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. Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in 1907
in Iowa. In 1914, he headed west with his family to
California. Young Wayne's closest companion was his little
dog, an Airedale named Duke. The two were so inseparable that they became
known as "Little Duke" and "Big Duke," and thus a lifelong nickname was born. While attending Glendale High School, Wayne
excelled at football and theater. At first, he believed he was destined for
a career on the gridiron. He played so well that he received a scholarship
to play for the University of Southern California Trojans. In his leisure time, he was a typical surfer
dude at Newport Beach. Unfortunately, his days on the waves and his
budding football career ended in 1926 when he was injured in a bodysurfing accident. This forced him to leave school, and he began
working for local movie studios. Wayne's first job in the film industry was
at the Fox Film Corporation, where he worked as a prop man. He shoved furniture and equipment for low
wages, but it was a living. He was also able to serve as an extra in several
films beginning in 1926. His first role was as an anonymous Yale football
player in Brown of Harvard. He would go on to have 13 more uncredited
roles before he finally received notice in 1929's Words and Music, in which he was credited
as Duke Morrison. Around this time, he met director John Ford,
with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. But it was director Raoul Walsh who finally
gave Wayne his first big break in 1930's The In the film, the actor plays Breck Coleman,
who leads covered wagons west on an overland trail. Wayne auditioned against 81 other actors before
winning the role. Walsh believed that his actor needed a stage
name, so he suggested "Anthony Wayne." But Fox Studios boss Winfield Sheehan thought
that sounded too Italian, so he suggested "John Wayne" instead, and the name stuck. John Wayne reportedly did not like horses. In fact, according to the book John Wayne:
The Life and Legend, his own son Michael was taught to ride horses by stuntmen instead
of his father. This revelation might be a hard pill to swallow,
considering that the Duke spent so much of his career atop a horse. But multiple sources attest to this very fact. As journalist Gary Wills put it in a PBS interview, "[Wayne] hated horses. Never rode except on the set, and never rode
when he didn't have to." But according to Wayne's son Patrick, his
father was actually a terrific horseman. During the filming of 1971's Big Jake, Patrick
watched as his dad stayed astride his horse even after it got spooked during a chase scene. Patrick also recalled a time when he himself
was riding a horse for 1961's The Comancheros and it wasn't going so well. He explained, "I looked awful. It looked like I didn’t know what I was
doing riding the horse. [My father] came to me and said, 'You’re
going to learn how to ride a horse,' and he made sure I learned. There was a later scene when I looked very
good, so good that they reshot the earlier scene so that I looked as good then as I did
later in the film." Onscreen, Wayne's persona was that of the
ruggedly handsome man's man. But off-camera, he was reportedly somewhat
reserved and even awkward around women. Yet he still managed to get married three
times and have seven children. He married his first wife Josephine in 1933,
and out of that union came four children. The marriage ended in 1943, though, possibly
due to his affair with Marlene Dietrich, his co-star in the films Seven Sinners, The Spoilers,
and Pittsburgh. Most biographers blame Dietrich for the affair,
which began shortly after she saw Wayne for the first time and reportedly told her agent, "Daddy, get me that." Wayne and Dietrich's affair lasted about three
years, after which Wayne married his second wife, Esperanza. Their union was marred by jealousy and drunken
fights, as well as Wayne's alleged affair with actress Gail Russell. On the day that their divorce was finalized
in 1954, Wayne married actress Pilar Palette. Three more children were born before the couple
split up 1973. Wayne never remarried after that, although
he did live his last years with his secretary, Pat Stacy. Between 1940 and 1945, as World War II raged
on, John Wayne starred in seven war movies. He had dutifully registered for service, but
he received a 3-A deferment for "family dependency." As a father and sole provider for his family,
he wanted to make a few more movies before entering the service. There's also little doubt that he wanted to
keep his name fresh in Hollywood. He did expect to eventually go to war, though. But Wayne never ended up serving during the
duration of the conflict. In 1942, Congress revised the Selective Service
Act to defer all married men until further notice. The fact that Wayne avoided service reportedly
annoyed his friend John Ford so much that during the filming of They Were Expendable
in 1945, he barked, "Duke, can't you manage a salute that at least
looks like you've been in the service?" Wayne was so angry that he reportedly stormed
off the set for the only time in his career. There's also evidence that the actor thought
he could have been more useful on the big screen than overseas. Ford's grandson Dan recalled Wayne once telling
him, "I felt it would be a waste of time to spend
two years picking up cigarette butts. I thought I could do more for the war effort
by staying in Hollywood." Despite all this, there is also evidence that
the actor attempted to find a way to serve, including a letter of application to the Office
of Strategic Services contained in the National Archives. In 2015, this topic came up again when David
James Elliott played Wayne in the film Trumbo. "Where did you serve again?" "You trying to say something?" "No, Duke, he wasn't." In 1948, when Wayne was 41 years old, a look
in the mirror told him what many middle-aged men dread: he was progressively losing his
hair. From that point forward, he wore a toupee
in his films, although he was occasionally seen in public without it. He notably made one onscreen exception as
he declined to wear his wig for 1957's The Wings of Eagles. He was even quite open about wearing a rug. When a reporter once asked about him about
his phony hair, he quipped, "It's not phony. It's real hair. Of course it's not mine, but it's real." As it turns out, a celebrity's fake hair can
end up being quite valuable. In 2010, the toupee that Wayne wore for 1967's
El Dorado ended up fetching $1,244 at auction. In 2013, another one of his custom-made toupees
was found. That wig, along with its canvas block, sold
for $6,250. In 1954, Wayne was in the Utah desert shooting
The Conqueror, in which he played Genghis Khan. The shoot was taking place 100 miles from
an atomic bomb testing site in Nevada. Officials assured everyone that fallout couldn't
possibly reach the production site, although a Geiger counter on the set crackled so loudly
that Wayne believed it was broken. Nobody knew it at the time, but everyone on
the set was exposed to radiation as the fallout was blown south and east. People who were exposed in this way between
1951 and 1962 in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada are now referred to as "Downwinders." In 1964, Wayne was diagnosed with cancer. He lost a lung and some ribs to the disease. He would eventually die from stomach cancer
in 1979. His sons Michael and Patrick, who were also
on the set of The Conqueror, got cancer as well, though they survived. By 1981, 91 of the 220 cast and crew members
on the set of The Conqueror had developed cancer. And 46 of them had died, including Wayne,
lead actress Susan Hayward, and director Dick Powell. Wayne was friends with many American presidents,
including Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford,
Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. He was especially supportive of Nixon, whom
he rallied for in the 1960 presidential election. But Wayne was also a good sport. When Kennedy won the election that year, he
received a telegram from Wayne expressing "congratulations from the loyal opposition." And when Kennedy was assassinated three years
later, Wayne was as devastated as anyone else. Indeed, Wayne reportedly aimed to be fair-minded
when it came to politics. When his friend Barry Goldwater lost the 1964
election, he again bowed gracefully to the loss. But when the chance came to vote for Nixon
again in 1968, he once more became a huge supporter. The support was reciprocal, as Nixon appreciated
that Wayne had a way with the blue-collar voters. After Nixon won the election, the two remained
good friends, even when the president became embroiled in the infamous Watergate scandal
and subsequently resigned in 1974. "He probably should've just stood up at the
very beginning and said, 'Anybody that's done something wrong, go to jail.' He didn't do it soon enough." In 1976, John Wayne appeared on the big screen
for the last time in The Shootist, which co-starred Lauren Bacall and Ron Howard. The film was, appropriately enough, about
an aging Old West gunman who was dying from cancer. After Wayne's character, J.B. Brooks, is diagnosed
as terminal, he chooses to meet his maker in a gunfight. The John Wayne Heritage heralds it as being
"among his greatest performances." "Most men, regardless of cause or need, aren't
willing, and they blink an eye or draw breath before they pull the trigger." Because Wayne himself had battled cancer,
the general public assumed that he still had it during production of The Shootist. The actor was indeed clearly ailing during
filming, which was evidenced by his character grunting and groaning as he moved around. In truth, though, Wayne actually didn't have
cancer during filming, having kicked his illness back in 1969. He would later suffer a bout with stomach
cancer in 1975, but it went into remission before The Shootist was filmed. During production, he also was hospitalized
with a bad case of the flu, but he nevertheless showed no signs of slowing down. He actually had another movie booked that
he was planning on appearing in called Beau John. It was intended to be a light comedy about
the patriarch of a Kentucky family during the 1920s. Unfortunately, Wayne's stomach cancer returned
in January 1979, and he died on June 11 of that year. In 2019, a 1971 Playboy interview with Wayne
resurfaced. In it, the actor expressed some incendiary
views, such as, "I believe in white supremacy until the blacks
are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions
of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people." Wayne also voiced his beliefs that Black people
needed better education opportunities, that the slavery of long ago wasn't his generation's
fault, and that taking American land from indigenous people was a matter of survival. As he put it, "I don't feel we did wrong in taking this
great country away from [Native Americans], if that's what you're asking. Our so-called stealing of this country from
them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed
new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves." "I am sad to see minorities make so much of
themselves as a hyphenated American." Wayne also voiced his displeasure with socialism
in the interview, saying at one point, "You can't whine and bellyache 'cause somebody
else got a good break and you didn't, like these Indians are. We'll all be on a reservation soon if the
socialists keep subsidizing groups like them with our tax money." "There shouldn't be so much whining and bellyaching." The interview prompted many responses, including
some people considering the possibility that John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California,
should be renamed. Clearly, like many icons of the entertainment
industry, Wayne had a controversial side that persists to this day. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite
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