On June 11, 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 were bit parts in which he was credited as Duke Morrison, a childhood nickname derived from the name of his beloved pet dog.
Wayne’s first starring role came in 1930 with The Big Trail, a film directed by Raoul Walsh. It was during this time that Marion Morrison became “John Wayne,” when director Walsh didn’t think Marion was a good name for an actor playing a tough Western hero. Despite the lead actor’s new name, however, the movie flopped. Throughout the 1930s, Wayne made dozens of mediocre westerns. In them, he played various rough-and-tumble characters and occasionally appeared as “Singing Sandy,” a musical cowpoke a la Roy Rogers.
Vaqueros In 1519, shortly after the Spanish arrived in the Americas, they began to build ranches to raise cattle and other livestock. Horses were imported from Spain and put to work on the ranches. Mexico’s native cowboys were called vaqueros, which comes from the Spanish word vaca (cow). Vaqueros were hired by ranchers to tend […]
Classic Westerns have cemented the image of cowboys as white Americans, but the first wave of horse-riding cow wranglers in North America were Indigenous Mexican men.
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In 1939, Wayne finally had his breakthrough when his old friend John Ford cast him as Ringo Kid in the Oscar-winning Stagecoach. Wayne went on to play larger-than-life heroes in dozens of movies and came to symbolize a type of rugged, strong, straight-shooting American man. John Ford directed Wayne in some of his best-known films, including Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).
Off-screen, Wayne came to be known for his conservative political views. He produced, directed and starred in The Alamo (1960) and The Green Berets (1968), both of which reflected his patriotic, conservative leanings. In 1969, he won an Oscar for his role as a drunken, one-eyed federal marshal named Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. Wayne’s last film was The Shootist (1976), in which he played a legendary gunslinger dying of cancer. The role had particular meaning, as the actor was fighting the disease in real life.
Despite having lost a lung to lung cancer in 1964 and being considered cured after five years, Wayne was in good health during the filming. Following The Shootist, he planned to star in a new film with Ron Howard called Beau John, but health problems intervened. In January of 1979, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, which led to his death in June of the same year.
During four decades of acting, Wayne, with his trademark drawl and good looks, appeared in over 250 films. He was married three times and had seven children.
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Zappa met Wayne in an LA restaurant in the early seventies.
Wayne was drunk and he told Zappa he fucked his mother in the desert.
I always thought that was a very endearing story.
Seriously………..Wayne took a lot of heat about his lack of “acting” skills.
I believe his 1956 masterpiece “The searchers” put that to rest.
One of my top ten greatest Westerns.
Cant wait for the kikes in Hollywood to do a remake of one of his movies with a nigger as the Duke.
I liked Hondo. What a beautifully shot movie.
Red River. a western masterpiece.
I love John Wayne movies. Too many to list. My drill sergeant in the army had two John Wayne tattoos “the duke” and a portrait. He was a small skinny staff sergeant with glasses and tough as fuck.
The only time I ever saw my Uncle cry. He was a disabled veteran half paralyzed in an electric wheel chair . He died in 1981. What a waste he’d be disgusted that he fought for this shithole.
My youngest daughter got to meet Jennifer Wayne backstage at a Carrie Underwood concert in Ames, Iowa. She’s Aissa’s daughter. 6ft.tall Viking goddess type. Former pro volleyball player and now a very successful song writer. She recently made the Duke a great grandfather again. She was born years after her grandfather’s passing.
Marion only married spics, so I’m gonna call bullshit on viking phenotype.
” Big talk , don’t make a big man. “
A cool non cowboy movie. Island In The Sky – 1953. A C-47 Plane goes down in the Artic and they must survive.
Pics :
Photos From John Wayne’s Arctic Survival Adventure – ISLAND IN THE SKY 1953 – YouTube