Marion Robert Morrison: (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979)

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✪ Marion Robert Morrison, professionally known as John Wayne and nicknamed The Duke or Duke Wayne, was an American actor who became a popular icon through his starring roles in films which were produced during Hollywood’s Golden Age. He especially gained notoriety through his starring roles in Western and war genre films. His career spanned & flourished from the silent era of the 1920s through the American New Wave, as he appeared in a total of 179 film and television productions. He was among the top box-office draws for three consecutive decades and appeared with many other well known Hollywood actors of his era. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Wayne as one of the greatest male stars of classic American cinema.

Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison on May 26, 1907 in Winterset, Iowa. The local paper, Winterset Madisonian reported on page 4 of the edition of May 30, 1907, that Wayne weighed 13 pounds at birth.

Wayne’s father, Clyde Leonard Morrison (1884–1937), was the son of American Civil War veteran Marion Mitchell Morrison (1845–1915). Wayne’s mother, the former Mary “Molly” Alberta Brown (1885–1970), was from Lancaster County, Nebraska. Wayne was of Scottish, Scotch-Irish, English and Irish ancestry. His great-great-grandfather Robert Morrison (b. 1782) left County Antrim, Ireland with his mother and arrived in New York in 1799 to eventually settling in Adams County, Ohio. The Morrisons were originally from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Wayne was raised Presbyterian.

Wayne’s family first moved to Palmdale, California and then again in 1916 to Glendale where his father worked as a pharmacist. He attended Glendale Union High School, performing well in both sports and academics. Wayne was part of his high school’s football and debating teams. He was also the president of the Latin Society and contributed to the school’s newspaper sports column as a writer.

A local fireman at the station on his route to school in Glendale started calling him “Little Duke” because he never went anywhere without his huge Airedale Terrier, Duke. Wayne preferred his nickname “Duke” to “Marion” so the nickname stuck. Wayne attended Wilson Middle School in Glendale. As a teen, he worked in an ice-cream shop for a man who shod horses for several Hollywood studios. He was also active as a member of the Order of DeMolay and played football for the 1924 league champion Glendale High School team.

Wayne applied to the U.S. Naval Academy, but was not accepted due to poor grades. Instead, he attended the University of Southern California (USC) and majored in pre-law.

Wayne, who stood 6 feet 4+¹⁄₂ inches tall, also played on the USC football team under coach Howard Jones. However, a broken collarbone injury curtailed his athletic career. Wayne later noted that he was too terrified of Jones’ reaction to reveal the actual cause of his injury, a bodysurfing accident. He lost his athletic scholarship, and without adequate funds, had to leave the university.

As a favor to coach Jones, who had given silent Western film star Tom Mix tickets to USC games, director John Ford and Mix hired Wayne as a prop boy and extra. Wayne later credited his walk, talk and screen persona to his acquaintance with Wyatt Earp, who was also good friends with Tom Mix. Wayne soon moved into performing bit parts in films while establishing a longtime friendship with the director who provided him with most of those roles, John Ford.

While working for Fox Film Corporation in bit roles, Wayne was given the on-screen credit of “Duke Morrison” only once in Words and Music (1929). Director Raoul Walsh saw Wayne moving studio furniture while working as a prop boy and cast him in his first starring role in The Big Trail (1930). For his screen name, Walsh suggested “Anthony Wayne” after Revolutionary War General “Mad” Anthony Wayne. However, Fox Studios chief Winfield Sheehan rejected that as sounding “too Italian.” Walsh then suggested “John Wayne.” Sheehan agreed and Wayne’s screen name was set. Wayne was not even present for the discussion. His pay was raised to $105 a week.

The Big Trail was planned to be the first big-budget outdoor spectacle of the sound era. It was made at a then-staggering cost over $2 million (over $32.8 million equivalent in 2021) using hundreds of extras and wide, on location vistas of the American Southwest. To take advantage of the breathtaking scenery, it was filmed in two film format versions; a standard 35 mm version and another in the new 70 mm Grandeur film process, using a special innovative camera and lenses. Many in the audience who saw it in Grandeur stood and cheered, but only a handful of theaters were technically equipped to show the film in its widescreen process. At the time, the film was considered a huge box-office flop but later came to be highly regarded by modern film critics and historians.

After the commercial failure of The Big Trail, Wayne was relegated back to small roles in A Pictures. By Wayne’s own estimation, he appeared in about 80 of these horse operas between 1930 & 1939. During this time, he became one of the first singing cowboys of film, albeit via dubbing. He was mentored on film sets by professional stuntmen in riding and other Western skills.

One of the main innovations with which Wayne is credited in these early Poverty Row Westerns is allowing the good guys to fight just as dirty and convincingly as the bad guys. Wayne later claimed, “Before I came along, it was standard practice that the hero always must fight clean. The heavy would be allowed to hit him in the head with a chair or throw a kerosene lamp at him or kick him in the stomach, but the hero could only knock the villain down politely and then wait until he rose again. I changed all that. I was the first good guy who threw chairs and lamps. I fought hard and I fought dirty. I fought to win.”

Wayne’s second major professional breakthrough role came in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939).

America’s entry into World War II resulted in a deluge of support for the war effort from all sectors of society and Hollywood was no exception. Wayne was exempted from service due to his age (34 at the time of Pearl Harbor) and family status (classified as 3-A – family deferment). Wayne repeatedly wrote to John Ford saying he wanted to enlist and on at least one occasion inquired whether he could get into Ford’s military unit. However, Republic Pictures intervened in Wayne’s Selective Service request and extended his deferment indefinitely.

The U.S. National Archives records indicate that Wayne in fact, did make an application to serve in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), but his bid was ultimately unsuccessful. Wayne toured U.S. bases and hospitals in the South Pacific for three months in 1943 and 1944 with the USO.

By many accounts, Wayne’s failure to serve in the military during the war later became an incredibly painful part of his personal life. His widow later suggested that his patriotism in later decades sprang from a deep guilt, writing: “He would become a ‘superpatriot’ for the rest of his life out of trying to atone for staying home.”

Like most Hollywood actors of his era, Wayne appeared as a guest on many radio programs. For six months in 1942, Wayne even starred in his own radio adventure series, Three Sheets to the Wind. In the series, an international spy/detective show, Wayne plays Dan O’Brien, a detective who uses alcoholism as a mask for his investigatory endeavors. The show was intended to be a pilot of sorts for a series of films, though no film projects ever came to fruition. None of the episodes of the series featuring Wayne seem to have survived.

Batjac, the production company co-founded by Wayne in 1952, was named after the fictional shipping company Batjak in Wake of the Red Witch (1948). Batjac (and its predecessor, Wayne-Fellows Productions) was the production arm through which Wayne created many films for himself and other actors.

During his career, Wayne appeared in nearly two dozen John Ford films over 20 years, including She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), The Wings of Eagles (1957). The first movie in which Wayne called someone “Pilgrim” was in Ford’s The Searchers (1956). Wayne notoriously portrayed Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956) to horrible critic reviews.

In 1960, Wayne directed and produced The Alamo playing the role of Davy Crockett, with Richard Widmark as Jim Bowie. Wayne was nominated for an Oscar as the producer of The Alamo in the Best Picture category.

In 1968, Wayne co-directed The Green Berets with Roy Kellogg; the only major studio film made during the Vietnam War in support of the war. Wayne was particularly interested in making this movie because at the time, Hollywood had no interest in making movies about the War. During the filming of The Green Berets, the Degar or Montagnard people of Vietnam’s Central Highlands, fierce fighters against communism, gifted Wayne a brass bracelet that he wore in the film and all subsequent films.

On June 13, 1969, Henry Hathaway’s True Grit premiered. Wayne won the Best Actor Oscar at the Academy Awards for his role in the film as Rooster Cogburn,

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In 1976, Wayne starred in Don Siegel’s The Shootist with Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard and James Stewart. It would be Wayne’s final cinematic role, in which the main character, J. B. Books, was dying of cancer, to which Wayne himself succumbed three years later. The film received positive reviews and was named one of the Ten Best Films of 1976 by the National Board of Review. Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times ranked The Shootist number 10 on his list of the 10 best films of 1976. The film was also nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA film award and a Writers Guild of America award.

Throughout most of his life, Wayne was a vocally prominent conservative Republican in Hollywood who openly supporting anti-communist positions. He took part in creating the conservative Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals in February 1944 before being elected its president in 1949. An ardent anti-communist and vocal supporter of the House Un-American Activities Committee, he made Big Jim McLain (1952) playing a HUAC investigator to demonstrate his support for the cause of anti-communism.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin is alleged to have said that Wayne should be assassinated for his frequently espoused anti-communist politics, despite being a fan of his movies. Wayne was also a supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Wayne supported Vice President Richard Nixon in the presidential election of 1960; but expressed his vision of patriotism when John F. Kennedy won the election: “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.” Wayne was also a staunch supporter of Barry Goldwater and actively campaigned for him in 1964. Wayne used his star power to support conservative causes, including rallying support for the Vietnam War.

However, Wayne openly differed with many conservatives over the issue of returning the Panama Canal. He supported the Panama Canal Treaty in the mid-1970s; while Republican leaders such as Reagan, Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond wanted the U.S. to retain full control of the canal, Wayne and fellow conservative William F. Buckley believed that the Panamanians had the right to the canal and sided with President Jimmy Carter. His support of the treaty brought him hate mail for the first time in his life.

Roger Ebert writes that Wayne had a sense of humor about his politics. He recalls Wayne giving him a tour of his house: “He pointed out autographed photos of Eisenhower, Nixon, Goldwater, and J. Edgar Hoover. I said I had to take a pee. On the wall of the bathroom opening off the den, he had a photo of Hubert Humphrey, inscribed ‘with warm appreciation for your continued Support.'” Colorado Congresswoman Pat Schroeder recalled that “John Wayne gave me a silver cigarette lighter during the Vietnam War that said ‘Fuck Communism’ on it. I didn’t know how to do that. I still don’t.”

Wayne was married three times and divorced twice. His wives included one of Spanish American descent, Josephine Alicia Saenz; and two from Latin America, Esperanza Baur and Pilar Pallete. Wayne had four children with Josephine. and three more children with Pilar. Several of Wayne’s children entered the film and television industry.

Wayne had several high-profile affairs, including one with Merle Oberon that lasted from 1938 to 1947. After his separation from Pilar in 1973, Wayne became romantically involved and lived with his former secretary Pat Stacy (1941–1995) until his death in 1979. Stacy published a book about her life with him in 1983, titled Duke: A Love Story.

A close friend, California Congressman Alphonzo E. Bell Jr., wrote of Wayne:

“Duke’s personality and sense of humor were very close to what the general public saw on the big screen. It is perhaps best shown in these words he had engraved on a plaque: ‘Each of us is a mixture of some good and some not so good qualities. In considering one’s fellow man, it’s important to remember the good things. … We should refrain from making judgments just because a fella happens to be a dirty, rotten S.O.B.”

Wayne was very fond of literature. His favorite authors included Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.

Wayne was a voracious chess player. Roger Ebert recalls that on the set of Chisum, “we were playing a chess game, both of us bending over the board on an upended apple crate. Wayne, slouched in his old stitched leather director’s chair, had a crowd of kibitzers: wranglers, extras, old cronies, drinking buddies, a couple of Mexican stuntmen. He studied the board, roared with laughter, and said, ‘God…damn it! You’ve trapped my queen!’ We studied the board. I made a decisive move. ‘Why the hell did I just say that?’ he asked. If I hadn’t-a…said it, you wouldn’t-a…seen it.’” According to Michael Munn, when Wayne was asked about Rock Hudson’s sexuality, he replied, “Who the hell cares if he’s a queer? The man plays great chess.”

Wayne was a chain smoker of cigarettes since his young adulthood and was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1964, when he underwent successful surgery to remove his entire left lung and two ribs. Despite efforts by his business associates to prevent him from going public with his illness for fear that it would cost him work, Wayne announced he had cancer and called on the public to get preventive examinations. Five years later, Wayne was declared cancer-free. Wayne is credited with coining the term “the Big C” as a euphemism for cancer.

Howard Hawks, who directed him in five films, felt that after losing one of his lungs, Wayne became a much better actor. Hawks explained: “Because of the lung Wayne lost, he reads his lines differently. He pauses in the strangest places simply because he hasn’t got the breath he used to have. This device is terribly effective, because you keep your eyes on him and wait for him to finish, because you don’t know what’s coming next.“

Wayne’s yacht, the Wild Goose, was one of his favorite possessions. He kept it docked in Newport Beach Harbor and in 2011, it was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

Wayne considered himself to be a reactor rather than an actor, and felt that the difference between good and bad acting was the difference between acting and reacting. He explained: “In a bad picture, you see them acting all over the place. In a good picture, they react in a logical way to a situation they’re in, so the audience can identify with the actors.” When asked about his approach to acting, Wayne commented: “I read dramatic lines undramatically and react to situations normally. This is not as simple as it sounds. I’ve spent a major portion of my life trying to do it well and I am not past learning it yet.” Much like many actors of his generation, Wayne disliked method acting, and once said of them: “Let those actors who picked their noses get all the dialogue, just give me the close-up of reaction.”

Wayne’s enduring status as an iconic American was formally recognized by the U.S. government in the form of the two highest civilian decorations. On his 72nd birthday on May 26, 1979, Wayne was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Wayne was also posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on June 9, 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. He had attended Carter’s inaugural ball in 1977 “as a member of the loyal opposition,” as he described it.

Wayne successfully rose beyond the typical recognition as a famous actor to that of an enduring cultural icon who symbolized and communicated American values and ideals. By the middle of his career, Wayne had developed a larger-than-life image, and as his career progressed, he selected roles that which would support his off-screen image. Wayne embodied the icon of strong American masculinity and rugged individualism in both his films and his life.

Wayne died of stomach cancer on June 11, 1979, at the UCLA Medical Center and was buried in the Pacific View Memorial Park Cemetery in Corona del Mar, Newport Beach. According to his son Patrick and his grandson Matthew Muñoz, who was a priest in the California Diocese of Orange, Wayne converted to Roman Catholicism shortly before his death. He requested that his tombstone read “Feo, Fuerte y Formal” a Spanish epitaph Wayne described which translates as “ugly, strong and dignified.” His grave remained unmarked for 20 years but has been marked since 1999 with the quotation:

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.” ✪