Silent Wierdness: Born Today May 26: John Wayne

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Born Today May 26: John Wayne

1907-1979

Western superstar John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison on this day in Winterset, Iowa. His first name change came almost immediately; when his parents decided that they wanted to reserve the use of his middle name for the first name of a second son, they changed their young son's name to Marion Michael (or Mitchell) Wayne (Michael is a name he would eventually name his own eldest son). His nickname Duke preceeded his name change for acting purposes. The family relocated to Palmdale, California to go into ranching, and in 1916 on to Glendale when the ranch failed, where the young Morrison was dubbed by a local fireman "little duke"--the name stuck and he reportedly preferred "Duke" to "Marion" long before the name of "John" was ever dreamed up as a replacement first name. His entry into the world of film acting actually came while he was in high school, when one of his summer jobs was working with a man who maintained (and shoed or shod) horses for the studios producing westerns. After graduating from high school, he attended the University of Southern California majoring in pre-law. He was also famously a football player there and was in fact attending on a full atheletic scholarship, which he lost when he badly shattered his collarbone while body surfing and had to leave university. His next entery into the film business was occasioned by this event; his coach knew western star Tom Mix, who gave Duke a job on the sets of director John Ford as a prop handler. Mix liked his style and it's wasn't long before he made his film debut in small parts. He does have named credits from his days as a "property boy," the first of which is The Great K & A Train Robbery (1926), a Tom Mix film directed by Lewis Seiler (in which he aledgedly had a tiny bit part). His first time in front of the camera also came in 1926, in an uncredited role of, appropriately, a football player in Jack Conway's Brown of Harvard for MGM. The Duke actually has a large number of film credits of various sorts from the 1920's, unusual for someone born in 1907; however all, but one, of his on-camera acting roles went uncredited during this time. That being said, he was in some very famous films released in the late 1920's, they include: Bardelys the Magnificent (1926) directed by King Vidor, Norman Taurog's The Draw-Back (1927), Annie Laurie (1927) with Lillian Gish, the Taurog/Zanuck production Noah's Ark 1928, and the early talkie Speakeasy 1929. His first actual named acting credit came in the James Tinling directed Words and Music in 1929, the film was one of Fox's first music productions in partial sound, he was credited as Duke Morrison. The first John Ford (longtime friend and mentor) directed film that he appeared in was Mother Machree in 1927, a Fox partial silent that Ford also went uncredited in at the time. He also appeared in at least four more Ford films in 1928 and 1929 (Four Sons 1928, Hangman's House 1928, The Black Watch 1929--he also had a small role in Salute 1929 a film thought to have been partially directed by Ford.) The vast majority of these films had some sort of sport plot--meaning that his earliest "type casting" was as a football player. His first film in the 1930's also came in an uncredited role in another John Ford film Men Without Women (1930) a submarine film set in the China sea. His first credit as John Wayne also came in his first starring role in the Fox western The Big Trail in 1930. It was director Raoul Walsh's idea to change his name, suggesting Anthony Wayne (after a general in the American Revolutionary War), but studio execs thought it sounded "too Italian" and suggested John in exchange for the Anthony and a legend was born*. Not quite a western specialist, he would continue to star in films that featured dramatic roles and college types for some time during the 1930's. His next turn in a western came in 1931 in the The Ranger Feud, with several non-westerns in-between (in 1932, he even played a character named "Duke" in the Tim McCoy Columbia production Two-Fisted Law in 1932, he was even the star of a rare early horror/western Haunted Gold also in 1932). By the late 1930's, he was almost exclusively a western player, and well on his way to becoming a super star of the silver screen and Hollywood royalty. Probably his most famous film from the time period is John Ford's Stagecoach (1939). His first film of the new decade was another Raoul Walsh film set in Kansas during the Civil War: Dark Command (1940); but as the U.S. headed off to war, he added another character type to his repretroir: military commander. This would end up becoming nearly as synonymous with his name as cowboy/western lawman. Wayne came late to television, making his debut as a cameo in a 1955 episode of "I Love Lucy" (Lucy Visits Grauman's). Wayne never did warm to television acting, and though he made a few appearances on the small screen in the next two decades, many were as himself (see, for example, this episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies"). His last film came in 1976 in The Shootist; the film was directed by Don Siegel. In addition to his film acting, Wayne was also an actor on the radio. During his career, he was nominated three times for Ocars, winning once for Best Actor for his performance in True Grit (1969). In addition to Ford, Wayne worked with a whole host of top Hollywood directors during his career, including: Arthur Lubin, Cecil B. DeMille, Howard Hawks, Michael Curtiz, William A. Wellman, John Farrow, Josef von Sternberg, John Huston, Otto Preminger & John Sturgis (not to mention that he also directed himself, The Alamo from 1960 probably being the best known). This is not to say that his life was without significant controversy, it wasn't!!--please follow links below to read more about all aspects of his life (and that Playboy interview is available to read on Kindle for free). Wayne was already a cancer survivor when he was diagnosed with stomach cancer in the late 1970's. Although he was enrolled in an experimental treatment program, he succumbed to the disease on the 11th of the June, 1979--about a fortnight after his 72nd birthday. He is buried at Pacific View Memorial Park & Mortuary in Newport Beach.