Hi,
I started this post from an idea that Baron had (and it's a great one :D )

We can post magazine articals and interviews with the Duke. Be sure to post links or all the information with your post. This will aid us all on looking up great John Wayne info. :D

even thou I'm posting this the idea is totally the Barons.
This should be a fast growing post with great links to John Wayne info.

Thanks Baron
Monique ;)

I think it would be a good addition to have a seperate form for "articles, news releases", et cetera. And while we're at it, how about a seperate form for "polls"? It seems they are quite popular, those are the posts new members reply to the most, and it's interesting to read what other JW addicts favorites are. Right now however, they are repeating themselves, with new polls very much identical to earlier ones. So if "polls" would be seperated, it would be more fun. Just a suggestion to Kevin.

I agree, I put for a vote by the members to have seprate forums. What do all of you say??

John Wayne Everything about Him was Huge a soldier's Story by Steve Connatser.

Man, my life was bleak when John Wayne walked into it. I had been plucked out of graduate school and married life and thrown into boot camp. There drill sergeants tried to convince me through regimentation and rote and rhyme that "I wanta go to Vietnam, doo dah, doo dah. I want to kill some Charlie Cong doo dah, doo dah."
Ft. Polk La, Ft. Sill Ok, and Ft. Hood in Texas did little to help the Army's case that this country was worth giving my life for. No, I was already enamored with a different America. Through my family's car window each summer as a boy I had seen most of the 48 states. I had bought a decal from each one, but thank goodness my folks wouldn't let me apply them or I wouldn't been able to see out of the same window the beauty of this country. I mostly fell in love with the west on those trips, having grown up with the ideas of the cowboys projected up on the screen: the wide open horizons, the rugged individual, the sense of right and wrong and chivalry, the gifts and commands of God.
But now I was in a strange America. I was in the burn center of Brooke Army Hospital, San Antonio, Texas. I had been in a horrific collision in which my car had exploded and rolled over several times, coming to a rest on its side.
It was while I was trapped inside the car, trying to open the door above me, as I was surrounded by flames, that my hero came along. But this is not the John Wayne part. Out of nowhere, in the middle of the Texas hill country, a young Mexican-American kid jumped on top of this burning car, jerked open the door and pulled me out. He helped me shove the car onto it's melting tires so we could rescue my unconsciouse wife. For his incredible bravery, the kid was later awarded the Carnegie Hero medal, the highest civilian award for heroism. The clincher is that his own brother had died in a car fire just a week or so earlier, and yet he still risked his life to save mine.
So here I was in the best burn center in the world, being treated alongside the napalm and helicopter crash victims direct from Vietnam. Characters that would fill a John Irving novel illustrated by Chester Gould milled around. Fred, who's face melted in a fire started from his own cigarette on his own mattress during his own drunken stupor, would meander around all night, clinking through everyone's belongings, drinking all the English Leather he could find. There was Jerome, the orderly whose falsetto butchering of Frances Langford's song announcing, "I'm in the mood for blood" served as our wake-up call from morphine nightmares. There was a Scream, a character with no nose and a permanetly open hole for a mouth. There was a Vincent, as in Van Gogh, because his face was in globular strokes of layered and shinny tissue, who loved to hide in the room where they kept the huge jars of liquid filled with thin sheets of pig skin and human skin. Even though my life had bottomed out, for some reason I was glad to have it.
Into this otherwordly menagerie, one day-out of the blue, with no fan fare or press corps or sidekicks-walked John Wayne. He ambled up to me and stuck out his huge left hand. His palm filled mine so the outside joint of my thumb couldn't bend around his thickness and the third joint on my middle finger couldn't crook on the far side of his hand. The wrinkles in his mighty face were inches deep. He was bigger than life, all right; especially compared to mine at the time. He put his other hand on my crewcut and rubbed it. He said,"We're proud of you, son. Hang in there. Be good" Then he was gone.
Gary Wills, in his book John Waynes America, ask why we believe in this man. I'll tell you why I believed. Because he believed in us. Not because he saved someone's life in a movie screen. That Mexican-American kid is my hero for the real life version of that. I understand the difference. On the top floor of the hospital was President Lyndon Johnson, recovering from a dreadful fall-from favor with the American people-and a heart attack. Perhaps Mr. johnson was too ill to come downstairs to see the troops he had sent around the world to Vietnam. I was instead being visited by John Wayne. Neither of us were war heros in reality,and, to drive home the point, we were surrounded by the true ones. Had I meant to make him think that I had been wounded in battle just because I was in the Army and in the Army Hospital? No. Had he meant to make me believe he was a true soldier because he appeared in war films? I don't know, But I don't think so. John Wayne believed in us-soldiers, Americans, individualist, young men. And he just dropped by to tell us so.
At one time I was hurting and life was bleak and in walked John Wayne. Thanks, Duke.

From Cowboys and Indians Magazine Sept. 1997

I had tears in my eyes typing that one. Yes John Wayne was much, much more than an actor.

Monique ;)

Monique, thank you for the story. You getting enough coffee? Just joking

Brian
Tulalip Wa

Baron, itdo, I agree totally :rolleyes:

Monique ;)

Hello :rolleyes:

I'm also bringing this one back to the top :huh:

If you have any Media links or articals post them here :rolleyes:

Monique ;)

um.. Please credit your source! (AP, Reuters, etc.)

:)


Kevin

I love reading articles about John Wayne. Especially those written while he was alive. so here are a few links to articles that I have on my site. Enjoy the read!

Rona Barrett interview with John Wayne (http://www.dukelestweforget.com/rona_interviews_john_wayne.htm)

Excerpts from his Playboy interview (http://www.dukelestweforget.com/following_excerpts_are_from_the_.htm)

"The Last Cowboy" from US Magazine by James Bacon, June 1978 ('http://www.dukelestweforget.com/john_wayne1.htm')

Time Magazine "Last Hero" August 1969 ('http://www.dukelestweforget.com/john_wayne_as_the_last_hero.htm')

"The Right And The Wrong Way To Love" from PhotoPlay May 1973 ('http://www.dukelestweforget.com/article_from_photoplay.htm')

I hope you all enjoy them. dukefan1

p.s. If anyone wants to look around the site after reading the articles, it has a frames menue and you can't access it from the above links, so here is the home page address Lest We Forget (http://www.dukelestweforget.com)

Dukefan1 :rolleyes:

Thank you very much for those links :D

I really enjoy your website :D

Monique ;)

Wow, that was quite a story. I can't think of any more to say!

Here's another article from 1930 that gives you a glance at the start of a rising star! This article was in a 1930 December issue of Photoplay magazine. Enjoy!

OH, FOR A HAIRCUT
December, 1930. Photoplay magazine by Miriam Hughes

He hasn’t had a haircut since February. And when they told him he was to have the lead in “The Painted Lady”, he stroked his long locks and asked if he were to be given the title roll.
John Wayne is six feet and two inches tall and weighs 198 pounds. He’d give five hundred dollars (if he had it) if they’d let him get a haircut tomorrow. But such is the price of fame.
John Wayne (Duke Morrison to you football fans) began his picture career as a prop man. And, if you were to see him in the flesh, you’d believe him when he says he had no intention whatsoever of becoming an actor.
He won by a walk. Literally!
Here’s the story. In 1923, a freshman at the University of Southern California, he made the football team, and during the summer, the school found a job for him and Don Williams, also on the varsity, at the Fox Studio. Tom Mix told the two boys that he wanted them as trainers and that he would take them on location to Colorado with him. In the meantime they were put on what is known as the swing gang in the prop room. When you’re on the swing gang, you’re sort of a glorified furniture mover, and not too darned glorified.
Weeks went by and the boys heard no word from Mix. They discovered that he had gone to Colorado without them. He had forgotten. Don Williams gave up in disgust, but John Wayne worked on and the next summer, he was put on a company as prop man, which was a better job. During that year, he broke his ankle and didn’t play football until the term was almost over. He expected to return to school in the fall, but a loan which he hoped for didn’t come through and he had to go to work.
He had been a good prop man and he got a steady job with the Fox company. He hoped that, perhaps, if he worked hard and kept his eyes open some day he might become a director.
One morning he was on his way to his set carrying a table. Raoul Walsh was standing talking to a friend. He didn’t know Walsh.

”Who is that fellow?” asked the director.
“Prop boy on John Ford’s company.”
“I like his walk”, said Walsh, “He might be ok for the lead in The Big Trail.”
“Shall I call him and tell him you want to see him?” asked the friend.
“No”, said Walsh, “I’ll wait until he passes this way again.”

Job like, the director waited. He watched the door to the stage. Forty-five minutes passed, and at last the lad returned, this time without the table, on the way to the prop room. Walsh called to him.

“Do you mind letting your hair grow?”
“Err- - no.” said John, who had been in the picture business long enough to know about some of the maniacal requests that are made.
“Then let it grow. I want to make a test of you.” And the director left the boy standing there with his chin on his chest and his eyes bulged!

Weeks passed. And John shunned the barbers. At last, he began to think that, like Mix, Walsh had forgotten about him. But the director remembered the prop boy with the interesting walk. A test was made and John was handed the lead in the most important picture that Fox has ever made, The Big Trail. On this film, the company places high hopes. The company traveled thousands of miles and spared no expense or energy in getting the effects they wanted.
And John Wayne, an absolutely inexperienced lad, plays the leading roll, that of the out-door, trail-hitting Breck Coleman.
He is shy, boyish, with that same appeal that made Charlie Farrell a delight to fans. Yet he has more energy and virility and less of whimsy then Charlie has. His eyes are grey, his hair, dark brown.
If he doesn’t go Hollywood he’ll be a big star some day. He’s got the stuff it takes. He had never been in a saddle until a few weeks before the picture began, and in one of the scenes, he went charging into a herd of buffalo on a skittish horse. The hardships, the dangers which the picture demanded meant nothing to John Wayne.
Many a lad has been chosen, many a one has failed but John has a better chance of staying simple and unaffected then the average. Don’t forget he has seen the other side. He’s been one of that legion behind the lights. He knows what happens to stars grandeur complex.
“I think”, he said earnestly, “that I’ve got sense enough and that I’ve seen enough of the other kind to keep myself level-headed. I’ve heard the prop men and electricians talk about these people who go Hollywood. And I know that nobody, in Hollywood, can lead a life apart. If you don’t act right around the sets they catch on to you at once. And it doesn’t pay.”
He was not frightened riding into a herd of buffalo, nor of climbing over a steep precipice clinging to a rope. He was frightened, like a little child in the dark, of his first scene. “But Walsh was so great to me” he says. “He helped me so much that I even got over that pretty soon.”
The Big Trail is The Covered Wagon of the talkies. And John Wayne is its most sensational actor.

And he didn’t want to be an actor. That is the kind of men to watch out for. Remember the fellow that you coaxed to get into the poker game? He walked off with the money, didn’t he?

Hello :rolleyes:

Thank you Dukefan1 :D I really enjoyed that artical :unsure:

Monique ;)

Hello :rolleyes:
Posted on AOL


LONDON (July 31) - Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was so outraged at the anti-communism of film star John Wayne that he plotted to have him murdered, according to a new biography of the American icon.

"John Wayne - The man behind the myth" by British writer and actor Michael Munn says there were several attempts in the late 1940s and early 1950s to kill the man known to audiences around the world as "Duke."

In the first attempt, two Russian assassins posing as FBI agents tried to kill Wayne in his office at Warner Brothers studios in Hollywood. But the plot was uncovered and the would-be killers captured, the book says, citing several sources including director Orson Welles.

The book says the Soviet plots were cancelled after Stalin's death in 1953, by his successor Nikita Krushchev, who was a fan of the larger-than-life star of more than 100 films.

"That was a decision of Stalin during his last five mad years. When Stalin died I rescinded that order," the book quotes Krushchev as telling Wayne during a private meeting in 1958.

But it says American communist groups took up the cudgels against Wayne who was a supporter of the anti-communist witch-hunt led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, citing an attempt in Mexico on the set of the film "Hondo."

Born Marion Morrison on May 26, 1907, Wayne survived these attempts and another by a sniper during a trip to visit American troops in Vietnam in 1966. He died of cancer in 1979.

07/31/03 06:00 ET

Monique ;)

Hello :rolleyes:

More found on aol :huh:

Propaganda and American Values in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
by Laurel Westbrook

Fifty years ago pro-American propaganda was common in Hollywood produced movies, as were films deeply rooted in American values such as manliness, independence, and intelligence. Films starring John Wayne are exceptional examples of propaganda films that embody these American values. In his book, John Wayne's America, Garry Wills touches on aspects of anti-communist propaganda in the film She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and discusses how Wayne's characters embody American virtues. But Wills fails to fully flesh out these two main arguments because he does not evaluate the roles of minorities and he fails to analyze the character traits that are presented as desirable. He argues that "Wayne became the pattern of manly American virtue" (30), but he misses a major aspect of American virtue presented in the film - intelligence. Had Wills dealt with intelligence and minorities in his evaluation this film, he could have strengthened his argument that it embodies American values and is an anti-communist propaganda piece.

In the movie, Wayne plays Captain Nathan Brittles, an old father figure about to retire from the U.S. Cavalry. But, given confidence from their victory at the Battle of Little Big Horn, the Indians are on the war path. Brittles has to defeat the Native Americans to save the frontier. If the "Indian uprising" is not stopped then "it would be one hundred years before another wagon train dared to cross the plains" claims the narrator during the opening scenes. However, the cavalry has orders not to attack the Native Americans, so Brittles must come up with a clever way to evade these instructions and defeat the Native Americans. To do that, he orders his men to chase away the enemy's horses (instead of directly attacking the Native Americans), thereby eliminating their strength. The mission is successful and the frontier is saved - the cavalry continues to protect the nation and "wherever they [ride] and whatever they [fight] for, that place [becomes] the United States," the narrator concludes.

According to Wills, "the most interesting, and politically the most important" (180), theme in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is unity. This is primarily because he sees this film as a propaganda piece aimed at motivating Americans to forget their differences and join together to fight the Communists. But Wills only notes one side of unity in the movie and so fails to see all of the propaganda in the film. Wills only discusses the solidarity of the many fractions within the United States as shown through the "reconciliation between the veterans of the Civil War" (180). In the film, some of the men in the United States Cavalry fought for the North and some fought for the South, but now they have allied together to fight the Native Americans. Because of his blindness to the roles of minorities, Wills does not notice that the theme of unity also runs through the actions of the Native Americans. Their solidarity is clearly shown in the opening of the movie when the narrator says, "From the Canadian border to the Rio Bravo 10,000 Indians - Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, Sioux and Apache under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, Gall and Crow King - are uniting in a common war against the United States Cavalry."

In this movie, the Civil War veterans unite in the cavalry in a common war against the Native Americans. The parallel to that, which Wills misses, are the groups of Native Americans who united in a common war against the United States Cavalry. The idea being pushed in this film is that unity is strength and that dissenting groups within the nation should join together to fight against groups threatening the nation. What makes the war between Native Americans and the cavalry interesting in this movie is that they are worthy opponents. What makes both groups strong is their unity. This film uses two different groups to make its point doubly clear that solidarity equals strength. This message was especially important at the time because the U.S. was beginning to fight the Cold War and needed Americans to put up a solid front against communism.


She Wore a Yellow Ribbon was released in 1949 and at that time, "national unity for the great Cold War effort was a theme of growing insistence" (180). It was the year that the Communist party came to power in China and the Soviet Union exploded their first atomic bomb. America was no longer the sole world leader because the communists had the same deadly power to destroy nations in nuclear war. One way to strengthen the nation against communism was through national unity. And though Wills does see that this film is clearly a propaganda piece aimed towards that goal, he fails to observe all of the anti-communist propaganda in the movie.

The key to deciphering director John Ford's message is what causes the Native Americans to lose. In the film, there are two worthy opponents of equal strength, just like the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. But, the Native American defenses have one major flaw that allow the Americans to win: the young braves refuse to listen to the chiefs. In contrast, the young cavalry members always listen to Wayne's wisdom. In the movie, Wayne goes into the Native American's camp to speak to an old friend, a chief. While there he and Lieutenant Tyree (Ben Johnson) have an opportunity to observe where the horses are kept and to discover the best approach to drive them off. Because the Native Americans are not united under one strong and experienced leader they allow a spy into their camp and this leads to their downfall.

This movie is an example of media propaganda attempting to manipulate U.S. citizens into uniting against communism. There are two main messages that appear when one looks at the defeat of the Native Americans. One is that in order to be strong and to protect our country, Americans must follow an experienced leader. The Native Americans were defeated because the young braves ignored the chief. This film tells the youth of America to either listen to their elders or suffer the consequences of the defeat of the nation. The second message is a map on how to defeat the communists. If one replaces the Native Americans in this film with communists and the horses with the atom bomb, one can see that Ford is saying that spying on the enemy and removing their strength is the way to protect the U.S.

Wills' second main argument is that "the Wayne idea drew ... deeply upon the largest myths of [the American] past - of the frontier, of a purifying landscape, of American exceptionalism, of discipline as the condition of rule" (30). But, Wills forgets one of the great themes of American history - intelligence. Americans are told that they won the American Revolution because they outwitted the British. It was not strength that gave them freedom, but intelligence. This virtue of intelligence has been imbedded into the idea of ideal manliness. The ideal American man, as Wayne embodies him, is not "book smart" but has an intelligence more like "street smarts" that allows him to outwit stronger opponents.


This intelligence is presented as a virtue in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Because Captain Brittles is intelligent enough to think of a way to circumvent his orders, he is able to weaken the Native Americans and save the frontier without actually breaking any rules. Intelligence is also presented as a virtue in a comic scene early in the movie. In the film, there are two lieutenants fighting for the affection of the only young woman at Fort Starke, played by Joanne Dru. One of them wants to take Dru on a picnic and the other is not allowing the couple to leave the fort. Wayne walks up, hears each side of the argument and says that the lieutenant may leave the fort to go on the picnic. As Dru smiles happily, Wayne looks at her and says that she may not leave, though, because it is too dangerous. The lieutenant is forced to go on the picnic by himself. This humorous scene serves to introduce Brittles' intelligence. Wayne also uses his wit in the film to help protect a fellow Cavalry member from himself (he is an alcoholic). Wayne looked out for Sergeant Quincannon the whole movie but when it is time for him to retire, he knows he must keep the sergeant away from alcohol until it is Quincannon's time to retire (about two weeks away) so that he does not get in trouble and lose his pension. To do that, Brittles tells the sergeant to try on his civilian suit to see if the sergeant should get one also. He then gives him some money and tells him to go get a drink. Wayne then goes and tells some men to arrest the sergeant for being out of uniform and under the influence and to lock him up for two weeks as a punishment. Brittles' wit helped protect a loyal friend. Brittles's strengths as a strong leader and a good person come from his intelligence.

In fact, this theme of intelligence as an American virtue is so strong that is persists even in more modern films. Today one often sees movies that reflect the same values or have the same themes as John Wayne's movies. There are many action movies where the main character outwits his opponent in order to save the day, just as Wayne did in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. An example of this would be the movie Speed. In this film, an angry ex-cop wires a bus so that it will explode if it goes under 50 miles per hour and puts a video camera into the bus so that he can make sure that the police do not try and remove passengers. The "bad guy" is in control, so the hero, played by Keanu Reeves, has to outwit him to save the passengers, reinforcing intelligence as an American virtue. To do this, he makes the video loop an image of the passengers just sitting on the bus so that he can remove the passengers without the ex-cop seeing.

There are also many movies today filled with pro-American propaganda, just like Wayne's movies. Often these films use the plot of America versus an equal opponent where a spy must go into enemy territory to weaken the adversary and gain American victory. In the movie Independence Day, Americans are forced to fight aliens that threaten to destroy the planet, just like Americans had to fight Native Americans trying to take over the frontier in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. In Independence Day, both the U.S. and the aliens are strong, so the Americans need a special advantage to win. To defeat the aliens, the U.S. sends a hacker into the alien mother ship in a small alien space ship that had crashed to Earth. The hacker makes it so that the shields of the alien's ships drop so that the Americans can shoot and destroy them. There is a clear parallel: in both movies spies are sent into enemy territory to weaken the enemy and help the Americans save their country.

When looking at movies today, it becomes clear that many of the same basic values and themes present in movies from the 1940's and 1950's are still quite popular today. One might ask why those same ideas have survived for over 50 years. The answer can be found in an analysis of the basic nature of these ideas. Pro-American propaganda has continually surfaced in Hollywood films because Americans are making the films. American values of intelligence and manliness are essential parts of the American psyche that grew out of our history and our belief systems. They are so entrenched in the American mind that they will probably still be present in media in another 50 years. Since these ideas are so established we often do not notice them and so do not realize that we are promoting them. By failing to notice the extent that these ideas permeated She Wore a Yellow Ribbon even while looking for these themes, Wills demonstrates how entrenched they are.








Monique ;)

Hello :rolleyes:
More from aol


Thou Shall Not Lie
by Danny Andrews

John Wayne was very "charismatic"1 in his movies, so much in fact that he came to embody what pop culture at that time defined to be a man. He became a cultural icon.2 But whose icon was he? John Wayne taught white teenage boys what it meant to be a man. Who were black boys supposed to look up to? Were they supposed to learn how to be a man from someone who looked nothing like them? John Wayne embodied American ideals of the time, but was this who he really was? No, Wayne was created. He was the male beauty myth. The people that Wayne portrayed on television were nothing like his real life persona. So should he really be the symbol of manhood? Did John Wayne teach boys how to be men, or did he teach them to sacrifice their true beliefs in order to be "successful"? In his embodiment of American ideals about gender roles did he perpetuate the female beauty myth? Wills, the author of John Wayne's America, says that The Quiet Man is a feminist movie. Is it really? How can a movie that was directed by a chauvinist be a feminist? "If popular culture was a religion, John Wayne would be a Saint." 3 One very important commandment has been forgotten-thou shall not lie. This is indeed what Wayne did-lived a lie.

Marion Morrison came from a poor family, which originated in Iowa and migrated to California. Marion was a normal kid in high school, getting involved in activities such as football, student government, YMCA, Masonic youth group, etc.4 He was a young honest student in those days. Morrison then received a football scholarship to the University of Southern California. After getting injured Marion's scholarship was taken away, hence his dream of going to college was also taken away; thus he needed to find a new way to make a living. His first job was moving props in a production studio, where a director by the name of Raoul Walsh saw Morrison and thought that he had the perfect physique to be a star.5 This was the beginning of John Wayne's career and the dishonesty that would come to be synonymous with the existence of Marion Morrison.

The road to success for John Wayne was not easy. After his first role in The Big Trail, which was directed by Walsh, Wayne was subjected to over a decade of bit parts and B-movies. After doing movies such as Stagecoach, John Wayne became a household name. During these years Marion Morrison worked with many people, such as Yakima Canutt and John Ford, who taught him how to be the John Wayne that many grew to know and admire. The way he moved, ironically the reason his football scholarship was taken away, the way he spoke, his statuesque poses, all added to his charisma and what led to him becoming an American icon of those times and still of today.

John Wayne had become the symbol of manhood. He embodied the very essence of what a man should be. What kind of man? John Wayne was an icon for white boys and men. Professor Neil Henry once said in lecture that Wayne was an icon for black culture also. Henry may have idolized Wayne, but for the most part many African Americans did not. My father and my uncles said that they idolized people like Sidney Poitier not Wayne. For teenage white boys who were growing up in this time, they had an icon, someone who looked like them. Who did black youths have? Were black youths not worthy of a hero? As Peter Jennings said, "this country thrives on having heroes, they give you something to look up to,"6 something to strive for. What were blacks supposed to strive for? "Men learned what acceptable behavior was, from John Wayne."7 Drinking and smoking was cool and became synonymous with masculinity. Instead of Wayne teaching these boys to go to school, or to learn a trade he taught them how to utilize substances. If that is what an icon is then maybe Black youths were not the unlucky ones after all. However, the lack of a role model in the black community may have led black youths to many of the same substances to which white children were led.

John Wayne embodied American masculinity ideals. He was a tough guy, " the guy who kicked ass."8 But according to Wills, the guy who kicked ass, Wayne's ass in particular, was John Ford. In the studio Ford would tell his actors to "assume the position"9 which would entail them bending over so that he could kick them in their behinds. Wayne gave Ford a sense of power. Who would give Wayne his sense of control?

In his real life John Wayne, "sought out women who came from the macho Latin culture of supportive (if not downright submissive) women.10 Was this overcompensation for the lack of control that he had off screen? In the movie The Quiet Man, John Wayne goes after a very feisty red-head, at first this seemed commendable, until the end of the movie where her true colors were exposed. She was just as submissive as all the women with whom he was involved, both on and off-screen. There were often times when Wayne did not agree with a director but he would not say anything. "Men are supposed to be quiet, restrain their feelings,"11 and follow orders when given by a superior, had John Wayne fallen prey to the male beauty myth which he created? Did he teach young boys to be independent or did he teach them to be subordinate and to suppress all their feelings? The cycle of over-compensation for the lack of power, among 'powerful' men such as John Ford and John Wayne, is very ironic. John Ford tells people to assume the position, while Wayne marries submissive immigrants. Are these our heroes and icons, these men whose childhood insecurities have lingered into their adult lives?

John Wayne has been called, "The Man who single-handedly won World War II on television."12 This is a mammoth over-statement. Would a better title be, the man who single-handedly perpetuated the oppression of women; what Naomi Wolf calls "The Beauty Myth"? Since John Wayne was seen as an icon, did his acting in movies such as The Quiet Man; where he drags a woman all the way across town, or throws her on a bed to illustrate that he had control of her since they were married propagate the oppression of women? Men looked to John Wayne for guidance on how to be a real man. John Wayne man-handled his wife, why was it not acceptable for O.J. Simpson (yet another black youth who grew up without an icon to call his own) to take it one step further? Even if Wayne did not agree with the things that he was doing in his movies, his inability to differentiate his life-on and off screen led many to believe that John Wayne and Marion Morrison were one and the same.

"This is definitely not one of those movies that humiliates women," says Wills.13 In this movie a women is dragged around town by the collar of her dress, pushed onto a bed, threatened to be hit with a stick for being unruly, needs a dowry to be considered worthy of marriage, the list goes on and on. The activities mentioned above are anything but feminist. In the book John Wayne does seem to want the lady (Maureen O'Hara) to have a choice in whether she wants to marry him or not; this is because he was American, and in America women had a few more rights than women in Ireland. Is this feminist or an issue of independence? John Ford, the director of The Quiet Man, was a chauvinist, who did not think very highly of women, his feelings towards men were tacit. She is told many times that she "must pay her 'marriage debt' of sexual compliance (otherwise the husband would be tempted to fornicate elsewhere)."14 O'Hara is told this by women in the town and even her bishop. Women are never shown together in a group because in Ford's eyes " women should be kept peripheral."15 Lisa Miya-Jervis, editor and publisher of Bitch magazine, defines feminism as "a doctrine that women should have equal political, social, and economic rights as men. According to her definition this movie is not feminist." Conceivably it is a "better treatment of woman's independence"16 however feminism is more profound than the mere independence of women.

Professor Leonard said that pop culture has become a religion, "once we had saints now we have stars."17 Professor Henry agreed with him by going a step further and saying that John Wayne is "The Saint". In a business where "image is more important than the real thing,"18 a celebrity is going to have to tell a lie sooner or later; this is not my issue. My concern is that if one is going to be in a profession where he is going to have to create an image (lie), his name should not be synonymous with that of a Saint's. Thou Shall Not Lie.

Garry Wills has written a very thought provoking book about John Wayne. Although his book seemed to be lacking a profound purpose, it did shed some light on several issues that are still present today. There is the idea of Americans needing someone to look up to and Hollywood being the provider of that someone. The book also illustrates how the media is still run by rich middle-class white men who subject the masses to their points of view. The book also deals with the idea of a beauty myth - both male and female. I found this book rather insightful, however when dedicating three hundred and eighty pages to an "icon", there are some criteria that should go into selecting this person. One such criterion is that of universality, the idea that most, if not all, people should be able to look up to this person.

Today we have a high number of sexual assaults on women, battered spouses, alcoholism and other substance abuses. Keeping in mind that this country is run by people who were influenced by John Wayne, "the Saint," maybe Garry Wills is right, perhaps this is John Wayne's America.


Monique ;)

Hello :rolleyes:
Some more on aol


John Wayne's America: Rio Grande
by Brianna Keilar

In Rio Grande, Kathleen Yorke, played by Maureen O’Hara, arrives by wagon at Fort Starke, a United State Cavalry camp located on the Rio Grande. She encounters an officer who, oblivious to her identity as the wife of the commanding officer of the fort, informs her that unauthorized ladies are not allowed at the post. "I am not unauthorized," retorts Kathleen, "I have a pass signed by General Sheridan." Kathleen climbs down off the wagon, brushing the dust from her clothes, unaware that Colonel Yorke, played by John Wayne, has seen her arrival and is approaching her. When she lifts her head to look around, Kathleen is caught unaware in her husband’s gaze. Her facial expression, conveying her annoyance with the officer, melts into a longing gaze. She bites her lip and touches her chest delicately with her hand. Kathleen has dropped her guard and when she realizes that her desire for "Kirby," as she calls Yorke, is completely visible she quickly masks her yearning. She reverts back to brushing her clothes, embarrassed about the emotions she displayed when surprised by her husband’s presence.

Rio Grande, directed by John Ford, is set during the high point of the conflict between America and the Native Americans. Colonel Yorke has been frustrated by the assaults of a united ring of Indian tribes who have been raiding the camp and nearby villages. After executing the raids, the Indians return to the Mexico side of the river, where the United States Cavalry is unable to legally pursue them, thus the origin of Yorke’s frustration. The plot is complicated by a new group of recruits who have come to the camp for training; among them is Jefferson Yorke, the son of Colonel Yorke who enlisted after failing out of West Point. The Colonel has not seen his son in fifteen years. At this point, the importance of past events is introduced into Rio Grande. Fifteen years prior, the Colonel had been a commander on the Union side of the Civil War, a war that pitted Yorke, a northerner, against his southern wife, Kathleen (O’Hara). During the march of the Union troops down the Shenandoah Valley, Yorke had to give orders to burn the surrounding crops and structures, among them Bridesdale, his wife’s Southern ancestral estate. This ruined Yorke’s marriage, and prior to Kathleen’s arrival at the camp to retrieve Jeff from the front of the Indian conflict, Yorke has not seen her since the Civil War. Rio Grande details the events following Kathleen’s arrival, challenging Colonel Yorke to salvage his marriage and reunite with his son while enduring the hardship of a campaign against the Indian ring across the Rio Grande.

In the reunion of Kathleen and Kirby, these unguarded emotions expressed by O’Hara are the true emotions of Kathleen. Although she harbors a grudge against Kirby, she is still in love with him. In John Wayne’s America, Garry Wills explains that Kathleen "has come to buy her son’s way out of the Army, and she is willing to ingratiate herself with ‘Kirby.’" Wills contends that she uses seduction as a strategy to achieve her objective. (186-187) In his analysis of Rio Grande, Wills captures the essence of the chemistry and resultant emotional blunders between Kathleen and Kirby; unfortunately, he fails in dissecting the strategy that Kathleen uses in influencing Yorke to dismiss Jeff from duty. Kathleen’s tactic in this battle she wages with Yorke, is not to seduce him but to make him feel guilty for the consequences she suffered in the past as a result of his strict sense of duty. Wills does not examine this approach that persists throughout Rio Grande in O’Hara’s dialogue..

To counter Wills’s analysis of Kathleen’s strategy, it is important to first disprove Wills’s contention that Kathleen tries to seduce Yorke. Contrary to Wills’s analysis, Yorke is the character that tries to initiate a physical reconciliation but Kathleen rebuffs him. When Kathleen haughtily explains to Kirby that she has come to pay one hundred dollars "in Yankee gold" for Jeff’s release, he tells her that the application requires his signature and that he will not sign. "You’ve overlooked several other important details," Yorke explains. "Number one: you’re a fine figure of a woman." Kirby approaches Kathleen, his face an inch from her, his body pressed against her in invitation. Kathleen turns from him. "And number two: you probably haven’t eaten," says a deflated Kirby. John Wayne’s America ignores Kathleen’s rejection of Kirby and the disappointment in his voice in Wills’s judgement of her beguiling motives. Wills also misinterprets the events of a scene in which Kirby returns from patrol after dark, lights his lamp in his tent and is surprised to find his wife, who had been sitting in the dark. As Kathleen rises from the chair, Kirby grabs her and kisses her passionately. Wills explains that "[Kirby] draws away since he knows she is ‘seducing’ him to get her way on their son" but Kirby actually seems to draw away because he is afraid of showing too much emotion. (187) His past attempt at getting close enough to her so that he could kiss her was met with a denial. "[Kathleen] has planned this," says Wills, "but is flustered by her emotional response…which goes beyond her calculation." (187) Wills is correct in his interpretation of her emotional response to the situation, as surprise and enjoyment inundate her face, but not in his comments about her calculation of the event. Kirby is the active initiator of the kiss and Kathleen has hardly been exerting her feminine wiles in the previous days to "seduce" him into kissing her. These scenes make evident that O’Hara does not py Kathleen as the seductress that Wills eludes to in John Wayne’s America but as a proud woman, who is experiencing honest emotions, and is yet unwilling to succumb to the advances of Kirby.

O’Hara succeeds powerfully in showing the emotions of Kathleen, a woman who is still in love with her husband but continues to nurse the wounds he has inflicted on her southern pride. These emotions of longing and love for Kirby persist throughout the movie but are independent of her mission to return home with Jeff. Wills recognizes these emotions and briefly addresses the chemistry between Kathleen and Kirby but must mistake some of this emotional fumbling as Kathleen’s seduction ploy. >From her very arrival at her husband’s camp, Kathleen causes the conscience of Wayne’s character much guilt. After Kathleen collects herself during her encounter with Kirby in the scene of her arrival, she walks with him towards his tent, passing an officer who salutes them as they go by. The officer is Quincannon, a Sergeant Major who carried out Kirby’s order to burn Bridesdale during the Civil War. "I see you still have that arsonist with you," Kathleen says to Kirby. After Kirby accounts for Quincannon’s reluctance in carrying out the order she replies, "Oh, the reluctant arsonist." If Kathleen were trying to charm her way into getting Jeff out of the cavalry, as Wills suggests, her first encounter with Kirby would necessarily be less abrasive. That Kathleen has refused to see Kirby for the fifteen years since the burning of Bridesdale is evidence of her pride. Wills’s analysis of her attempts to sway Kirby go counter to the proud character that O’Hara portrays in Rio Grande. In trying to persuade Kirby to release Jeff, awakening his guilt is the only method she can implement to achieve her goal and still keep her pride intact. Indeed, Kathleen’s quality of pride is analogous to Kirby’s austere sense of duty in that these traits are the root of the conflict between the two characters. The great loss suffered by the South in the Civil War and that her own husband was an instrument of the army that pillaged her homeland into submission weighs heavily on Kathleen’s pride. She is unwilling to suct her pride to any more assault so she chooses to make Kirby ask himself if he can let his sense of duty destroy Jeff, an event which would devastate her immensely more than the destruction of Bridesdale. In the context of O’Hara’s performance as Kathleen, this moral appeal that she tries to make to Kirby is more plausible than the sexual appeal that Wills proposes.

During Kathleen’s first night at the camp, Kirby leaves the tent to find a wagon in which to sleep so she has comfortable quarters in which to sleep. "I am sorry to dispossess you," Kathleen apologizes. "I dispossessed you more forcibly fifteen years ago," Kirby replies, indicating his regret. This response reveals Kirby’s weakness to Kathleen, that of his suffering conscience. This is a significant aspect of Wayne’s character that Wills fails to analyze in John Wayne’s America. After this night, Kathleen continually assaults Kirby’s sense of duty, drawing on the sorrow it has caused her. Making Kirby feel guilt for his actions becomes cemented as her principal tactic. As Kathleen and Kirby take a walk the following day, Kathleen makes another underhanded assault on Kirby’s conscience. "I’m sorry your sense of duty made you destroy two beautiful things: Bridesdale and us." Kirby also apologizes, noting that she rebuilt Bridesdale. "It was easy…required only physical effort," Kathleen says. This comment brings the conversation back to the delicate topic of their ruined marriage by eluding, in this comment, to the effort it would take to restore the relationship. Kathleen is excellent, almost undetectable, at reverting to this subject which causes Kirby great feelings of regret. She notes a vulnerable moment when he avoids talking about their relationship, instead focusing on her successes with Bridesdale. Channeling back to the topic of rebuilding the marriage, she tells Kirby, "It would be a start if you let Jeff go." Kirby refuses, once again, but not with the adamancy with which he had the day before in the tent. Kirby’s resistance is waning but at this point Kathleen has not attempted to romantically ingratiate herself to Kirby. Thus, another agent must be working to soften the strictly principled Colonel Yorke – his conscience. When Kathleen walks off in response, the camera closes in on Wayne, examining the sorrowful gaze with which he watches O’Hara depart. Kathleen knows by Kirby weak refusal that he is slowly losing in the battle over Jeff and she continues with her efforts.

The next evening, Kathleen joins the officers, her husband, and General Sheridan for dinner. The General bestows upon her the honor of making a toast. "To my only rival, the United States Cavalry," Kathleen toasts, eyes fixated on the Colonel. Kirby, before fellow officers and his commanding general, drinks his entire glass of sherry in one gulp, while casting a challenging gaze on Kathleen. This display of resistance on the part of the Colonel is a façade. It is merely a gesture to maintain respect from his peers. Kathleen is already aware of this as she swallows her entire glass in a graceful tilt of her hand, the corners of her mouth upturned. The next day, Colonel Yorke assigns Jeff to the duty of escorting the wagons of women and children that are being evacuated from the camp as a result of an Indian raid. Wills is correct in interpreting Wayne’s motive to "[send] his son with the wagons of women and children, thinking he will be safer guarding them." (188) Kathleen tells Kirby that she loves him for making this decision. While she was unable to influence Kirby to dismiss Jeff, Kathleen effectively pressured him so that he engaged in nepotism, removing Jeff from the harmful situation of defending the fort.

Kathleen really does love Kirby, but this love is independent of her attempt to influence Kirby towards relieving Jeff of duty. Wills’s brief analysis of these intense, sometimes blundering emotions that are evident in the scenes with Kathleen and Kirby is well directed despite his shortcomings in correctly assigning Kathleen’s motives. In ascribing the role of seductress to O’Hara, Wills is sexist. He negates O’Hara’s rich and powerful portrayal of Kathleen’s honest desire for Kirby in various scenes by explaining them as pretense, an instrument by which to achieve Jeff’s dismissal. This analysis aligns Kathleen with the stereotype of the woman who uses sex for power, when in actuality Kathleen uses an intelligent argument to appeal to Kirby’s conscience. In Rio Grande, Kathleen Yorke goes to Fort Starke to retrieve her son by morally appealing to her husband but she experiences emotions for Kirby that she was not expecting. At no point does she try to "seduce" him as Wills suggests. (187) In scenes that he does not deem as moments of seductive influence by O’Hara, Wills does recognize the poignancy of the interactions between Wayne and O’Hara. "When she seems to relent, he must resist, and vice versa, as they grope their way to honest statement under all the fencing they do over their son’s future, their own past, and the peril that surrounds the fort after her arrival," Wills recognizes. (186) This observation of the interplay of Kathleen and Kirby is insightful yet scarce in Wills’s analysis of Rio Grande. The artistry that director, John Ford, created in the subtleties of interaction between John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in Rio Grande is the most phenomenal aspect of the film and it is all but ignored in Wills’s John Wayne’s America.

Monique ;)

Hello :rolleyes:
Still more

"Gephardt Sneers at 'John Wayne' America"

Posted by Cinnamon Stillwell
Sunday, July 27, 2003


NewsMax.com’s Insider Report sheds light on the bizarre statements of yet another Democratic presidential candidate. Dick Gephardt’s ill-timed sneering at America’s ''John Wayne'' foreign policy and President Bush’s ''machismo,'' came just as news of the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein was made public. It looks like John Wayne knew what he was doing, even if the wimpy Gephardt doesn’t!

The leftist media establishment, as usual, ignored one of the week's juiciest quotes, so we'll just have to highlight it again, and report on its aftermath.

As NewsMax.com pointed out Wednesday, Rep. Dick Gephardt was among the Democrats grumbling even as the U.S. military took out Saddam Hussein's genocidal sons Uday and Qusay. Geppy condemned President Bush's foreign policy as ''machismo'' and ''arrogant unilateralism.''

''Foreign policy isn't a John Wayne movie, where we catch the bad guys, hoist a few cold ones, and then everything fades to black,'' the White House wannabe fumed in a speech to a receptive audience: San Francisco Bar Association.

Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., chairman of the House Policy Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, retorted that Gephardt needed to ''get his facts straight.''

''America did not go it alone,'' Cox noted. ''The only people suggesting that, having removed Saddam, we quit and 'hoist a few cold ones' are the isolationist Democrats to whom Rep. Gephardt was apparently directing his San Francisco remarks.''

And why the slap at John Wayne?

That prissy attempt at an insult might delight a bunch of leftist lawyers in San Francisco, but would Gephardt have the guts to say that to an audience of normal people in Omaha or Pittsburgh or Orlando?

Are the White House wannabes trying to alienate Middle America? Gephardt's goof recalls the boast of zillionaire trial lawyer Sen. John Edwards that he no longer likes country music, owns a gun or pays attention to NASCAR - a triple insult to his fellow North Carolinians. Edwards even had to apologize for once hunting rabbits.

Not coincidentally, Edwards is now in danger of losing his Senate seat as well as his feeble bid for the White House.

Gephardt's curious comment raises questions about what sort of movie star he'd emulate.

An angry reader from Poplar Bluff, Mo., wrote to NewsMax, ''WHAT WE NEED IS MORE JOHN WAYNE AND A HELL OF A LOT LESS FROM THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST DEMOCRATIC PARTY'S LITTLE DICK GEPHARDT!!!''

Another reader wondered if Gephardt preferred a Fred Astaire sort of foreign policy.

But Astaire was a class act all the way. It's safe to say Gephardt would adopt a foreign policy styled after ... Democrat operative and former movie star Barbra Streisand.

After all, babbling Babs' semi-illiterate, error-filled memos last September ordering Gephardt to attack President Bush's Iraq policy were such a hoot that even the media establishment couldn't ignore them.


Monique ;)

Hello :rolleyes:
And another on aol
I'm not to much into the following stories <_<


John Wayne Becomes A Christian Just Before His Death
The only part of this story that anyone connected with it can remember is that Wayne did write a "get-well" note to Schuller's daughter (named Carol, not Cindy) during her convalescence from an auto accident. Schuller's daughter remembers nothing about writing back to him. Here's what Dr. Rich Buhler of Truth or Fiction had to say: "This is an unusual one because those who would have first-hand knowledge of the story do not remember it. The name of Dr. Schuller's daughter who experienced the accident and the loss of her leg is Carol, not Cindy. She tells TruthOrFiction.com that there was a communication from John Wayne after her accident, but says she was so "out of it" that she doesn't remember if she sent a note back to him and, if she did, does not know whether he made a spiritual decision as a result of it. In a sermon titled "Joy...God's Gift To You" that was delivered two years after Carol's accident, Dr. Schuller said that John Wayne did send an autographed picture to Carol with the inscription, "Be Happy, You're Loved!" The timing of the note in the erumor is incorrect. The erumor says John Wayne died three weeks afterwards. Carol Schuller's accident was in 1978. John Wayne died in June of 1979. "

Many believe that Wayne had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1979 shortly before his death. This was based on information by now deceased journalist Alan Dumas. When Dumas was pressed for further information, he admitted that he had invented the story. For more information on Dumas and this story, click here. Many thanks to Robert Rodriguez for the tip on this information.

Barbara Mikkelson of the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society believes that the message is totally false and gives even more reason for it than Dr. Buhler. She says that at the time this dinner was to have occurred, that Wayne rarely went out in public anymore because he was in a fairly advanced stage of his cancer. Ms. Mikkelson really takes Christians to task for "bearing false witness."

Articles

Snopes Truth or Fiction

Original Email Message
This was passed to me and I thought I'd send it to each of you. It's so neat! Most of you know John Wayne as an actor. You may not know what happened to him before he died. This is that story! Robert Schuller's teenage daughter, Cindy, was in a motorcycle accident and had to have her leg amputated. John Wayne is a big fan of Robert Schuller. He heard Dr. Schuller say on one of his programs that his daughter had been in an accident and had to have her leg amputated. John Wayne wrote a note to her saying: Dear Cindy, sorry to hear about your accident. Hope you will be all right. Signed, John Wayne The note was delivered to her and she decided she wanted to write John Wayne a note in reply. She wrote: Dear Mr. Wayne, I got your note. Thanks for writing to me. I like you very much. I am going to be all right because Jesus is going to help me. Mr. Wayne, do you know Jesus? I sure hope you know Jesus, Mr. Wayne, because I cannot imagine Heaven being complete without John Wayne being there. I hope, if you don't know Jesus, that you will give your heart to Jesus right now. See you in Heaven. And she signed her name. She had just put that letter in an envelope, sealed it, and written across the front of it "John Wayne" when a visitor came into her room to see her. He said to her: What are you doing? She said: I just wrote a letter to John Wayne, but I don't know how to get it to him. He said: That's funny, I am going to have dinner with John Wayne tonight at the Newport Club down at Newport Beach. Give it to me and I will give it to him. She gave him the letter and he put it in his coat pocket. There were twelve of them that night sitting around the table for dinner. They were laughing and cutting up and the guy happened to reach in his pocket and felt that letter and remembered. John Wayne was seated at the end of the table and the guy took the letter out and said: Hey, Duke, I was in Schuller's daughter's room today and she wrote you a letter and wanted me to give it to you. Here it is. They passed it down to John Wayne and he opened it. They kept on laughing and cutting up and someone happened to look down at John Wayne. He was crying. One of them said: Hey, Duke, what is the matter? He said (and can't you hear him saying it), " I want to read you this letter." He read the letter. Then he began to weep. He folded it, put it in his pocket, and he pointed to the man who delivered it to him and said: "You go tell that little girl that right now, in this restaurant, right here, John Wayne gives his heart to Jesus Christ and I will see her in heaven." Three weeks later, John Wayne died. You never know how your witness to another will effect their eternity!

I'm not to much into these stories <_<
But maybe someone is <_<

Monique ;)

Hello :rolleyes:
Some more :huh:

The Quiet Man
One of the highlights of the family’s career came in 1951 when ‘The Quiet Man’ was filmed at nearby Ashford Castle. Many of the costumes were tailored by the O’Máille family.

Members of the cast including John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara visited the shop personally, creating a major sensation in Galway City.

Mary O’Máille travelled to Ashford Castle to complete fittings for Maureen O’Hara’s outfits.

The O’Máille’s association with ‘The Quiet Man’ has brought the business international acclaim and to this day tourists travel especially to the store to see where the costumes were made.


Left to right: Frank Ford, John Wayne, Victor McLagan, John Ford (Director) and Barry Fitzgerald (seated)


Monique ;)

Hello :rolleyes:
Anyone know of this movie :huh: John Wayne as a Hockey player :unsure:

Idol of the Crowds (1937)

Directed by
Arthur Lubin

Writing credits
Harold Buckley
George Waggner (story)

Add to
MyMovies
Genre: Drama (more)

Plot Summary: Johnny Hanson wants to make enough money to enlarge his chicken farm. He does this through hockey. Gangsters get involved in trying to get him to... (more)

User Rating: 8.0/10 (6 votes)

Complete credited cast:
John Wayne .... Johnny Hansen
Sheila Bromley .... Helen Dale
Charles Brokaw .... Jack Irwin
Bill Burrud .... Bobby (as Billy Burrud)
Jane Johns .... Peggy
Huntley Gordon .... Harvey Castle
Frank Otto (I) .... Joe Garber
Russell Hopton (I) .... Kelly
Hal Neiman .... Squat Bates
Virginia Brissac .... Mrs. Dale
George Lloyd (I) .... Spike Regan
Clem Bevans .... Andy Moore
Wayne Castle .... Swifty
Lloyd Ford .... Hank
Lee Ford .... Elmer
(more)

Runtime: 60 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Black and White
Sound Mix: Mono


Monique ;)

Hello :rolleyes:

As for the media stuff I posted above :unsure: It's just stuff I found on aol :unsure:

The Story "Thou Shall Not Lie" I think is a crock of #@!#!!# :blink:

I just posted these stories, does not mean I beleive in them :rolleyes:

Monique ;)

Thanks for posting these articles, Monique. Some were an interesting read. I agree with you that "thou shalt not lie" is a crock! And Gary Wills book, John Wayne's America is full of bunk too. It is the only book I have about Duke that I only read once. People try to read something into all the movies John Wayne made. That just takes the pleasure out of it. When asked what message his movie was putting forth, Duke said "If you want to send a message, use Western Union". Why does something always got to mean something. Can't a rock just be a rock? Gary Wills book is the only book about Duke that I never recommend to anyone. But don't confuse it with John Wayne: American . That book is an excellent read. One of the best, in my opinion. Thanks for sharing these, Monique. dukefan1

For those who aren't yet familiar with the publication "Wildest Western", I can highly recommend it. It's a magazine for those who are mainly into westerns, the first issue had JW as cover boy. Well-chosen photographs, good interviews with survivors, fun stuff all around. For those outside the US: you can be a subsriber as well.

Hi Monique i have a few old newspaper clippings from around the tine John Wayne died if there any good. :rolleyes:

Chance :rolleyes:
What ever you post is well welcomed :rolleyes:

Monique ;)

Good Information :rolleyes:

Haunted Gold


Warner Brothers was known in the 1930s as the studio that made successful films fast and cheap. That reputation certainly was not contradicted by Haunted Gold (1932) or many of the other Westerns the studio put out around the same time. Producers Leon Schlesinger and Sid Rogell hit on the idea of remaking several of cowboy star Ken Maynard's most popular silent Westerns into sound films, using footage from the original versions. Because Warners had taken over First National Pictures, where Maynard made his box office hits, the producers could use all the footage they wanted. Hiring Maynard himself was another matter. He was now under contract to Universal and no longer the fit-and-trim action figure of his earlier films. So to re-do one of Maynard's best-loved movies, The Phantom City (1928), they found a young actor they could dress up in Maynard¨Vs costumes and used him to re-shoot the interiors and close-ups. In addition, they edited in exciting action scenes from Maynard's other high-budget Westerns, including all the famous stunts the expert horseman was known for in his youthful days on screen.

The man they found was the 25-year-old John Wayne, who already had 30 pictures under his belt, most of them Westerns. He had the same wiry build as Maynard and looked enough like him to match the close-ups and the action shots. Between mid-1932 and mid-1933, Warners put Wayne in six Westerns (always playing a character with the first name "John"), four of them direct remakes of Maynard¨Vs movies and the other two using footage from the cowboy star¨Vs silents. Westerns were not Warners¨V forte nor something they were much interested in; this was the studio best known for gritty Depression-era urban dramas and crime stories, such as Little Caesar (1931) and The Public Enemy (1931). But the Wayne movies, made for rural markets and the bottom half of double features, got good reviews and returned excellent profits (and why not, recycling footage and hiring Wayne for only $825 a picture?). Still, it would be seven years and 45 more pictures before Wayne broke through to major stardom in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939).

Wayne almost didn't get put under contract. When his tireless agent Al Kingston brought him to Warners, studio executives were reluctant to hire someone they heard was an irresponsible drinker and womanizer. But Wayne revealed the source of the rumors to be Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn, a man the Warners producers didn¨Vt much care for anyway, and Wayne was signed. This was the first movie he did under his new short-term contract, although it was the third released. The rather odd story finds him returning to a mine to claim his half share in it. There he meets a woman whose father has lost his half of the mine to an outlaw. Wayne is forced to contend with the outlaw and his gang as well as a mysterious cloaked phantom who lives deep in the mine shafts. The story and script were by Adele Buffington, who had a long career in movies - from 1919 to 1958 - writing mostly B-Westerns.

Director: Mack V. Wright
Producer: Leon Schlesinger
Screenplay: Adele Buffington
Cinematography: Nicholas Musuraca
Editing: William Clemens
Original Music: Leo Forbstein
Cast: John Wayne (John Mason), Sheila Terry (Janet Carter), Erville Alderson (Benedict), Harry Woods (Joe Ryan), Blue Washington (Clarence).
BW-58m.

by Rob Nixon

Monique ;)

good information :rolleyes:

Stagecoach


Geronimo and his band of Apaches have severed the telegraph wires, leaving the town of Tonto, New Mexico, cut off from the rest of the world. In the meantime, a stagecoach is heading out of town for Lordsburg, full of individuals from all walks of society: Dallas, a "fallen lady" who is chased out of town by gossip-mongering society ladies; Dr. Josiah Boone, a doctor whose alcoholism has ruined his practice; Samuel Peacock, a timid whisky drummer; Lucy Mallory, a refined but tough-minded woman who will stop at nothing to be reunited with her cavalry officer husband; Henry Gatewood, a banker who uses his aura of respectability to hide embezzled money; and Hatfield, a Southern gambler with a sketchy past who skips town under the pretext of gallantly protecting Mrs. Mallory. Escorted by the stagecoach driver and Sheriff Curly Wilcox, they embark for Lordsburg. Along the way, they meet up with the notorious Ringo Kid, whom the Sheriff arrests. Before they finally reach Lordsburg, various crises, from childbirth to the climactic Apache raid, reveal the underlying character of each stagecoach rider.

Stagecoach (1939) was director John Ford's first Western since Three Bad Men (1926). Although Ford had earned a reputation as a significant director with films such as The Iron Horse (1924), his early sound films were less successful. By the mid-30s, he had recovered lost ground, winning an Oscar for his direction of The Informer(1935) and becoming one of the most respected and highly paid directors in Hollywood. The source material for the screenplay was a short story by Ernest Haycox entitled "Stage to Lordsburg," published in the April 1937 issue of Collier magazine. As Ford acknowledged, the basic outline of the story resembles the classic Guy de Maupassant short story "Boule de suif." Ford bought the rights to the story for $7500 and his longtime collaborator Dudley Nichols wrote the adaptation. Unable to find support for the project at studios like Fox, MGM and Warner Brothers, Ford finally attracted interest from Selznick International Pictures. The head of production there, Merian C. Cooper, was Ford's old friend and drinking buddy. Although David O. Selznick expressed initial interest in the project, he wavered back and forth and attached various conditions to it, including a demand for big name stars such as Gary Cooper or Marlene Dietrich. Finally, independent producer Walter Wanger took up the project, giving it a relatively low budget of approximately $500,000. Ford agreed to work for $50,000, less than his usual director's fee. Dudley Nichols and the film's cast also agreed to accept reduced salaries.

From the moment we are introduced to John Wayne as the Ringo Kid, with the camera tracking in to an imposing close-up, we know we are in the presence of a major star. Although he had shown some early promise as an actor, Wayne's potential was being squandered in a series of forgettable B-Westerns for Republic Studios. Ford invited Wayne, who was already a good friend, on a weekend boat trip to read the screenplay. "I'm having a hell of a time deciding whom to cast as the Ringo Kid," he said. "You know a lot of young actors, Duke. See what you think." Wayne suggested Lloyd Nolan. "Nolan?" Ford asked incredulously. "Jesus Christ, I just wish to hell I could find some young actor in this town who can ride a horse and act." The next day, as the boat pulled into the harbor, Ford declared, "I have made up my mind. I want you to play the Ringo Kid." It was likely that Ford had Wayne in mind for the role from the beginning. However, he had to work hard to convince Wanger to cast the star of mediocre B-Westerns in the part; and Republic Studios, to which Wayne was still under contract, proved to be a difficult negotiator.

Ford liked to bully actors on the set, and Stagecoach was no exception. At one point he said to Andy Devine, the husky-voiced character actor who plays the coach driver: "You big tub of lard. I don't know why the hell I'm using you in this picture." Undaunted, Devine replied, "Because Ward Bond can't drive six horses." Likewise he attacked Thomas Mitchell, who eventually retorted, "Just remember: I saw Mary of Scotland," effectively humbling the director. Worst of all was Ford's treatment of the Duke. He called him a "big oaf" and a "dumb bastard" and continually criticized his line delivery and manner of walking, even how he washed his face on camera. However, at least part of this was to provoke the actor into giving a stronger performance; Claire Trevor recalls how Ford grabbed Duke by the chin and shook him. "Why are you moving your mouth so much?" he said. "Don't you know you don't act with your mouth in pictures? You act with your eyes." Wayne tolerated the rough treatment and rose to the challenge, reaching a new plateau as an actor. Ford helped cement the impression that Wayne makes in the film by giving him plenty of expressive reaction shots throughout the picture.

Legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt also deserves to be noted for his contributions to the picture. One scene, which required the stagecoach full of passengers to be floated across a river, was deemed impossible by technicians to pull off and John Ford considered removing it from the script altogether. Canutt, however, suggested using hollow logs tied to the coach; the air would give them increased buoyancy, offsetting the weight of the fully loaded coach. In addition, an underwater cable was used to help pull the stagecoach. Canutt's plan worked, and the scene was retained for the film. But it is for Canutt's magnificent (and dangerous) stunts on this film that he is remembered today. In the most striking of these, he plays an Indian who rides alongside the coach at full speed - approximately forty miles per hour - and transfers from the horse he is riding to a horse on the team. After he is shot by Wayne, he falls between the two lead horses and hangs from the rig before letting go and allowing the horses and the stagecoach to pass over him. The stunt, which was broken up into two segments for the shoot, required precise timing and movements since any miscalculations or slips on Canutt's part could have been deadly. Steven Spielberg made an homage to this scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) when Indiana Jones slides down the hood of a moving car, passes underneath it and is dragged behind.

Although it was not the first film to use Monument Valley as a location, Stagecoach did much to popularize it. Part of the vast Navajo reservation near the Utah/Arizona border, the desolate landscape with its striking sandstone buttes and mesas, lends a mythic quality to the film, dwarfing the vulnerable stagecoach party in the presence of eternal and impersonal Nature. It came to embody the very idea of the West for John Ford, who used Monument Valley in many of his later films. At the time the film was made, the region was still sparsely populated and not readily accessible, making work difficult for the film crew. Yet as prominent as it appears in the film, the location was in fact used surprisingly little. The Apache raid was shot on the Muroc dry lake bed near Victorville, California, and the river crossing took place on the Kern River near Kernville, California, to name only a couple of other locations that were used. The interior scenes of the coach were all shot in a studio, and the town sequences were shot on Hollywood backlots. Moreover, to focus solely on the admittedly stunning outdoor landscapes is to lose sight of the film's stylistic richness as a whole: the beautifully lit nighttime scene in Lordsburg, with graceful tracking shots following Dallas and the Ringo Kid on their stroll through the town; and the taut editing of the conversations inside the stagecoach, with their perfectly timed reaction shots. Orson Welles later claimed to have watched the film dozens of times before directing his own masterpiece, Citizen Kane (1941).

Stagecoach received seven Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Score, Best Art Direction and Best Supporting Actor (Thomas Mitchell). Even in the face of the Gone With the Wind juggernaut at that year's Academy Awards ceremony, it won two awards - for Thomas Mitchell's performance as Dr. Josiah Boone and for the score, a deft combination of folk tunes, including the hymn "Shall We Gather at the River," which seems to have been used in every subsequent Ford Western and is darkly parodied in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969).

Director: John Ford
Producer: Walter Wanger
Screenplay: Dudley Nichols, based on Stage to Lordsburg by Ernest Haycox
Cinematography: Bert Glennon
Editing: Dorothy Spencer and Walter Reynolds
Music: Louis Gruenberg, Richard Hageman, W. Franke Harling, John Leipold, Leo Shuken
Art Direction: Alexander Toluboff
Principal cast: John Wayne (The Ringo Kid), Claire Trevor (Dallas), John Carradine (Hatfield), Thomas Mitchell (Dr. Josiah Boone), Andy Devine (Buck Rickabaugh), Donald Meek (Mr. Samuel Peakock), Louise Platt (Lucy Mallory), George Bancroft (Sheriff Curly Wilcox), Berton Churchill (Henry Gatewood), Tim Holt (Lt. Blanchard).
BW-97m.

by James Steffen

Monique ;)

more good stuff :rolleyes:

The Quiet Man - 50th Anniversary


John Ford, the director of such classic films as The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and The Searchers (1956), turned to his own Irish heritage for The Quiet Man (1952). In the film, John Wayne plays Sean Thornton, a man who was born in Ireland, but moved to the United States as a young boy. He grew up in Pittsburgh and eventually became a prizefighter. After accidentally killing a man in the ring, he returns to Ireland and buys the house he was born in. Sean falls in love with the beautiful and strong-willed Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O'Hara). Her brother, "Red" Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen), is one of the wealthiest men in the area and he is upset that a "yank" bought the property he wanted. Sean's and Mary Kate's strong personalities clash as Sean learns Irish customs, particularly those concerning her dowry. The film culminates in a raucous fistfight between Sean and his new brother-in-law.

The Quiet Man is based on a 1933 Saturday Evening Post short story, but the final movie script is really a reflection of Ford's idealized view of his parents' homeland. In his biography of John Wayne, John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity, Garry Wills notes the script "does not represent the real Irish culture of the time but it does embody John Ford's world." In spite of the Academy Award winning director's well-known reputation, Ford had trouble finding a studio willing to back his Irish story. Eventually a doubtful Herb Yates at Republic Pictures agreed to the project.

Everything about the film, however, made Yates nervous. From the script to the casting, and especially the nearly two million dollar budget, Yates had doubts. In order to help Ford keep costs down, John Wayne agreed to do the film for one-hundred thousand dollars. As a part of the budget cuts, Ford decided not to take Wayne's regular makeup man, Web Overlander, to Ireland. Wayne used Maureen O'Hara's assistant instead, but after only one day, the actor's sensitive skin puffed up. Overlander was in Ireland a few days later.

Several family members of the cast and crew also made the journey to Ireland. Wayne brought along his four children and when they saw John Ford, they asked if they could be in the film. Ford agreed saying, "Why not, everyone else is getting into the act!" Maureen O'Hara had also convinced Ford to put two of her brothers in the film, and Ford's own brother, Francis, had a role. This was Francis Ford's twenty-ninth appearance in one of his brother's films.

In spite of Yates' doubts about the film's success, critics loved it. Kay Proctor wrote in the Los Angeles Examiner, "Never before I'm sure, have you seen a movie quite like this one, nor will you again, unless you go see it twice or more. Which incidentally, is what I recommend you do."

The Quiet Man was also a success at the Academy Awards. It was nominated for Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Victor McLaglen), Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, and Sound Recording. John Ford received his fourth Oscar for Best Director and Winton Hoch and Archie Stout received the award for Best Cinematography.

Director/Producer: John Ford
Producer: Merian C. Cooper, Michael Killanin
Screenwriter: Richard Llewellyn, Frank S. Nugent
Cinematographer: Winton Hoch, Louis Clyde Stouman
Music: Victor Young
Editor: Jack Murray
Cast: John Wayne (Sean Thornton), Maureen O'Hara (Mary Kate Danaher), Barry Fitzgerald (Michaleen Flynn), Ward Bond (Father Peter Lonergan), Victor McLaglen (Red Will Danaher), Mildred Natwick (The Widow Sarah Tillane), Jack MacGowran (Feeney)
C-130m.

by Deborah Looney

Monique ;)

More good stuff :rolleyes:
THE ALAMO


Nominated for six Academy Awards, The Alamo (1960), was a dream that John Wayne had been harboring for over 15 years. Wayne felt that he needed to both produce and direct the film in order to make sure that creative control could not be taken from him. To that end, Wayne exercised nepotism in assembling his cast and crew to make sure that his project would remain faithful to his ideals. His son Michael served as assistant producer, Wayne's brother Bob was the producer's aide, other sons and daughters were extras or had bit parts. Wayne's pal James Edward Grant wrote the screenplay. Good friend and mentor, director John Ford, came to the set to lend any help Wayne might need. John Ford's son-in-law, Ken Curtis, played Captain Dickinson.

The story of the 187 Texans (including mythic American frontiersmen Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie) who held out against over 6,000 regular Mexican army troops for 13 days during the Texas Revolution embodied the idealistic elements that were closest to Wayne's heart.

Historically there was a rivalry between Col. Travis and Jim Bowie, but on the set of The Alamo, the clash was between Wayne and Richard Widmark. Widmark repeatedly challenged Wayne's direction and eventually the clash blew up on the set. Despite their creative differences, the film remains an impressive historical epic which wasn't appreciated by film critics during its original release. Nevertheless, it managed to garner seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Cinematography, and Best Sound, for which it won the Academy Award.

Director/Producer: John Wayne
Screenplay: James Edward Grant
Cinematography: William H. Clothier
Music: Dimitri Tiomkin
Editing: Stuart Gilmore
Art Direction: Alfred Ybarra
Cast: John Wayne (Colonel Davy Crockett), Richard Widmark (Jim Bowie), Laurence Harvey (Colonel William Travis), Frankie Avalon (Smitty), Linda Cristal (Flaca), Chill Wills (Beekeeper), Joseph Calleia (Juan Seguin), Ken Curtis (Captain Almeron Dickinson), Denver Pyle (Thimblerig).
C-203m. Letterboxed.

by Lang Thompson & Jeff Stafford


Monique ;)

Monique,

"Good stuff" is putting it mildly. That was GREAT stuff, truly fascinating.

Thank you very much for providing it for us.

Chester

More good Stuff :rolleyes:


(John Wayne in THE SHOOTIST)


The year is 1901. John Bernard Books, an aging gunfighter, returns after many years to Carson City, a town full of old friends and old enemies. There he meets Bond Rogers, the widowed owner of a boarding house, and her son Gillom, who idolizes Books and wants to become a gunfighter just like him. A visit to a doctor confirms Books' deepest fears: he has cancer and his days are numbered. As Books settles down in the boarding house, his desire for tranquility is inevitably threatened by snooping reporters and aspiring gunfighters eager to make a name for themselves. Sweeney, the brother of one of his earlier victims, is out for revenge - and Books finds himself in one last great gunfight.

Although Elmer Bernstein received an Academy Award for his score for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), today it is not as highly regarded as his work for films such as The Shootist (1976), The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and especially The Magnificent Seven (1960), one of the most famous of all film scores. Due in part to his studies with composer Roger Sessions and his experience with Glenn Miller's Army Air Corps Band, Bernstein has an affinity for a wide variety of American musical idioms, especially jazz, which he used to great effect in his recent score for Devil in a Blue Dress (1995). The Western genre is one of his particular strengths, as demonstrated by his collaborations with such notable directors as John Ford, Anthony Mann, Henry Hathaway, John Sturges, and in this case, Don Siegel. In recent years, Bernstein has championed the cause of classic film score composers such as Miklos Rosza, Dimitri Tiomkin and Max Steiner, recording their scores through his own record label, Film Music Collection.

The montage sequence which recounts J. B. Book's past as a gunfighter uses footage from earlier John Wayne vehicles such as Red River (1948), Rio Bravo (1959) and El Dorado (1967), making it literally a summation of his Western film career. When Wayne read Glendon Swarthout's novel in 1974, he tried to buy the screen rights to it, but Paramount had beat him to it. Although in retrospect Wayne seems like the obvious first choice for the lead role, in fact it was offered to Paul Newman, George C. Scott, Charles Bronson, Gene Hackman and Clint Eastwood, all of whom turned it down before Wayne was selected.

John Wayne was highly self-conscious of his public image, considering it unmanly to be photographed in production stills while makeup was being applied with a powder puff. He also insisted on using a particular reddish tint of makeup, which flattered his complexion but created headaches for cinematographer Bruce Surtees. Most importantly, he insisted on toning down the profanity and more explicit references to cancer from the original novel and refused to shoot a villain in the back during a key fight scene, as these details contradicted the basic morality of his on-screen legend. When Doctor Hostetler, played by James Stewart, informs Books that he is dying of cancer, the scene takes on added resonance today; it was Wayne's final film before succumbing to the disease in 1979.

The Shootist received one Oscar nomination for Best Art Direction, thanks to the work of production designer Robert F. Boyle and set designer Arthur Jeph Parker. One example of the film's meticulous attention to period detail is the town's turn-of-the-century horse-drawn trolley, which actually had been used for a connecting route between El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico. Richard Boone, who plays the lead villain, is best known for his stint on TV as the hero of the long-running series, Have Gun, Will Travel (1957-63).



Director: Don Siegel
Producer: M. J. Frankovich, William Self
Screenplay: Miles Hood Swarthout and Scott Hale, based on the novel by Glendon Swarthout
Cinematography: Bruce Surtees
Editing: Douglas Stewart
Music: Elmer Bernstein
Principal Cast: John Wayne (John Bernard Books), Lauren Bacall (Bond Rogers), Ron Howard (Gillom Rogers), James Stewart (Dr. Hostetler), Richard Boone (Sweeney), Hugh O'Brian (Pulford).

C-99m. Letterboxed. Closed captioning.

By James Steffen

Monique ;)

More good Stuff :rolleyes:

Rio Bravo

Saturday 08/23/2003 05:30 PM

Additional Showings:
Friday 10/17/2003 08:00 PM

It has been said that director Howard Hawks made Rio Bravo (1959) as a reaction to two popular westerns which angered him - High Noon (1952) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957). His comment on the former was, "I didn't think a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help, and finally his Quaker wife had to save him." Hawks also considered 3:10 to Yuma, which had outlaw Glenn Ford playing psychological games with lawman Van Heflin, "a lot of nonsense." So Rio Bravo was the director's take on heroism and the true measure of a man. The simple storyline has sheriff John T. Chance arresting a murderer and keeping him locked up until his trial. It soon becomes evident that the jailed prisoner has plenty of armed friends and they plan an attack on the jail. Luckily, sheriff Chance, who is outnumbered forty to one, gets some unexpected backup from the least likely characters - an alcoholic drifter, a crippled, elderly man, a naive young gunslinger, a dance-hall girl, and a hotel clerk.

John Wayne was at the peak of his career in 1958 and Howard Hawks could not think of a better actor to play John T. Chance, a lawman who embodied duty, decency, and integrity. Walter Brennan, who had worked for Hawks before on several films including Red River (1948), was also a natural for the role of Stumpy, Chance's comical sidekick. But the real surprises of Rio Bravo are two crooners turned actors: Dean Martin, who was attempting a solo film career after the breakup of his partnership with Jerry Lewis, and Ricky Nelson, the teenage idol who had just scored a number one hit with "Poor Little Fool" the previous year.

Cast in the role of Dude, an alcoholic battling inner demons, Martin turned to his friend Marlon Brando for advice about playing the role. According to Hawks in a later interview with Joseph McBride, Martin showed up for the first day of shooting "dressed like a musical comedy cowboy. I said, 'Dean, look, you know a little about drinking. You've seen a lot of drunks. I want a drunk. I want a guy in an old dirty sweatshirt and an old hat.' He went over, and he came back with the outfit he wore in the picture. He must have been successful because Jack Warner said to me, 'We hired Dean Martin. When's he going to be in this picture?' I said, 'He's the funny-looking guy in the old hat.' 'Holy smoke, is that Dean Martin?'"

The only thing Martin really had a problem with was a scene in which he had to cry. The idea of pretending to cry totally unnerved him but he eventually got it right. He also got along great with the cast and crew, even if his joke telling sometimes held up production or he was hung over for most of the shoot. Martin and Wayne also played mischievous older brothers to Ricky Nelson on the set, presenting him with a 300-pound sack of steer manure for his eighteenth birthday and then tossing him into the center of it.

Rio Bravo was filmed in Old Tucson, the same Arizona movie set where Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) was filmed. Cinematographer Russell Harlan modeled the look of the film on the frontier paintings of Charles M. Russell. Filming outdoors was often a chore due to the 120-degree heat and an invasion of grasshoppers that fried on the hot lights and littered the sets.

Rio Bravo was the first in an informal trilogy written by Leigh Brackett and directed by Hawks that included El Dorado (1967) and Rio Lobo (1970), both starring John Wayne. John Carpenter would later remake Rio Bravo as an urban thriller entitled Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). While Hawks' original continues to survive as one of the great Westerns of the fifties, an English critic said it best when he wrote: "If I were asked to choose a film that would justify the existence of Hollywood, I think it would be Rio Bravo."

Director/ Producer: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman
Cinematography: Russell Harlan
Editor: Folmar Blangsted
Art Direction: Leo K. Kuter
Music: Dimitri Tiomkin
Cast: John Wayne (Sheriff John T. Chance), Dean Martin (Dude the Drunk), Ricky Nelson (Colorado Ryan), Angie Dickinson (Feathers), Walter Brennan (Stumpy).
C-142m.Letterboxed. Closed captioning.

by Jeff Stafford

Monique ;)

More goodies :D :lol: :D :lol:

The Searchers


Texas 1868. After a long, unexplained absence, Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards arrives at the home of his estranged brother, Aaron, and his wife, Martha, for whom he harbors a secret love. Soon after Ethan's return, a posse of lawmen headed by Captain Reverend Samuel Clayton invite Ethan and his adopted nephew, Martin Pawley, to join them in a hunt for some cattle that was run off by marauding Indians. Leaving Aaron and his family at the homestead, Ethan and the posse soon realize the missing cattle was only a ruse to lure them away from their homes. Ethan races back to his brother's home, only to discover it in flames with everyone butchered by Indians, except for Aaron's youngest daughter Debbie and her teenage sister Lucy who are missing. What follows is a long and torturous search for Ethan's kidnapped kin and the bloodthirsty Indian chief Scar who initiated the massacre.

Film critic and filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once said of The Searchers: "How can I hate John Wayne upholding [Barry] Goldwater and yet love him tenderly when abruptly he takes Natalie Wood into his arms in the last reel of The Searchers?" This sentiment was also voiced by film students in the late sixties and seventies who began to revise their opinions of John Wayne after seeing him in John Ford's most mythic film, one that was largely misunderstood when it was first released in 1956 and features what is possibly Wayne's finest performance.

In a 1979 New York magazine article, Stuart Byron called The Searchers the "Super-Cult Movie of the New Hollywood." This amply encapsulates just one reason why the film is essential; it had a tremendous influence on filmmakers during the 1970s, arguably one of the most creatively periods in Hollywood history. Directors and screenwriters as varied in background and style as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, John Milius, Paul Schrader, Wim Wenders, Jean-Luc Goddard, and George Lucas have all been influenced and paid some form of homage to The Searchers in their work. Scorsese, perhaps the greatest filmmaker of his generation, exclaimed, "The dialogue is like poetry! And the changes of expression are so subtle, so magnificent! I see it once or twice a year." Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) obviously shares some narrative similarities with the Ford film as does Paul Schrader's Hardcore (1979). Spielberg, one of the most profitable film producer/directors in movie history, told Stuart Byron he had watched The Searchers a dozen times, including twice while on location for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). And it was in the late fifties when seventh grader Spielberg shot a two-reel Western in a friend's backyard imitating The Searchers, using a backdrop of Ford's beloved Monument Valley painted on a bedsheet. You can even see references to Ford's masterpiece in the work of Italian director Sergio Leone who stages a massacre scene in his epic, Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), that is remarkably similar to the one that destroys Ethan's kin in The Searchers. The Searchers represents the apex of the Western genre and stands as John Ford's most emotionally complex and sophisticated film (It was also his 115th feature film!). But it is not simply a summation of the Western themes that Ford had previously explored in his films. The Searchers is one of the first Westerns to deal in a serious and unpretentious way with racism and sexuality. As Joseph McBride wrote in his monumental Ford biography, Searching For John Ford, the director's decision to tackle such a complicated and ambiguous film dealing with race and sex during the 1950s "was a shrewd career move, showing a willingness to make a more 'modern'-seeming Western for an audience that wanted greater psychological realism from the genre..." But more than just making a social statement like other Westerns of the period were apt to do, Ford instills in The Searchers a visual poetry and a sense of melancholy that is rare in American films and rarer still to Westerns.

For an essay in The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, film scholar Ed Lowry wrote: "Never before in a Ford western has the wilderness seemed so brutal or settlements so tenuous and threatened. There are no towns - only outposts and isolated homesteads, remote and exposed between the awesome buttes of Ford's mythic Monument Valley. And while the Comanches are depicted as utterly ruthless, Ford ascribes motivations for their actions, and lends them a dignity befitting a proud civilization. Never do we see the Indians commit atrocities more appalling than those perpetrated by the white man. Not only does [Ethan] Edwards perform the only scalping shown in the film, but Ford presents the bloody aftermath of a massacre of Indian women and children carried out by the same clean-cut cavalrymen he depicted so lovingly in films like Fort Apache." For most viewers, however, it is John Wayne's performance in The Searchers that is a revelation. "I've always thought [Wayne is] underrated as an actor," James Stewart once said. "I think The Searchers is one of the most marvelous performances of all time."

Producer: C. V. Whitney, Merian C. Cooper
Director: John Ford
Screenplay: Frank S. Nugent, based on the novel by Alan Le May
Cinematography: Winton C. Hoch
Film Editing: Jack Murray
Art Direction:
Music: Max Steiner
Cast: John Wayne (Ethan Edwards), Jeffrey Hunter (Martin Pawley), Vera Miles (Laurie Jorgensen), Ward Bond (Captain Reverend Samuel Clayton), Natalie Wood (Debbie Edwards), John Qualen (Lars Jorgensen), Olive Carey (Mrs. Jorgensen), Henry Brandon (Scar), Ken Curtis (Charlie McCorry), Harry Carey, Jr. (Brad Jorgensen), Hank Wordon (Mose Harper).
C-119m.

By Scott McGee

Monique ;)

One of the moderators of this board, LibertyV, has a John Wayne web site, one worth checking out, IMHO. The address is http://www.jwplace.com.

In looking the site over, my wife and I noticed a very interesting article which originally appeared in Reader's Digest in October 1979, written by Ronald Reagan.

Enjoy! :)

Chester




Unforgettable John Wayne

biography by Ronald Reagan

courtesy of Readers Digest - October 1979

We called him DUKE, and he was every bit the giant off screen he was on. Everything about him-his stature, his style, his convictions-conveyed enduring strength, and no one who observed his struggle in those final days could doubt that strength was real. Yet there was more. To my wife, Nancy, "Duke Wayne was the most gentle, tender person I ever knew."

In 1960, as president of the Screen Actors' Guild, I was deeply embroiled in a bitter labor dispute between the Guild and the motion picture industry. When we called a strike, the film industry unleashed a series of stinging personal attacks on me - criticism my wife found difficult to take.

At 7:30 one morning the phone rang and Nancy heard Duke's booming voice: "I've been readin' what these damn columnists are saying about Ron. He can take care of himself, but I've been worrying about how all this is affecting you." Virtually every morning until the strike was settled several weeks later, he phoned her. When a mass meeting was called to discuss settlement terms, he left a dinner party so that he could escort Nancy and sit at her side. It was, she said, like being next to a force bigger than life.

Countless others were also touched by his strength. Although it would take the critics 40 years to recognize what John Wayne was, the movie going public knew all along. In this country and around the world, Duke was the most popular box-office star of all time. For an incredible 25 years he was rated at or around the top in box-office appeal. His films grossed $700 million-a record no performer in Hollywood has come close to matching. Yet John Wayne was more than an actor; he was a force around which films were made. As Elizabeth Taylor Warner stated last May when testifying in favor of the special gold medal Congress struck for him: "He gave the whole world the image of what an American should be."

Stagecoach to Stardom

He was born Marion Michael Morrison in Winterset, Iowa. When Marion was six, the family moved to California. There he picked up the nickname Duke - after his Airedale. He rose at 4 a.m. to deliver newspapers, and after school and football practice he made deliveries for local stores. He was an A student, president of the Latin Society, head of his senior class and an all-state guard on a championship football team.

Duke had hoped to attend the U.S. Naval Academy and was named as an alternate selection to Annapolis, but the first choice took the appointment. Instead, he accepted a full scholarship to play football at the University of Southern California. There coach Howard Jones, who often found summer jobs in the movie industry for his players, got Duke work in the summer of 1926 as an assistant prop man on the set of a movie directed by John Ford.

One day, Ford, a notorious taskmaster with a rough-and-ready sense of humor, spotted the tall USC guard on his set and asked Duke to bend over and demonstrate his ball stance. With a deft kick, knocked Duke's arms from his body and the young athlete on his face. Picking himself Duke said in that voice which then commanded attention, "Let's try that once again." This time Duke sent Ford flying. Ford erupted in laughter, and the two began a personal and professional friendship which would last a lifetime.

From his job in props, Duke worked his way into roles on the screen. During the Depression he played in grade-B westerns until John Ford finally convinced United Artists to give him the role of the Ringo Kid in his classic film Stagecoach. John Wayne was on the road to stardom. He quickly established his versatility in a variety of major roles: a young seaman in Eugene O'Neill's - The Long Voyage Home, a tragic captain in Reap the Wild Wind, a rodeo rider in the comedy - A Lady Takes a Chance.

When war broke out, John Wayne tried to enlist but was rejected because of an old football injury to his shoulder, his age (34), and his status as a married father of four. He flew to Washington to plead that he be allowed to join the Navy but was turned down. So he poured himself into the war effort by making inspirational war films - among them The Fighting Seabees, Back to Bataan and They Were Expendable. To those back home and others around the world he became a symbol of the determined American fighting man.

Duke could not be kept from the front lines. In 1944 he spent three months touring forward positions in the Pacific theater. Appropriately, it was a wartime film, Sands of Iwo Jima which turned him into a superstar. Years after the war, when Emperor Hirohito of Japan visited the United States, he sought out John Wayne, paying tribute to the one who represented our nation's success in combat.
As one of the true innovators of the film industry, Duke tossed aside the model of the white-suited cowboy/good guy, creating instead a tougher, deeper-dimensioned western hero. He discovered Monument Valley, the film setting in the Arizona - Utah desert where a host of movie classics were filmed. He perfected the choreographic techniques and stuntman tricks which brought realism to screen fighting. At the same time he decried pornography, and blood, and gore in films. "That's not sex and violence," he would say. "It's filth and bad taste."

"I Sure As Hell Did!"

In the 1940s, Duke was one of the few stars with the courage to expose the determined bid by a band of communists to take control of the film industry. Through a series of violent strikes and systematic blacklisting, these people were at times dangerously close to reaching their goal. With theatrical employee's union leader Brewer, playwright Morrie and others, he formed the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals to challenge this insidious campaign. Subsequent Congressional investigations in I947 clearly proved both the communist plot and the importance of what Duke and his friends did.

In that period, during my first term as president of the Actors' Guild, I was confronted with an attempt by many of these same leftists to assume leadership of the union. At a mass meeting I watched rather helplessly as they filibustered, waiting for our majority to leave so they could gain control. Somewhere in the crowd I heard a call for adjournment, and I seized on this as a means to end the attempted takeover. But the other side demanded I identify the one who moved for adjournment.

I looked over the audience, realizing that there were few willing to be publicly identified as opponents of the far left. Then I saw Duke and said, "Why I believe John Wayne made the motion." I heard his strong voice reply, "I sure as hell did!" The meeting and the radicals' campaign was over.

Later, when such personalities as actor Larry Parks came forward to admit their Communist Party backgrounds, there were those who wanted to see them punished. Not Duke. "It takes courage to admit you're wrong," he said, and he publicly battled attempts to ostracize those who had come clean.

Duke also had the last word over those who warned that his battle against communism in Hollywood would ruin his career. Many times he would proudly boast, "I was 32nd in the box-office polls when I accepted the presidency of the Alliance. When I left office eight years later, somehow the folks who buy tickets had made me number one.

Duke went to Vietnam in the early days of the war. He scorned VIP treatment, insisting that he visit the troops in the field. Once he even had his helicopter land in the midst of a battle. When he returned, he vowed to make a film about the heroism of Special Forces soldiers.

The public jammed theaters to see the resulting film, The Green Berets. The critics, however, delivered some of the harshest reviews ever given a motion picture. The New Yorker bitterly condemned the man who made the film. The New York Times called it "unspeakable ... rotten ... stupid." Yet John Wayne was undaunted. "That little clique back there in the East has taken great personal satisfaction reviewing my politics instead of my pictures," he often said. "But one day those doctrinaire liberals will wake up to find the pendulum has swung the other way.

Foul-Weather Friend

I never once saw Duke display hatred toward those who scorned him. Oh, he could use some pretty salty language, but he would not tolerate pettiness and hate. He was human all right: he drank enough whiskey to float a PT boat, though he never drank on the job. His work habits were legendary in Hollywood - he was virtually always the first to arrive on the set and the last to leave.

His torturous schedule plus the great personal pleasure he derived from hunting and deep-sea fishing or drinking and card-playing with his friends may have cost him a couple of marriages; but you had only to see his seven children and 21 grandchildren to realize that Duke found time to be a good father. He often said, "I have tried to live my life so that my family would love me and my friends respect me. The others can do whatever the hell they please."

To him, a handshake was a binding contract. When he was in the hospital for the last time and sold his yacht, The Wild Goose, for an amount far below its market value, he learned the engines needed minor repairs. He ordered those engines overhauled at a cost to him of $40,000 because he had told the new owner the boat was in good shape.

Duke's generosity and loyalty stood out in a city rarely known for either. When a friend needed work, that person went on his payroll. When a friend needed help, Duke's wallet was open. He also was loyal to his fans. One writer tells of the night he and Duke were in Dallas for the premiere of Chisum. Returning late to his hotel, Duke found a message from a woman who said her little girl lay critically ill in a local hospital. The woman wrote, "It would mean so much to her if you could pay her just a brief visit." At 3 o'clock in the morning he took off for the hospital where he visited the astonished child and every other patient on the hospital floor who happened to be awake.

I saw his loyalty in action many times. I remember that when Duke and Jimmy Stewart were on their way to my second inauguration as governor of California they encountered a crowd of demonstrators under the banner of the Vietcong flag. Jimmy had just lost a son in Vietnam. Duke excused himself for a moment and walked into the crowd. In a moment there was no Vietcong flag.

Final Curtain

Like any good John Wayne film, Duke's career had a gratifying ending. In the 1970s a new era of critics began to recognize the unique quality of his acting. The turning point had been the film True Grit. When the Academy gave him an Oscar for best actor of 1969, many said it was based on the accomplishments of his entire career. Others said it was Hollywood's way of admitting that it had been wrong to deny him Academy Awards for a host of previous films. There is truth, I think, to both these views.

Yet who can forget the climax of the film? The grizzled old marshal confronts the four outlaws and calls out: "I mean to kill you or see you hanged at Judge Parker's convenience. Which will it be?" "Bold talk for a one-eyed fat man," their leader sneers. Then Duke cries, "Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!" and, reins in his teeth, charges at them firing with both guns. Four villains did not live to menace another day.

"Foolishness?" wrote Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mike Royko, describing the thrill this scene gave him. "Maybe. But I hope we never become so programmed that nobody has the damn-the-risk spirit."

Fifteen years ago when Duke lost a lung in his first bout with cancer, studio press agents tried to conceal the nature of his illness. When Duke discovered this, he went before the public and showed us that a man can fight this dread disease. He went on to raise millions of dollars for private cancer research. Typically, he snorted: "We've got too much at stake to give government a monopoly in the fight against cancer."

Earlier this year, when doctors told Duke there was no hope, he urged them to use his body for experimental medical research, to further the search for a cure. He refused painkillers so he could be alert as he spent his last days with his children. When John Wayne died on June 11, a Tokyo newspaper ran the headline,
"Mr. America passes on."

"There's right and there's wrong," Duke said in The Alamo. "You gotta do one or the other. You do the one and you're living. You do the other and you may be walking around but in reality you're dead."

Duke Wayne symbolized just this, the force of the American will to do what is right in the world. He could have left no greater legacy.

I thought some of you may find this interesting. The following article is from The New American magazine, the July 28, 2003 issue, in the "Letters to the Editor" section.

Chester


John Wayne on McCarthy

Your recent article about the late Senator Joseph McCarthy ("McCarthy Targeted --Again," June 16th issue) brought to mind a story told to me by the late John Wayne that I would like to put on the record.

Around the early part of 1964 John Wayne and Chill Wills came to Houston to speak at a fundraiser for Gordon McLendon, radio's "old Scotchman," who was running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Ralph Yarborough.

After dinner I found myself sitting alone with Mr. Wayne in a corner at a private party hosted by one of McLendon's supporters. I asked him to tell me about the Communist Party's efforts to take over our country's movie industry and his role in combating the Reds. He stated that he never discussed the matter. When I asked why, he replied that people weren't interested. He relented after I convinced him that I was interested.

Mr. Wayne stated that the Communists had virtually taken over the movie industry when orders went out from the Communist Party USA headquarters for each member to drop all assignments and converge on Washington, D.C., to destroy Senator McCarthy.

By the time the Communists finished off McCarthy, he added, we were able to get back control of the movie industry. "There were only three of us fighting the Communists all along: Ward Bond, Adolphe Menjou, and myself."

When I asked him where Ronald Reagan stood in this scenario, Mr. Wayne replied, "Aw, he's alright, but he's just a Johnny-come-lately." I later had the opportunity to serve as Gov. Reagan's Texas Finance Chairman in the 1980 campaign.

CLYMER WRIGHT
Houston, Texas

You know how it is, when you are reading one thing and it makes you wonder about something else, so you Google it, and that takes you somewhere else, that takes you somewhere else, and . . . ? I first saw reference to the item on LibertyV's site, and wanted to find out more, so I was on such a circuitous route this morning, and ended at this article (http://www.musicfanclubs.org/garthoholic/news/5-13-981.html), about Garth Brooks attending the ceremonies to dedicate an Army RAH-66 helicopter named "The Duke" (yup, in honor of our Duke).

I'm sure member Bek will especially enjoy it, as she is a big Garth fan (if my old brain cells are remembering correctly :yeaahh: ).

Chester :newyear:

Speaking of media articles, did you know that the Orange County Sheriff's Department has two helicopters named Duke I and Duke II, in honor of John Wayne. This article (http://blog.ocsd.org/post/2007/08/24/The-Airport-Operations-Division-Air-Support-Bureau-Orange-Countys-eyes-in-the-sky.aspx) tells about it (little mention of JW, and mostly technical specs about the choppers, but interesting nonetheless).

Chester :newyear: