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I just watched the remake of True Grit and I was disapointed to say the least. The kid did well, but the whole movie seemed to be a lukewarmed version of the original. This movie had all the stuff, just like a c on a term paper. Blah. When you watch the original you get involved in the movie. This is a sad satire of a classic.

Fr. Matthew Muñoz Rome, Italy, Oct 1, 2011 / 12:29 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- John Wayne, for many, was a Hollywood legend who symbolized true masculinity and American values. To Fr. Matthew Muñoz, though, he was simply “granddaddy.” “When we were little we’d go to his house and we’d simply hang out with granddaddy and we’d play and we’d have fun: a very different image from what most people have of him,”  Fr. Muñoz told CNA on a recent visit to Rome. Fr. Muñoz was 14 years old when his grandfather died of cancer in 1979. In his lifetime, “The...

Heritage Auctions spokesman Donn Pearlman on Tuesday said the auction will include more than 700 personal and professional items, including an eye patch Wayne wore in his Golden Globe-winning performance in "True Grit."

Ethan Wayne, the youngest son of Hollywood legend John Wayne, hates to have anything in his pockets because as a young boy he couldn't go out of the house with his dad without a stack of business cards that read, "Good Luck, John Wayne" on one side and the Duke's name typed on the other side stuffed in his pockets. "He would always take care of the fans no matter how busy he got," said Wayne, 49, who is named after his father's character in John Ford's influential 1956 western "The Searchers." "If he couldn't sign [an autograph] or talk...

A vacationing U.S. President Barack Obama accused Congress on Saturday of holding back the U.S. economic recovery by blocking "common sense" measures he said would create jobs and help growth. In remarks recorded on Wednesday on his campaign-style bus tour in Illinois and aired during his holiday in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, Obama said the stalled construction, trade and payroll tax bills could give a boost to the economy. "The only thing preventing us from passing these bills is the refusal by some in Congress to put country ahead of party. That's the problem right now. That's what's holding this country...

It is the ultimate fancy dress outfit. The entire costume worn by John Wayne in his most famous western role is being auctioned off by his family and is expected to go for US$164,000 (£100,000).

Michele Bachmann says "John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa" and the media goes nuts. Ohhhhhhhh what an idiot, she confused John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy the serial killer. Ha ha ha. Now comes word that… yes indeed… Clyde Morrison and his blushing bride Molly got married in…. Waterloo, Iowa. And settled there. Later moving to Winterset, Iowa. Where they had their bouncing baby boy ...Who grew up to become -- yes indeed -- John Wayne. Not John Wayne Gacy.

Watch below courtesy of a YouTube account titled, no joke, “BachmannLovesGacy.” The gaffe: She claimed in an interview with Fox News that she shares the spirit of another famous Waterloo, Iowa, resident, John Wayne. But John Wayne never lived in Waterloo; John Wayne Gacy did, which means this is either (a) another sloppy factual error a la her claiming that Lexington and Concord are located in New Hampshire or (b) some sort of Freudian slip that proves she secretly identifies with lunatics or something. (Bachmann loves Gacy!) Her critics will insist they’re sticking to the first narrative but their read...

Many don't realize that John Wayne struggled a bit to get to his famed career as a western legend. In 1926, John Wayne started his journey in the film industry by being an extra, a propman and a stuntman. His first starring role would be in a Fox Film western called "The Big Trail" (1930). He was let go from Fox after starring in three leads.

John Wayne (1907-1979) Today marks the 104th birthday of my favorite movie star (and Catholic convert), John Wayne (1907-1979). Born Marion Michael Morrison in Iowa, he grew up in California and attended the University of Southern California, where he played football. A surfing accident ended his football career and he got into the movie business as a prop boy. From there he found leading roles, mainly in B-Westerns, until his 1939 breakthrough role in Stagecoach. His work with director John Ford resulted in some of the greatest Westerns ever made: Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949),...

Via Wikipedia: Marion Mitchell Morrison (born Marion Robert Morrison; May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer.[1] He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive voice, walk and height. He was also known for his conservative political views and his support, beginning in the 1950s, for anti-communist positions. A Harris Poll, released January 2011, placed Wayne third among America’s favorite film stars,[2] the only deceased star on the list and the only one who has appeared on...

It’s not a national holiday but, for some, it should be. On May 26, 1907 Marion Robert Morrison came into the world in Winterset, Iowa. When he left on June 11, 1979, he was John Wayne, an American icon. continue reading at:http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/36926

I often wonder that if John Wayne were alive today, what would he think/do/say regarding the current events of the world. Not just the current regime in DC and Congress, but Iraq, Afghanistan etc....

“Courage is being scared to death…. but saddling up anyway.”Good stewardship by the United States Government (“We the People”) is failing miserably. Good stewardship is at the heart of Biblical expectation. Therefore, as a Christian Nation enjoying God’s blessings and founded on God given principles, the following topic is not just a necessary secular topic, but a necessary religious topic. Folks may be afraid to talk about and even engage in taking action, but they are even more afraid of the consequences. However, it is time to “saddle up”.America is scared to death at this point in the country’s history....

"In San Antonio, the Alamo is venerated as a sacred shrine. But it does not belong to Texas alone," Wayne told newspaper reporters. "It belongs to people everywhere who value the priceless treasure that has always been bought with blood — human freedom." Pilar Wayne says that was no act. "I feel that he wanted to show what America stood for and the courage and the love of the country," she said. "To him, it was a very important message that he wanted to put out there. Mainly, it was his love of America." "The Alamo," which was the most...

In 1969, John Wayne played Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" -- a grizzled, drunken U.S. Marshal hired by a 14-year-old girl to track down her father's killer. The role ended up winning the aging Western star his first and only Oscar, prompting him to make a rare sequel -- "Rooster Cogburn" -- opposite Katherine Hepburn in 1975. The image of Wayne's craggy, eye-patched visage from "True Grit" has become a cinematic icon. So film mavens everywhere were taken aback when it was announced last year that Joel and Ethan Coen would been making their own version of "True Grit." But...

The Duke at his Best!

I'm looking for the text of "John Dierkes" character "Jocko Robertson" speech in the long version of the 1960 "The Alamo" with John Wayne. His speech is about 140 minutes into the movie. It starts with "I say this: THAT I BELIEVE" and he talks about faith in God and the inability to convince those who do NOT BELIEVE in God.

One of the most flogged excuses by both Palin and her supporters for her resignation as Governor of Alaska was that ethics complaints were "bankrupting" her. But the Independent Council Report issued in conjunction with the decision on her Legal Defense Fund says otherwise. Not only does it show the State of Alaska offered to make payments for her legal costs it shows that even bfore the election the Palin campaign was making alternate plans to not only get the McCain campaign to pay for them but to hit up the Rnc AND set up a legal defense fund. When...

T’is the season when bunches of young people here and there sit in fancy graduation robes and hats and listen to the advice some important person is giving them in a commencement address... he Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke at the Kaiserslautern High School in Germany, a school composed mostly of children of US service members and Foreign Service officers. It is a fascinating speech and I recommend to President Obama to spare a minute to read it. The overwhelming theme of the Obama reign has been the ‘Open Gov: Transparency, Participation, Collaboration’. There is a reason why this...

LLOYD MARCUS: NO HYPHENS IN HIS AMERICA "Lloyd Marcus, (black) UNHYPHENATED American, Tea Party Spokesperson and Troubadour, releases his much anticipated book; Confessions of a Black Conservative: How the Left has shattered the dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Black America." Buy the book at Lloyd's site. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fuzLTrwVbc

"The first thing I'll teach my daughter is the Lord's Prayer"

Not only are there no stand outs as far as actors go, but writers don't seem to be able to come up with an interesting western story line without nudity, extreme violence and horrible language. Why is that? How did Gunsmoke last those many years without nudity? A shy grin, wink and a nod between Matt Dillon and Kitty was sufficient and somehow much more palatable than seeing them rip clothes off and get down to business.

1 The Searchers This John Ford Western chronicles the efforts of a Confederate veteran (Wayne) to track down the daughter of his murdered brother. 2 Rio Bravo The Duke and Dean Martin are the pair of old friends at the heart of this Howard Hawks hit, in which the pair tussles with a local lawbreaker.3 The Quiet Man Wayne shows his softer side with this drama about the tempestuous affair between an Irish-American expat and an Irish woman. 4 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance In this John Ford Western, Wayne stars as a rancher who pairs up with a...

Once upon a time, there was "The Code of the West." [Original here] That was long ago, far away and in another country. Now there is only, "The Code of the Left." I've compared the two here. W - Never order anything weaker than whiskey. L - Never order anything stronger than a decaf double latte made with soy milk. Yes, that drink will shrink your testicles and/or ovaries to the size of peas, but you weren't using them anyway. Make it a double. W - Don't make a threat without expecting dire consequences. L - Threaten everyone and every...

The Freeper Canteen Remembers ~~John Wayne~~May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979 In more than 200 films made over 50 years, John Wayne saddled up to become the greatest figure of one of America's greatest native art forms, the western. The movies he starred in rode the range from out-of-the-money sagebrush quickies to such classics as "Stagecoach" and "Red River." He won an Oscar as best actor for another western, "True Grit," in 1969. Yet some of the best films he made told stories far from the wilds of the West, such as "The Quiet Man" and "The Long...

It has been said that director Howard Hawks made Rio Bravo (1959) as a reaction to two popular westerns which angered him - High Noon (1952) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957). His comment on the former was, "I didn't think a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help, and finally his Quaker wife had to save him." Hawks also considered 3:10 to Yuma, which had outlaw Glenn Ford playing psychological games with lawman Van Heflin, "a lot of nonsense." So Rio Bravo was the director's take on heroism...

No, it’s not any of those celebrities we’re told are stars. DiCaprio and George Clooney didn’t even make the top 10. Neither did Ashton Kutcher, Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Seth Rogen, Matt Damon, Will Farrell, or Tom Cruise. Every year for about 15 years now, Harris Interactive has conducted a nationwide poll and asked a very simple question: “Who is your favorite movie star?” And every year since the taking of the poll one particular individual has placed in the top ten — 13 of those years in the top 3. This year, 2,388 U.S. adults were surveyed and this...

No other star of stage or screen, no cowboy or Western hero can compare to the legend that was John Wayne. He became the very embodiment of American values and patriotic pride. All across the Internet you will see John Wayne web pages, just as this one, done in red, white and blue. Seems appropriate somehow. I have collected some Wavs and MP3s of John Wayne talking about America. They make me feel good. They make me feel proud. So I thought I'd share them with you.

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...