John Wayne remains an American icon thanks to his roles in popular Westerns and war movies, but what do we really know about him? From his early days to his heights of fame and later controversies, this is the untold truth of John Wayne.
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00:00John Wayne remains an American icon thanks to his roles in popular westerns and war movies.
00:06But what do we really know about him? From his early days to his heights of fame and
00:09later controversies, this is the untold truth of John Wayne.
00:14Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in 1907 in Iowa. In 1914, he headed west with his family to
00:21California. Young Wayne's closest companion was his little dog, an Airedale named Duke.
00:26The two were so inseparable that they became known as Little Duke and Big Duke, and thus a
00:31lifelong nickname was born. While attending Glendale High School, Wayne excelled at football
00:36and theater. At first, he believed he was destined for a career on the gridiron. He played so well
00:42that he received a scholarship to play for the University of Southern California Trojans.
00:46In his leisure time, he was a typical surfer dude at Newport Beach.
00:50Unfortunately, his days on the waves and his budding football career ended in 1926 when he
00:55was injured in a body surfing accident. This forced him to leave school, and he began working
01:00for local movie studios. Wayne's first job in the film industry was at the Fox Film Corporation,
01:06where he worked as a prop man. He shoved furniture and equipment for low wages,
01:10but it was a living. He was also able to serve as an extra in several films beginning in 1926.
01:16His first role was as an anonymous Yale football player in Brown of Harvard. He would go on to
01:21have 13 more uncredited roles before he finally received notice in 1929's Words in Music,
01:27in which he was credited as Duke Morrison. Around this time, he met director John Ford,
01:32with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. But it was director Raoul Walsh who finally
01:36gave Wayne his first big break in 1930's The Big Trail. In the film, the actor plays Brett Coleman,
01:42who leads covered wagons west on an overland trail. Wayne auditioned against 81 other actors
01:48before winning the role. Walsh believed that his actor needed a stage name, so he suggested
01:52Anthony Wayne. But Fox Studios boss Winfield Sheehan thought that sounded too Italian,
01:58so he suggested John Wayne instead, and the name stuck.
02:02John Wayne reportedly did not like horses. In fact, according to the book John Wayne,
02:07The Life and Legend, his own son Michael was taught to ride horses by stuntmen instead of
02:12his father. This revelation might be a hard pill to swallow, considering that the Duke spent so
02:17much of his career atop a horse. But multiple sources attest to this very fact. As journalist
02:22Gary Wills put it in a PBS interview,
02:25"...Wayne hated horses, never rode except on the set, and never rode when he didn't have to."
02:31But according to Wayne's son Patrick, his father was actually a terrific horseman.
02:36During the filming of 1971's Big Jake, Patrick watched as his dad stayed astride his horse
02:41even after it got spooked during a chase scene. Patrick also recalled a time when
02:46he himself was riding a horse for 1961's The Comancheros, and it wasn't going so well. He
02:52explained,
02:53"...I looked awful. It looked like I didn't know what I was doing riding the horse.
02:57My father came to me and said,
02:58You're going to learn how to ride a horse. And he made sure I learned. There was a later scene
03:03when I looked very good. So good that they reshot the earlier scene so that I looked as good then
03:07as I did later in the film."
03:10On screen, Wayne's persona was that of the ruggedly handsome man's man. But off-camera,
03:15he was reportedly somewhat reserved and even awkward around women. Yet he still managed to
03:20get married three times and have seven children. He married his first wife, Josephine, in 1933,
03:26and out of that union came four children. The marriage ended in 1943, though, possibly due
03:31to his affair with Marlena Dietrich, his co-star in the films Seven Sinners, The Spoilers, and
03:36Pittsburgh. Most biographers blame Dietrich for the affair, which began shortly after she saw
03:41Wayne for the first time and reportedly told her agent,
03:45Daddy, get me that.
03:47Wayne and Dietrich's affair lasted about three years, after which Wayne married his second wife,
03:52Esperanza. Their union was marred by jealousy and drunken fights, as well as Wayne's alleged
03:57affair with actress Gail Russell. On the day that their divorce was finalized in 1954,
04:03Wayne married actress Pilar Paillete. Three more children were born before the couple split up in
04:081973. Wayne never remarried after that, although he did live his last years with his secretary,
04:14Pat Stacey.
04:16Between 1940 and 1945, as World War II raged on, John Wayne starred in seven war movies.
04:23He had dutifully registered for service, but he received a 3A deferment for family dependency.
04:29As a father and sole provider for his family, he wanted to make a few more movies before entering
04:33the service. There's also little doubt that he wanted to keep his name fresh in Hollywood.
04:37He did expect to eventually go to war, though, but Wayne never ended up serving during the
04:42duration of the conflict. In 1942, Congress revised the Selective Service Act to defer
04:47all married men until further notice. The fact that Wayne avoided service reportedly annoyed
04:52his friend John Ford so much that during the filming of They Were Expendable in 1945, he barked,
04:59Duke, can't you manage a salute that at least looks like you've been in the service?"
05:03Wayne was so angry that he reportedly stormed off the set for the only time in his career.
05:08There's also evidence that the actor thought he could have been more useful on the big screen
05:12than overseas. Ford's grandson Dan recalled Wayne once telling him,
05:16I felt it would be a waste of time to spend two years picking up cigarette butts.
05:21I thought I could do more for the war effort by staying in Hollywood."
05:24Despite all this, there is also evidence that the actor attempted to find a way to serve,
05:28including a letter of application to the Office of Strategic Services contained in the National
05:33Archives. In 2015, this topic came up again when David James Elliott played Wayne in the film
05:39Trumbo.
05:40Where did you serve again?
05:42You trying to say something?
05:44No, Duke, he wasn't.
05:46In 1948, when Wayne was 41 years old, a look in the mirror told him what many middle-aged men
05:51dreaded. He was progressively losing his hair. From that point forward, he wore a toupee in
05:56his films, although he was occasionally seen in public without it. He notably made one on-screen
06:02exception as he declined to wear his wig for 1957's The Wings of Eagles. He was even quite
06:07open about wearing a rug. When a reporter once asked him about his phony hair, he quipped,
06:12It's not phony. It's real hair. Of course, it's not mine. But it's real.
06:17As it turns out, a celebrity's fake hair can end up being quite valuable.
06:21In 2010, the toupee that Wayne wore for 1967's El Dorado ended up fetching $1,244 at auction.
06:29In 2013, another one of his custom-made toupees was found.
06:33That wig, along with its canvas block, sold for $6,250.
06:39In 1954, Wayne was in the Utah desert shooting The Conqueror, in which he played Genghis Khan.
06:45The shoot was taking place 100 miles from an atomic bomb testing site in Nevada.
06:49Officials assured everyone that fallout couldn't possibly reach the production site,
06:54although a Geiger counter on the set crackled so loudly that Wayne believed it was broken.
06:59Nobody knew it at the time, but everyone on the set was exposed to radiation as the fallout was
07:04blown south and east. People who were exposed in this way between 1951 and 1962 in Utah,
07:10Arizona, and Nevada are now referred to as downwinders.
07:14In 1964, Wayne was diagnosed with cancer. He lost a lung and some ribs to the disease.
07:21He would eventually die from stomach cancer in 1979. His sons Michael and Patrick,
07:26who were also on the set of The Conqueror, got cancer as well, though they survived.
07:30By 1981, 91 of the 220 cast and crew members on the set of The Conqueror had developed cancer,
07:37and 46 of them had died, including Wayne, lead actress Susan Hayward, and director Dick Powell.
07:44Wayne was friends with many American presidents, including Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy,
07:49Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan.
07:54He was especially supportive of Nixon, whom he rallied for in the 1960 presidential election.
08:00But Wayne was also a good sport. When Kennedy won the election that year,
08:04he received a telegram from Wayne expressing his congratulations from the loyal opposition.
08:09And when Kennedy was assassinated three years later, Wayne was as devastated as anyone else.
08:14Indeed, Wayne reportedly aimed to be fair-minded when it came to politics.
08:19When his friend Barry Goldwater lost the 1964 election, he again bowed gracefully to the loss.
08:24But when the chance came to vote for Nixon again in 1968, he once more became a huge supporter.
08:30The support was reciprocal, as Nixon appreciated that Wayne had a way with the blue-collar voters.
08:36After Nixon won the election, the two remained good friends, even when the president became
08:40embroiled in the infamous Watergate scandal and subsequently resigned in 1974.
08:46He probably should have just stood up at the very beginning and said,
08:49anybody that's done something wrong will go to jail. He didn't do it soon enough.
08:54In 1976, John Wayne appeared on the big screen for the last time in The Shootist,
08:59which co-starred Lauren Bacall and Ron Howard. The film was, appropriately enough,
09:03about an aging Old West gunman who was dying from cancer. After Wayne's character, J.B. Brooks,
09:09is diagnosed as terminal, he chooses to meet his maker in a gunfight.
09:13The John Wayne heritage heralds it as being among his greatest performances.
09:18Most men, regardless of cause or need, aren't willing. They blink an eye or
09:24draw a breath before they pull a trigger.
09:27Because Wayne himself had battled cancer, the general public assumed that he still
09:32had it during production of The Shootist. The actor was indeed clearly ailing during filming,
09:37which was evidenced by his character grunting and groaning as he moved around.
09:41In truth, though, Wayne actually didn't have cancer during filming,
09:44having kicked his illness back in 1969. He would later suffer a bout with stomach cancer in 1975,
09:51but it went into remission before The Shootist was filmed. During production,
09:55he was also hospitalized with a bad case of the flu, but he nevertheless showed no signs
10:00of slowing down. He actually had another movie book that he was planning on appearing in called
10:04Bojohn. It was intended to be a light comedy about the patriarch of a Kentucky family during the
10:091920s. Unfortunately, Wayne's stomach cancer returned in January 1979, and he died on June 11
10:17of that year. In 2019, a 1971 Playboy interview with Wayne resurfaced. In it, the actor expressed
10:24some incendiary views, such as,
10:27"[I believe in white supremacy until the Blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.
10:32I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible
10:36people." Wayne also voiced his beliefs that Black people needed better education opportunities,
10:42that the slavery of long ago wasn't his generation's fault,
10:46and that taking American land from indigenous people was a matter of survival. As he put it,
10:51I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from Native Americans,
10:55if that's what you're asking. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just
11:00a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land,
11:04and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."
11:07I'm sad to see minorities make so much of themselves as a hyphenated American."
11:13Wayne also voiced his displeasure with socialism in the interview, saying at one point,
11:18You can't whine and bellyache cause somebody else got a good break and you didn't,
11:21like these Indians are. We'll all be on a reservation soon if the socialists
11:25keep subsidizing groups like them with our tax money.
11:28There shouldn't be so much whining and bellyaching."
11:31The interview prompted many responses, including some people considering the possibility that
11:36John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California should be renamed. Clearly,
11:41like many icons of the entertainment industry, Wayne had a controversial side that persists to
11:46this day.