Posted on 07/08/2007 9:14:46 PM PDT by jazusamo
Monday, July 9, 2007
If he were alive today, John Wayne would have just celebrated his hundredth birthday. Actually, if he hadn’t made the worst movie of his career, “The Conqueror,” he might well have made it to the century mark. In that movie, Wayne appeared as Genghis Khan, joining the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Paul Muni, Mickey Rooney, Louise Rainer, Agnes Moorehead, Walter Huston and Alec Guinness, on the list of movie greats who should have had second thoughts before agreeing to portray Asians.
In case you’re wondering how that dreadful 1956 movie shortened the Duke’s life, it was shot downwind from where our government had been conducting A-bomb tests. Among the movie’s cast and crew, it’s believed that 91 people, including Wayne, director Dick Powell, and co-stars Susan Hayward and Pedro Armendariz, developed radiation-induced cancer.
Although John Wayne was nominated for an Oscar for “Sands of Iwo Jima” and took one home for “True Grit,” his acting ability was generally dismissed by the hoity toity critics. Typically, they complained that he was merely playing himself. Having been a movie critic in those days, it used to drive me nuts when my colleagues made such inane comments. I would point out that Wayne had been a college graduate back in the days when that actually meant something. His real name was Marion Morrison, his father had been a pharmacist, and, for the better part of 40 years, Wayne had been an actor. In other words, he had never been a cowboy, a cop, a Marine sergeant, a sea captain, a professional boxer or an airline pilot -- all of them roles which he had convincingly portrayed on screen. He never once played himself -- a hugely successful movie star.
When Wayne wasn’t being excoriated by the critics, he was being attacked by liberal airheads. Because the Duke was a plain-spoken patriot, the left-wing press labeled him a fascist, a warmonger and a bigot. Some bigot -- he had married three Hispanic women and had seven half-Hispanic children!
They called him a know-nothing ignoramus in spite of the fact that he ran his own motion picture company, was extremely well-read, and played a first-rate game of chess. On top of all that, he was legendary for being loyal to his fellow actors and the crews with whom he worked, and, so far as I know, he never once showed up on a set unprepared or threw a temper tantrum to prove how important he was. It’s also worth noting that he wasn’t called the Duke because he regarded himself as royalty, but because, as a kid, he’d had a dog named Duke, and Wayne had wound up with it as a nickname.
Although I never met the man, I find myself missing him more and more as time goes by. Sometimes I find myself missing him the most when I’m watching a modern western, and it occurs to me that the leading man would be more at home in a tutu than in chaps.
Sometimes, though, all it takes is a news item to get me wishing that Wayne was still in his prime, still making movies, and that somewhere down the line I’d get to see the big lug taking certain matters into his own capable hands.
Recently, the item that grabbed my attention was a public opinion poll that reported that 25% of young American Muslims see nothing wrong with suicide bombers in “certain circumstances.” Presumably, those would be circumstances in which only Christians and Jews were the victims. This is the same crowd that’s always complaining that they’re the victims of racial profiling.
So, do you really blame me for wishing that I could look forward to going to the local Bijou in the near future and see the Duke mopping up a bunch of these whiny punks in a movie that might be called, “Allah, Be Damned”?
W. Burt Prelutsky is an accomplished, well-rounded writer and author of Conservatives Are from Mars (Liberals Are from San Francisco): 101 Reasons I'm Happy I Left the Left.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I agree completely, he deserved an Oscar for his performance and it was a great cast.
BTTT!
Well, how ‘bout puttin somma yer danged money on Duncan Hunter? He’s about as close as yer gonna git to the mighty John Wayne, without fallin for another shallow slick celebrity!!! (please excuse the interruption. we now return you to your regularly scheduled program of whistful stargazing...)
I’m backing a Hunter/Thompson ticket. :-)
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Clint Eastwood was supposed to be the heir to Wayne, heck, that is what I heard anyway. Eastwood’s films seemed to include an aspect of self-worship or self-concern that I never found in Wayne. Which is why,to me, he is immensely more human and likeable than Eastwood.
I only watch Westerns. I have no formal training in film critique. I just watched the characters and compared.
Guess I won’t make everybody’s day.
I love “The Searchers” but “True Grit” remains my favorite! I, too, miss John Wayne...and men like him.
Yes, I like Eastwood but IMO he can’t hold a candle to John Wayne in Westerns.
John Wayne was also ranked #11 in the 100 Most Influential People in the History of the Movies, according to the authors of the Film 100 Web site. Preceded only by WK Laurie Dickson, Edwin S. Porter, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney, D.W. Griffith, Will Hays and Thomas Edison. Wow!
Great ticket call!!! God will bless you I hope!!!
They were both really good movies and the difference in the characters he played in them blows the myth by some that he just played himself.
(FWIW : USO Show in 1967 I had duty,,,coverin' The Duke's Back,,,Me and the NCOIC "heard" the roar of the crowd from a few miles away,,,It made me very proud...WE GOT THE REAL DEAL "ON THE LINE NOW!!"... 
I grew up watching John Wayne movies and still watch his reruns. He’s the only actor I consistently watch reruns of, he was one of a kind.
That’s a great caption and I can hear him saying it.
Thanks for that link! What makes that so good is he meant it.
There are many great Wayne movies to choose from - but my all time favorite is “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” - starting with the title and throughout the movie it is a suberb distillation of irony.
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