Actors - John Wayne

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	Actors - John Wayne

John Wayne (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), popularly known as "The Duke," was an American film actor whose career began in silent movies in the 1920s. He was a major star from the 1940s to the 1970s. He is most famous for his Westerns, but he also made films of various other kinds. He epitomised a certain kind of rugged individualistic masculinity, and has become an enduring icon.

Life and career

John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa in 1907, but the name became Marion Mitchell Morrison when his parents decided to name their next son Robert; however in later life he often stated that his middle name was Michael. His family was Presbyterian; father Clyde Leonard Morrison was of Scottish descent and the son of an American Civil War veteran, while mother Mary Alberta Brown was of Irish descent. Wayne's family moved to Glendale, California in 1911; it was neighbors in Glendale who started calling him "Big Duke," because he never went anywhere without his Airedale Terrier dog, who was Little Duke. He preferred "Duke" to "Marion," and the name stuck for the rest of his life.

Duke Morrison's early life was marked by poverty; his father was a man who did not manage money well. Duke was a good, and popular, student. Tall from an early age, he was a star football player for Glendale High School and was recruited by the University of Southern California.

After nearly gaining admission to the U.S. Naval Academy, he attended the University of Southern California, where he was a member of the Trojan Knights and joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity. Wayne also played on the USC football team under legendary coach Howard Jones. An injury while supposedly swimming at the beach curtailed his athletic career, however; Wayne would later note that he was too terrified of Jones' reaction to reveal the actual cause of his injury. He lost his athletic scholarship and with no funds was unable to continue at USC.

While at the university, Wayne began working around the local film studios. Western star Tom Mix got him a summer job in the prop department in exchange for football tickets, and Wayne soon moved on to bit parts, establishing a long friendship with director John Ford. After two years working as a prop man at the William Fox Studios for $35 a week, his first starring role was in the 1930 movie The Big Trail
; it was the director of that movie, Raoul Walsh, who gave him the stage name "John Wayne," after Revolutionary War general "Mad Anthony" Wayne. His pay was raised to $75 a week. He was tutored by the studio's stuntmen in riding and other western skills.

The Big Trail, the first 'western' epic sound motion picture, did not make Wayne a major star. Wayne would have to wait 9 more years, until his performance in the 1939 film Stagecoach achieved that. In between, he kept busy as a 'star' of the B-level westerns, most notably at Monogram Pictures as part of the trio "The Three Mesquiteers" (along with co-stars Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune).

Although he appeared in many war films and was frequently eulogized as an "American hero," unlike other prominent Hollywood actors (Clark Gable, James Stewart and Henry Fonda, to name a few), Wayne refused to fight in the Second World War, a fact that reportedly embarrassed him. His friend Bob Hope speculated that Wayne did more for the WWII war effort as an actor than he ever could on the battlefield. Between 1940, when the military draft was reinstated, and the end of World War II in 1945, he remained in Hollywood and made 21 movies. (Among them was Cecil B. DeMille's Reap the Wild Wind
(1942), in which he portrayed one of the few less-than-honorable characters in his career.) He was of draft age (34) at the time of Pearl Harbor in 1941, but asked for and received a deferral for "family dependency", a classification of 3-A. This was later changed to a deferment in the "national interest", 2-A. Years later, he outspokenly criticized those who refused to fight in Vietnam.

His friendship with Ford led them to work together on films which featured some of Wayne's most iconic roles. Beginning with three minor parts in 1928, Wayne would appear in over twenty of Ford's films in the next 35 years, including Stagecoach (1939), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
(1949), The Quiet Man
(1952), The Searchers (1956), The Wings of Eagles
(1957) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
(1962).

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Actors - John Wayne

Life and career

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