The Curious Legend of John Wayne

[WI_DEM]

Biographer Garry Wills tells the story in his book "John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity":


There was tremendous pressure, in public and in private, for Wayne to join them . But if he did, his opportunity might slip away forever...Wayne was prepared to do anything to avoid such a fate. He wrote tortuous excuses to John Ford, who had rushed into military service. He had his studio contrive ever-new exemptions for him... As he told the daughter of his friend and fellow actor, Paul Fix: "I better go do some touring --I feel the draft breathing down my neck."...



Wayne's fans have tried to make excuses for his absenteeism from the war. They even bring up the mythical "football injury" that supposedly cost him a scholarship 14 years before the war...They point out that he was 34 in 1941, still married to his first wife, with whom he had four small children -- enough to get an exemption in the war's early years. But other stars were as old or older, and some of them had children. Clark Gable was 41 when he entered the service, Tyrone Power 40, Henry Fonda and Robert Montgomery 37, Jimmy Stewart 33, Ronald Reagan 32...



excuses were varied and contradictory. He wrote to Ford that he was trying to fill out the proper forms to enter the military, but he had no typewriter on location; that he left forms with Ward Bond, who couldn't fill them out; or that his wife, from whom he was separated, would not let him get essential documents he had left at home. In short, the dog ate his homework.



To others he claimed that Herb Yates, the head of Republic, threatened that the studio would "sue you for every penny you hope to make in the future" if he walked away from his contract. But no studio took action against the actors, directors, and cameramen, all under contract, who went to war...



In later years, Wayne had a new excuse. He told Ford's grandson, Dan, that he would have been only a private in the military (an absurd supposition), so he could have more influence through the war films he did as a star...But Wayne's identification with World War II came mainly from movies made after the war...Wayne was in none of these films that made a difference to the war effort...He was making it clear that if single-minded careerism would get him there, he was bound to make it. This cost him the chance to serve his country at its time of greatest unity against worldwide foes. Some in Hollywood never forgave Wayne for that. Part of John Ford never forgave him...This is a man who called on other generations to sacrifice their lives, and called them 'soft' if they refused...



Though Wayne's personal character came to approximate the roles he played on-screen, they could never merge in this area. There was nothing in his actual life to resemble the blank bullets he shot at fellow actors in feigned combat. He would forever be the warless "war hero."



Wills also tells of the time that John Ford's wife, Mary, wrote of Wayne to her husband: "It’s a damn shame that with a war going on he has to think about his lousy stinking tail."

Historian William Manchester, in a 1987 article in The New York Times Magazine, recalled an encounter with Duke during World War II:

After my evacuation from Okinawa, I had the enormous pleasure of seeing Wayne humiliated in person at Aiea Heights Naval Hospital in Hawaii. Only the most gravely wounded, the litter cases, were sent there.... Each evening Navy corpsmen would carry litters down to the hospital theater so the men could watch a movie. One night they had a surprise for us. Before the film the curtains parted and out stepped John Wayne, wearing a cowboy outfit...He grinned his aw-shucks grin, passed a hand over his face and said, ‘Hi ya, guys!' He was greeted by a stony silence. Then somebody booed. Suddenly everyone was booing. This man was a symbol of the fake machismo we had come to hate, and we weren't going to listen to him. He tried and tried to make himself heard, but we drowned him out, and eventually he quit and left.

http://rockfordrascal.blogspot.com/2007/05/curious-legend-of-john-wayne.html

[Captain Hilts]

1. I've always loved Manchester's story of the booing. Here's a photo of the RealJohnWayne

No contest between the real and the fake:

[predfan]

7. I met Ted Williams in the early '80s at Winter Haven during spring training.

Talk about bigger than life. He was in his 60's I suppose, and a big robust man. I was so glad my kids were there, and we got their picture with him, along with autographs.
One of my life's highlights.

[Captain Hilts]

19. Awesome!

[theHandpuppet]

15. The author of the article made some great points about social conservatism

(Excerpt)
I have a theory: Social conservatives, more than liberals, tend to embrace myths and make-believe. They distrust realities that don't jibe with their fairy tales. They're more inclined to dismiss scientific evidence of evolution and global-warming. They're more inclined to see the world in simple terms of good and bad -- with no ambiguities -- just like in John Wayne's movies.

<snipping>
Social conservatives generally see the American flag as more sacred than the U.S. Constitution. That's because the flag is about emotion, while the Constitution is about complicated concepts that require courts to intepret. We get no freedoms from the flag, but we are supposed to treat it with almost religious reverence. We get our American system -- freedoms and all -- from the Constitution, but nobody's going to get upset if I carelessly throw a copy of it in the garbage.

In that same sense, the popular image of John Wayne is about emotion rather than complicated concepts. He seemed manly because he wasn't very complicated, at least in his roles on the screen. In his movies, he didn't play lawyers or judges or politicians or professors. Rather, he played cowboys and marshals and soldiers and other kinds of men who took no guff from anybody and didn't have to study legalistic footnotes to decide what was right or wrong....

[hedgehog]

21. Could you tell us more about the photo? I'm assuming that's

a picture of someone other than the actor John Wayne.

[predfan]

22. It's Ted Williams. Served in 2 wars, gave up, how many seasons, Capt.,

and still finished his baseball career as one of the greatest players, and probably the BEST pure hitter, of all time. Fascinating character and career.

[Captain Hilts]

24. It's Ted Williams when he was flying fighters in the Korean War. He went to Korea

VERY reluctantly. He lost nearly 4 prime years of his career to the military.

Although a political conservative, he went to Korea VERY reluctantly because if it wasn't important enough for everyone to go, he didn't think he should have had to go. He felt the same way about Vietnam.

He flew with John Glenn in Korea and said the Marines were the best team he was ever on.

[hedgehog]

28. Thanks!

[Captain Hilts]

29. You're welcome, 'Hog!

[predfan]

2. Well, Pilgrim. you're a cruisin' for a bruisin' if you're a'gonna start in on

The Quiet Man.

[Captain Hilts]

5. Dog, I hate that movie. But he and O'Hara are very good together.

She must be the physically biggest woman in film at that point. It gives them visual balance.

[Annces]

3. When do actors match with real life

They are good at make believe for the most part. I saw him recently a little in some movies. He definitely fulfills the role of the strong man in charge.

[Captain Hilts]

4. I LOVE "They Were Expendable." You'd never know Montgomery was a true war hero of the two. nt

[pscot]

6. And to think that thousands of Vietnam vets

are still sore at Jane Fonda.

[Echo In Light]

9. !

[LeftinOH]

8. Not really a cowboy, never in the military; "John Wayne" wasn't even his real name

In other words, the ideal Republican. For those looking for real Hollywood heroes (and better actors, consider:

Brigadier General James Stewart (his real name, also)


Humphrey Bogart; US navy, WWI (also his real name)


Spencer Tracy; US Navy, WWI (also his real name)

[hootinholler]

16. What no Audie Murphy? n/t

[Captain Hilts]

20. Thanks to the shout out to Tracy! Yet he got hassled for being a draft dodger in WWII. nt

[pscot]

27. Eddie Albert

He won a bronze star for valor for rescuing 90 marines under heavy machinegun fire: Tarawa, 1943.

[zonkers]

30. Always dug Eddie Albert ever since I was a little kid. Green Acres was awesome.

[Frank Cannon]

33. He lost much of his hearing in that operation

And did you know that Earth Day is celebrated on his birthday for a reason? Of course, you did.

A true American hero in many ways, Mr. Eddie Albert.

[Bluenorthwest]

36. Eddie Albert was a great man

as was his son, Edward Jr, a fine actor and activist, in the tradition of his father and his mother Maria. Eddie Sr was an anti-hunger activist, organic gardening proponent and many other fine things.
Eddie live to be 99, Edward died the year after his father passed away.
Good Democrats. Good people.

[Catherine Vincent]

41. Thanks for that info

I didn't know that about Mr. Albert. I do know a little about his son though. He took care of his father years before he died. Then the next year he died of lung cancer I believe. So sad. His son was one of the stars of one of my favorite shows "Beauty and the Beast" as Elliot Burch.

[roguevalley]

47. his best buddy and fellow gardener was James Whitmore.

[theHandpuppet]

37. Two great quotes from Eddie, a REAL hero

"By the time I leave this Earth, I hope to have improved our relationships here and now, so that in the next generation my son, daughter and friends have my shoulders on which to stand, so it's easier to make their contribution."

"What's the most important thing in the world? It's love, and I look at that as an energy, not a sentiment."

[Frank Cannon]

38. Thanks for that

I think those are going to have to go on my desktop.

[TuxedoKat]

40. Wow. I didn't know all these things about him.

I will have to see if I can find a biography or autobiography as I always liked him
in Green Acres as a kid. These stories and quotes about him make me admire him all the
more. Thanks for sharing.

[Blue_Tires]

34. Lee Marvin, too

[roguevalley]

48. I *LOVE* Lee Marvin. He was a decorated soldier. I think he was

saved by someone else and there is a great story about it but I can't remember. The savior was a very very unlikely man. Marvin credits him with saving his life.

I remember. It was Captain Kangaroo. :) Even Captain Kangaroo had more balls than John Wayne.

[Thothmes]

66. Lee Marvin was not a soldier

He was a Marine. Wounded during the Tarawa assault, he spent almost a year in the hospital recovering.

[roguevalley]

67. meh. he served. My uncle was a marine and left on Guadalcanal

when the navy had to go. He made it to Bougainville where he was wounded.

[MrScorpio]

60. Lee Marvin is buried in Arlington, right next to my Great Uncle Joe Louis

I wonder what conversations they have with each other in the afterlife

[rockymountaindem]

57. Know who else? This guy:

Five combat service stars in a combat engineer battalion, WWII. Of course, Ted Knight wasn't his real name though :)

[TommyO]

10. All helmet, no soldier

All hat, no cowboy

I like the last paragraph posted. "He was greeted by a stony silence. Then somebody booed"


ARGH, spellng errrs!

[mitchum]

11. Marion was just a big puffed up chickenhawk fraud

[Echo In Light]

14. Ever see the movie Repo Man? haha

[proteus_lives]

35. Repo Man is a classic.

"John Wayne's a fag."

[PVnRT]

12. Sounds like George McClellan

"I would attack, honest, but, uh, I need about 30,000 more troops. Clearly everyone in Washington is out to get me. It's not my fault!"

[TornadoTN]

13. My grandfather despised John Wayne just for this very reason

There were no John Wayne movies or anything of the sort played in his house. If there ever was a mention of him, we all got the lecture about how he was a liar and a fraud, not a hero. He often said that the roles he played in movies about World War II were a direct insult to all soldiers who served.

My granddad, a Democrat, fought and served in WWII earning two Silver Stars for his valiant action during the Battle of the Bulge and in Operation Grenade at the Rhine River. He earned one more in the Korean conflict. He was still told up until 2001 that he wasn't a "real American" by Neocons in Tennessee simply because he was a Democrat. He passed away on July 4 of that year.

John Wayne is a fitting icon for the people who hold him as a "conservative", "macho" example of being a man. A fraud.

[roguevalley]

49. Your grandpa and my dad, real men, real heroes. I hug you.

[TornadoTN]

55. Thanks - and one for you as well. Both the greatest men, I'm sure

My only hope is that I can become 1/4 of the man that my granddad was. It's really sad that we are losing these people every day and within my lifetime, I will most likely see the last WW2 vet to walk this earth pass on. Just an amazing generation of people all the way around.

[UTUSN]

17. So it takes 100 yrs to unmask a Chickenhawk. So despite Shrub saying he doesn't care what History

will say about him "BECAUSE I'LL BE DEAD," people *will* talk. Someday.

[htuttle]

18. "I installed two-way mirrors in his pad in Brentwood, and he come to the door in a dress. "

[Echo In Light]

25. ! ...see my post #14

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

23. the Marines honored him

John Wayne -- P-38 can opener, a small folding blade used to open canned rations (such as K-rations or C-rations), so named because the actor was shown in a training film using it.





http://www.translationdirectory.com

[hedgehog]

26. It always bothered me to see Republicans degrade civilian

honors like the Medal of Freedom by passing them out to frauds like John Wayne.

[Hepburn]

31. John Wayne was a mother fucking jerk...

...:puke:

What a total, sexist asshole. I was around when he lived in the Newport Beach area with Pilar.

Asshole...total asshole.

[theHandpuppet]

32. Here's a good list of actor/veterans

http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/reviewsw67.htm

[lumpy]

54. Interesting reading. Thanx.

v

[stanwyck]

62. O'Reilly TWICE referred to Malmedy incorrectly as

Allies murdering Nazis. (he was trying to make some kind of point during the Haditha massacre in Iraq). Charles Durning is mentioned in this article as narrowing escaping the Malmedy killings of Allied soldiers by the Germans. And freaking O'Reilly TWICE got it backwards -- with Allies killing POW unarmed Germans. And all because he wanted to say that hey, in war, these things happen. So, quit talking about Haditha, because, it's you know, war.
Like he would know.

[electricD]

39. the war hero of my generation was John Rambo

same aspect...different guy

playing the downtroden Viet Nam Vet that traveled alone from town to town just trying to find something to eat until, somebody pissed him off.

or was he just a girls volleyball coach when the real bullets were flying???

things that make ya go hmmm

[progressoid]

42. And he was a shitty actor.

Just like Reagan.

[Catherine Vincent]

43. LOL!

"He was greeted by a stony silence. Then somebody booed. Suddenly everyone was booing. This man was a symbol of the fake machismo we had come to hate, and we weren't going to listen to him. He tried and tried to make himself heard, but we drowned him out, and eventually he quit and left."

That would have been awesome if it was captured on video!

[bmbmd]

44. My dad rode on a troop ship with Errol Flynn.

He always said he was a great guy, and would come out on the deck and hang with the guys-smoking cigarettes and playing cards. When I mentioned his sexual orientation, Dad said "Well-that explains a lot. Still, he was a hell of a man". I learned a lot from my dad.

He couldn't stand what he called "play-soldiers", particularly one Captain Mickey Rooney. Seems the captain tried to conscript my dad and a couple of others to change a tire on his jeep so he could flee a hot zone. He was pretty lucky not to get the stuffing kicked out of his own self by some otherwise occupied GI's.

Dad had great admiration for Audie Murphy, and a grudging respect for Clark Gable. Hated Reagan with a passion. His most red-hot scorn, though-was reserved for John Wayne. Thanks for the post.

[roguevalley]

51. Clark Gable enlisted when Carole Lombard died in a bond raising

crash of her plane. He was suicidal they said and he volunteered for every bomber run they could fly. People began to leave him off planes he was so messed up. At least he went and didn't slack, given all the rest about it.

[lumpy]

52. I don't get it. Errol Flynn was gay? Flynn was famous for being

a charming womanizer.

[bmbmd]

59. Good question.

And open for discussion.

http://www.uic.edu/depts/quic/history/errol_flynn.html

Errol Flynn, the stage name of Leslie Thomas Flynn was born in Hobart, Tasmania on June 20, 1909 and died on Oct. 14, 1959. Flynn was a film star known principally for his roles as a swashbuckling romantic hero. His adventure films include Captain Blood (1935) and The Sea Hawk (1940). In Too Much, Too Soon (1958), he played his friend John Barrymore.

Flynn is purported to have had a sexual liaison with film producer/industrialist/millionaire Howard Hughes. Does this "make" him gay? His autobiography suggests he had strong sexual appetite. It does not leave one with the impression, however, that he self-identified as a gay man. His screen and public image, however, apparently was one which gay men found attractive and appealing at the peak of his popularity. His film roles can be "read" with a gay subtext but a statement that he self-identified as gay seems premature based on the evidence available.

[Jack35]

45. ages of stars

Just for the record, Tyrone Power (born 1914) was 27, not 40.

[Vidar]

46. Wayne was as phony as they come.

[KG]

50. George A. never saw John Wayne on the sands of Iwo Jima

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJqX0zC00gU


THE SANDS OF IWO JIMA

George A. was at the movies in December '41
They announced it in the lobby what had just gone on
He drove up from Birmingham back to the family's farm
Thought he'd get him a deferment there's was much work to be done
He was a family man, even in those days
But Uncle Sam decided he was needed anyway
In the South Pacific over half a world away
He believed in God and Country, things was just that way

Just that way…..

When I was just a kid I spent every weekend
On the farm that he grew up on so I guess so did I
And we'd stay up watching movies on the black and white TV
We watched "The Sands of Iwo Jima" starring John Wayne

Every year in June George A. goes to a reunion
Of the men that he served with and their wives and kids and grandkids
My Great Uncle used to take me and I'd watch them recollect
about some things I couldn't comprehend

And I thought about that movie, asked if it was that way
He just shook his head and smiled at me in such a loving way
As he thought about some friends he will never see again
He said "I never saw John Wayne on the sands of Iwo Jima"

Most of those men are gone now but he goes still every year
And George A's still doing fine, especially for his years
He's still living on that homestead in the house that he was born in
And I sure wish I could go see him today

He never drove a new car though he could easily afford it
He'd just buy one for the family and take whatever no one wanted
He said a shiny car didn't mean much after all the things he'd seen
George A. never saw John Wayne on the sands of Iwo Jima

Patterson Hood / Drive-By Truckers (October 19, 2003) © Soul Dump Music (BMI)
Banjos - Mike Cooley / Fender Rhodes - David Barbe / Harmonica - Mike Cooley

[Johonny]

53. Is it ok if I liked some of the guys movies?

or is it impossible to separate actors real lives from the movies they make?

[WI_DEM]

56. Where does it mention anything about not liking his movies. I like many Wayne films.

[wolfgangmo]

61. I would rather say that I am a fan of John Ford films, but yah

Movies and reality are still, at least for the time being, separate.

[Johonny]

63. clearly a few ppl in the thread do

Just saying the dudes been dead like 30 years now. Not sure what the pissing on John Waynes grave gets anyone but a few odd jollies. For people under like 40, John Wayne is a guy that was in some great Ford and Hawks movies. If you happen to watch westerns which haven't been popular for like 35 years now. I really could care less if people think he was gay, a hypocrite or WWII vets thought he was a phony. I have no memory of Wayne outside his movies and sure as heck know almost next to nothing of his views on anything. I mean he's been dead a loooooong time now and WWII was even a loooooooonger time ago. I just spent the last 8 years under Bush in Cheney attacking imaginary slights of an era I was barely even alive in. I'm sick of refighting the social wars of the Vietnam era that hardly anynone in my generation even cares about. I was hoping with Obama's election we were finally moving past this stuff. What next a thread about all the founding fathers that didn't fight in the revolutionary war? Our founding fathers, mostly a bunch of chickenhawks.

"But Peg it's Hondo, HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

[TahitiNut]

58. John Wayne in "Green Berets" ... the only time we actually threw things at the screen in Nam

The hoots and hollers of derision were mere accompaniment for the debris we threw at the screen. The WORST movie about Nam ever made, 'starring' the LEAST 'military' of any Hollywood maggot.

:puke:

[ControlledDemolition]

64. Thanks TahitiNut, until now I've made internal excuses for John Wayne.

F*ck! For all these years I've now found out that I've been duped (Duked?) again. Had 'Marion' lived, I'm sure he would have been a Swiftboater S.O.B! F*ck!

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

65. John Wayne in The Conqueror - one of the funniest movies I've ever seen

Only I wasn't laughing at the jokes or the funny situations. I was laughing at Wayne's performance. The film has John Wayne playing the Mongol warrior Genghis Khan. Agnes Moorehead plays Wayne's Mongol mother and Susan Hayward is a Tartar Princess who has big red-permed hair and walks around in low-cut dresses. There's even a Playboy Bunny of the period who does a naughty dance. It's a surreal film. Wayne spends the entire film rolling his shoulders and swiveling his hips in his trademark cowboy walk. And he wears a Fu Manchu mustache while he says his lines with his typical Western drawl. He made no effort to sound Mongol in the least but just played Wayne. Can you image John Wayne saying these lines in a cowboy drawl?

"...She is woman, Jamuga...much woman. Should her perfidy be less than that of other women?"

I saw the film at the house of a friend and I was nearly chased from the living room when I couldn't stop laughing.



On the downside, I believe that's the film where several of the actors and actresses died because of exposure to radiation where it was filmed in Utah near a Nevada atomic test site.

[Vidar]

69. Slim Pickens stole the show.

[road2000]

68. "A poem, by John Wayne"

"The sky is blue
The grass is green
Get off your butt
And join the Marines."

Verbatim from Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, circa 1968. It occurred to me at the time the guy was making fun of himself. Considering what I've read today, maybe he was.