unless Hang ‘Em High is on AMC or something. No one has made a decent attempt at a true western in a number of years. Sure, perhaps we get a Kevin Costner film every few years that takes place in the old west, but it’s not a western. Those...

American Culture on the 4th of July By John E. Carey Peace and Freedom July 4, 2007I am never sure whether it is our American culture that shapes our TV, movies and other media or whether our media shapes our thinking to such an extent that it changes culture.Probably a little bit of both.What is culture? One very good online dictionary calls it “The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. These patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population.”On July 4,...

And why not? John Wayne was born Marion Morrison 100 years ago last month in the dreaded Midwest, before his family moved to a California that had yet to see the "golden days" of left-wing infiltration. He played football at USC before a surfing injury caused him to lose his scholarship and he soon found work as a Hollywood stuntman before stardom found him. He was incredibly handsome in youth and despite his large and rangy frame, had a lithesome quality to his bearing, even late in life. It is a cliche used in reference to many actors that women...

1979 : John Wayne dies On this day in 1979, John Wayne, an iconic American film actor famous for starring in countless westerns, dies at age 72 after battling cancer for more than a decade. The actor was born Marion Morrison on May 26, 1907, in Winterset, Iowa, and moved as a child to Glendale, California. A football star at Glendale High School, he attended the University of Southern California on a scholarship but dropped out after two years. After finding work as a movie studio laborer, Wayne befriended director John Ford, then a rising talent. His first acting jobs...

this past Memorial Day weekend, was loaded with John Wayne movies, Wayne being the symbol of American stand-up-and-fight courage, especially in the most bloody and noble of U.S. military endeavors. But when you tell people, especially lovers of John Wayne and all he ostensibly stood for and still stands for, that Wayne assiduously avoided military service during World War II, well, they either don't believe it or don't take it well. At the outbreak of WW II, Wayne was 34, the father of four and his movie career was on the grow. He didn't have to enlist. And he didn't....

If the Duke had just taken better care of himself, like maybe not smoking four packs of cigarettes a day for decades, he would turn 100 on Saturday. For what he did both to entertain and to inspire us in his long movie career, he has certainly earned peaceful rest for Eternity. But we could sure use the old cowpoke today. Marion Robert Morrison, who would later adopt the screen name John Wayne, entered this world at Winterset, Iowa, on May 26, 1907. Who could have guessed that this child of the Midwest would become the nation's most popular actor,...

If there's one thing I've learned from asking readers to send in stories about John Wayne, it's this: people really loved the guy. Even if they didn't know him personally, many speak of brief encounters with his gentle ways and humorous personality as if they're talking about somebody they've known for years. The Duke turns 100 years old Saturday, so we thought we'd celebrate with our very own birthday card.

Growing up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood carved out of desert east of here, my buddy and I would break out soldier fatigues his father wore during the Korean War. Armed with stick rifles or toy guns, we’d load our pockets with dirt-clod grenades, roll around in the sand dunes poking up in the nearby wash, and, if hit by “enemy fire,” lie face up and motionless under the blazing sun . . . until one of our moms called us in for lunch. It wasn’t until several years later that I realized violent images of the Vietnam War from motion...

Remarkable in the rhetoric of all the major leadership voices on the Iraq issue is the repeatability; you can trust that again and again cookie-cutter responses of wrongness will be popped out, the same errors re-treaded with apparently no imagination whatsoever. It is also appalling that nobody seems to know how to crush the insurgency in Iraq decisively. Forgive me for saying the very, very obvious, but here's how. First, the No. 1 rule in Islamist-Arab politics is … kill the head guy. He who kills the head guy becomes the new head guy. Brutal, unpleasant, but true. So? The...

I am shocked that so many are turning on Hastert so quickly. Is it due to a sense of anger that much of the conservative agenda has not come to pass? Or is it a true sense that he is lying to everyone about how much he knew?

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez has taken his anti-imperialist rhetoric to New York's Harlem overnight and ridiculed US President George W. Bush as a puffed-up John Wayne wannabe. And a supportive crowd loved it. Mr Chavez stunned delegates at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday by calling Mr Bush "the devil himself" and saying he left the smell of sulfur hanging in the chamber from his appearance the previous day. He received an ovation at the United Nations, but nothing like the raucous and upbeat receptions later Wednesday at a free university and again overnight at a Baptist church in the...

After almost every column or blogpost I've written about the various idiosyncracies of women, some woman writes to complain that I never criticize men. Of course, there's not exactly a shortage of male-bashing in the mainstream media today, to say nothing of chick rags like Cosmopolitan, Ms., Self and other variants on the Me, Myself and I theme so popular with women. And while there is something about the modern American man that is absolutely worthy of criticism, I don't think it's exactly what these feminists had in mind. For you see, the main problem with men today is that...

John Wayne is possibly the greatest Western cowboy of all time. He was a one-man show who had the fastest guns in the West and always found his enemy and brought him to justice. Cowboys go through life on their own, and they always get the bad guys, whether it's "dead or alive." It should come as no surprise, therefore, that a recent Times article (July 9) called for the "end of cowboy diplomacy"-our nation's policy of going it alone when it comes to world affairs. The Wild West had no real laws and was much like our current international...

The video link below connects to a short video narrated by John Wayne, set to his recording of "Why I Love America" recording. http://sagebrushpatriot.com/america.htm (a fast internet connection is recommended - if you're using dial-up, this may not load properly)

John Wayne, an actor who came to epitomize the American West, is born in Winterset, Iowa. Born Marion Michael Morrison, Wayne's family moved to Glendale, California, when he was six years old. As a teen, he rose at four in the morning to deliver newspapers, and after school he played football and made deliveries for local stores. When he graduated from high school, he hoped to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. However, after the school rejected him, he accepted a full scholarship to play football at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. In the summer of 1926, Wayne's...

Biography: We called him Duke, and he was every bit the giant off screen he was on. Everything about him - his stature, his style, his convictions-conveyed enduring strength, and no one who observed, his struggle in those final days could doubt that strength was real. Yet there was more. He was born Marion Michael Morrison in Winterset, Iowa. When Marion was six, the family moved to California. There he picked up the nickname Duke-after his Airedale. He rose at 4 a.m. to deliver newspapers, and after school and football practice he made deliveries for local stores. He was an...

With a grand jury now expected to convene Monday to weigh indictments of two or three of the Duke lacrosse players tied to allegations of raping an exotic dancer, defense lawyers say they fear their clients are being targeted in a setup or sting operation possibly perpetrated by law enforcement. The lawyers have advised the players not to trust or respond to any e-mails sent to each other, one attorney tells Time. The explosive allegations stem from an e-mail message sent in the last few days to several players from the e-mail address of another player, stating he was going...

The latest poll is not good for the Democrats. I am not talking here of the one showing George Bush's approval rating inching up. I'm talking about the recently released Harris Poll showing John Wayne, one of the most popular movie stars of 2005. The one thing he and the Democratic Party have in common is that they are both dead. Wayne was the quintessential anti-Democrat. Everything he stood for - from support for the Vietnam War to antipathy to the '60s and '70s counterculture - was in consonance with GOP positions. More important, though, his iconic man-on-horseback image has...

Douglas Healey for The New York TimesUnless a rescue plan is worked out or a new buyer comes forward, the gun-manufacturing plant in New Haven, with about 200 employees, will close on March 31. Come spring, the Winchester rifle, immortalized as the gun that won the West and rode into the sunset with John Wayne, will be made in Portugal and Japan. The U.S. Repeating Arms Company, which has manufactured rifles and shotguns in New Haven since 1866, is set to shut its doors on March 31. About 200 people will lose their jobs, many having worked for decades...

"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fameWith conquering lims astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch,whose flameIs the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome;Her mild eyes command the air-brigded harbor that twin cities frame,"Keep,ancient lands,your storied pom!"cries she with silent lips."Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breath free,The wrechted refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" (click to listen)

Be sure that your sound is turned up for this.

WAR ON TERROR Bush urged: 'Never apologize' to Muslims Administration officials reportedly inspired by classic John Wayne movie Posted: June 7, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern  © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Some members of the Bush administration have taken a cue from a classic John Wayne Western and are advising their boss to take the film's advice – "Never apologize" – when dealing with Muslims, reports geopolitical analysts Jack Wheeler. In a column on his intelligence website, To the Point, Wheeler explains Wayne's "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," made in 1948, though lesser known than many of the star's films, includes what's been called...

The consensus of film critics is that three of the four best Western movies ever made were those starring John Wayne: Stagecoach (1939), Red River (1948), and The Searchers (1956). (The fourth is Gary Cooper’s 1952 High Noon.) Many critics consider The Searchers to be one of the greatest movies, period, and has been the subject of numerous academic seminars. It is a lesser known John Wayne Western, however, that contains an important lesson for our relations with the Moslem world. Directed by John Ford, made in 1948, entitled She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, it stars Wayne as Capt. Nathan...

This is an early HAPPY GREETING to the DUKE! A real alll American Hero!

"True Grit",one of John Wayne's best movies is on American Movie Classics channel tonight at 8 PM EDT. Wayne enters his lion-in-winter phase, subverting his screen image as western hero to provide a darker, richer portrayal of the real true grit called for on the frontier. Overweight, drunken and one-eyed, Wayne, as marshal Rooster Cogburn, would seem an unpromising candidate to track a murderous cowboy into Indian Territory. But he's Darby's choice to find the man who killed her father. They're joined by bounty hunter Campbell (in his first screen role) as they follow Corey and Duvall's gang to their...

Get back, pilgrim. Legendary movie cowboy John Wayne has outshot Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" and has cruised by Tom Cruise. The late actor has been named as the Top Money-Maker of All Time in the Quigley Publishing Company annual star poll. ...In order to compare The Duke's box office sales to that earned by contemporary stars, a weighted score was given to the star's ranking for each year

Every year at this time The Harris Poll asks a nationwide cross-section of adults who their favorite movie star is. This year Tom Hanks recaptures the top spot, moving up three places from #4 last year. Mel Gibson, who had taken over first place last year, drops slightly to #2 this year. Rounding out the top four most popular stars are Julia Roberts at #3 and Johnny Depp at #4. These are the results of a nationwide poll of 1,015 U.S. adults surveyed online by Harris Interactive(R) between December 8 and 15, 2004. The "top ten" list is remarkably stable...

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/1/4/113514.shtml

UPDATE POST ELECTION Cowboys still depend on their neighbors for help. They expect their neighbors to call on them in times of need. This is called "neighboring" a practice that has endured since the days of the pioneers. In Washington, DC this is called reaching across the aisle. It is time for all Americans to come together and work on the problems we all face. A COWBOY'S IN THE WHITE HOUSE. MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN COWBOYS. It used to tick me off when the Muslim detractors in the Middle East, or the socialist detractors in Europe, Hollywood and others...

WRITTEN BY LT.COLONEL CHARLES WADE Wednesday, October 13, 2004 Even before the primary elections, President Bush’s military service was a political issue as was Senator Kerry’s military service which he touted and others questioned. Reporters continue to seek comment from candidates, political operatives, and pundits. It seems that everyone is an expert, and everyone has an answer. Some of the more interesting responses have come from Republican senators who typically begin by asserting that they honor Senator Kerry’s Viet Nam service, but… Honor: What is that all about? What virtues are honorable? More important, what virtues are both militarily and...

John Wayne's contributions to film will be honored during the unveiling of a commemorative stamp at his Iowa birthplace. Wayne's daughter, Melinda Wayne-Munoz, will be on hand for Saturday's U.S. Postal Service ceremony. The John Wayne stamp is the 10th entry in the "Legends of Hollywood" stamp series.

Check out the URL.

Appeasement groups are fighting mad: To honor the troops, the Minnesota Twins are giving G.I. Joe action figures to 5,000 children. The baseball team plans to present Duke, "the calm and determined battlefield commander of the G.I. Joe team," at the game Monday night, the day after Independence Day, in what the Associated Press today called "the first patriotic giveaway in the major leagues this season." Uh oh. If something is branded as patriotic, you know the whining will begin. "It's not a credible way to honor those who've suffered the inhumanity of war," moaned Phil Steger, executive director of...

FBI Questions Man Caught With Gun, Knife At Airport Man Allegedly Tried To Board DC Flight With Weapons POSTED: 11:27 pm PDT June 24, 2004 UPDATED: 11:40 pm PDT June 24, 2004 COSTA MESA, Calif. -- Late Thursday, the FBI was questioning a 65-year-old man of Middle Eastern descent who was arrested at John Wayne Airport Thursday for allegedly attempting to bring a loaded handgun and a knife onto a United Airlines flight to Washington, D.C., authorities said. At about 1 p.m., airport police notified the Orange County sheriff's terrorism joint task force that "a routine check of luggage through...

Looks like John Wayne has got more staying power than The O.C.'s fictional crew of tawny teens. Two days after an Orange County supervisor made the ill-advised suggestion that John Wayne Airport be renamed in tribute to Fox's prime-time teen soap, the idea has been kicked to the curb. "Let's just say it was a trial balloon. It crashed and burned," Supervisor Chris Norby told the Los Angeles Times of his proposal to dub the airport "The O.C. Airport, John Wayne Field." "With all the priorities we have, it is not going to be one of ours." (It sounds like...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Suddenly, John Wayne (news) isn't trendy anymore. A politician in Southern California's Orange County has suggested that the community's John Wayne Airport might be a more appealing destination for travelers and a better emblem of the region if it had a name that traded on a popular TV show: "The O.C. Airport." "The O.C.," a drama about the lives and loves of some oversexed teenagers in the affluent, conservative region south of Los Angeles, became a breakout hit for broadcaster Fox this season. Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby raised the idea before his colleagues of changing...

Unforgettable John Wayne biography by Ronald Reagan courtesy of Readers Digest - October 1979 We called him DUKE, and he was every bit the giant off screen he was on. Everything about him-his stature, his style, his convictions-conveyed enduring strength, and no one who observed his struggle in those final days could doubt that strength was real. Yet there was more. To my wife, Nancy, "Duke Wayne was the most gentle, tender person I ever knew." In 1960, as president of the Screen Actors' Guild, I was deeply embroiled in a bitter labor dispute between the Guild and the motion...

In his freshman and sophomore years at the University of Southern California, John Wayne (yes, that John Wayne) planned to be a lawyer. I'll wait here while you think about that one. Yes, it is chilling to think how close we came to losing the most popular actor in the history of cinema, and the man who almost single-handedly defined America during the grandest and gaudiest chapters of our history. Imagine, if you can, Sergeant John M. Stryker (Sands of Iwo Jima) reviewing ground leases. Try to picture Captain Nathan Brittles (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon) advising some Southern California...

I was a little discouraged last week when I urged a boycott of Disney's new revisionist, politically correct picture "The Alamo." I was concerned because few seemed to pick up the cry. I was beginning to think Americans just didn't care about heroism any more. I was beginning to think Americans had been brainwashed to believe their forebears were all just a bunch of crooks, cheats and criminals as Hollywood and too many of our government schools would like them to believe. I was beginning to think Americans would believe anything the entertainment cartel shoved down their throats. But then...

In his freshman and sophomore years at the University of Southern California, John Wayne (yes, that John Wayne) planned to be a lawyer. I'll wait here while you think about that one. Yes, it is chilling to think how close we came to losing the most popular actor in the history of cinema, and the man who almost single-handedly defined America during the grandest and gaudiest chapters of our history. Imagine, if you can, Sergeant John M. Stryker (Sands of Iwo Jima) reviewing ground leases. Try to picture Captain Nathan Brittles (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon) advising some Southern California...

"The Alamo": Defining Heroism Down Rather than depict them as alabaster saints, we wanted to show them as complete human beings. --Stephen Hardin, historical advisor, “The Alamo” In 1960, American icon John Wayne starred as Davy Crockett in “The Alamo”, a heroic, if sanitized portrayal of the infamous siege where some 200 Americans held off Mexican General Santa Anna’s army of several thousand for 13 days before being wiped out to a man. Nearly 45 years later, a new unwashed “Alamo” is upon us, brought to us by Disney, and starring American anti-hero Billy Bob Thornton as the larger-than-life frontiersman....

Remember the real Alamo Posted: April 8, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com "Remember the Alamo," was an American battle cry for generations. Now Disney is trying to get Americans to forget the real history of heroic fight. Disney's remake of "The Alamo" will be released tomorrow in theaters nationwide. Judging from a review of the script, the film will be a disgraceful deconstruction of Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, Jim Bowie and other American heroes who "died with their boots on." "The movie reads more like a Disney fairy tale and promotes a politically correct revisionist agenda aimed at...

Brackettville, TX…….Mark your calendar for April 3, 2004, make a reservation at Fort Clark Springs or Del Rio so you can be at the showing of John Wayne’s, “The Alamo” at the outdoor movie set where it was filmed! Ron (Opie Taylor) Howard might have produced his slick, new, and more historically accurate version but what an opportunity to experience the first ever showing of John Wayne's epic at Alamo Village. This memorey of John Wayne sent in by William Abbott of San Antonio. “The Alamo” premiered at the Woodlawn Theater in 1960. "The Frontier Club is or was upstairs...

Carter, a DRT member, ran the shrine's $5.2-million budget and 86 employees. The daughters aren't behaving very sisterly. Custodian of the Alamo for 99 years, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas is a group of women whose politics can be as contentious as the 1836 battle that led to the fall of the Shrine of Texas Liberty. Last week, it unceremoniously fired one of its most active and visible volunteers. Kathleen Carter, the DRT's face at the Alamo since May 2001, was relieved of her position as chairwoman of the Alamo Committee on Friday after a meeting of the...