Wrestling with the Duke

[thedrifter]

Wrestling with the Duke
On Saturday John Wayne would have turned 100. In death, he looms large as life, but he poses a dilemma: Love him or loathe him?
By Carrie Rickey
Inquirer Movie Critic

John Wayne swaggered like a rodeo bull, thundered like a storm over Monument Valley, and towered over the West like a craggy butte.

And he looms as large in death as he did on-screen. Duke, as he was universally known, died the year Heath Ledger - a very different kind of cowboy - was born, in 1979.

Ever since, when pollsters ask Americans to name their favorite actor, Wayne, whose centennial is this week, routinely makes the top 10. The iconic figure of westerns and war movies placed third in the 2006 Harris Poll, behind Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks.

Would Frank Sinatra rank with Bruce Springsteen and Jay-Z as America's favorite musical artist? That'll be the day.

The Duke, as historian Garry Wills observed, "reverses the law of optics." The farther away this hombre gets, the larger he looms. I'm talking not only about Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima, conceived as a corrective to the gung-ho heroics of a Wayne war movie. Or about this week's celebration of Wayne on Turner Classic Movies. Or about the restored Rio Bravo showing at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday. Or about the stat that in the history of Movies Unlimited, John Wayne has sold more units than any other actor.

I'm talking about this: When a Marine in Iraq shoots first and asks questions later, they say he "pulled a John Wayne." When we think of masculinity, The Duke is the yardstick by which we measure it. When we think of those who are larger than life, Wayne is the authoritarian who commands respect or incites rebellion. In my case, both.

Rather than doff my Stetson on the occasion of The Duke's hundredth (Saturday), I want to sort through my ambivalence about the man reviled by some as the Godzilla of American imperialism and revered by even more as a god of the American Olympus.

The stormy relationship that some have with their fathers is one that I have with Wayne. For as long as I can remember I've responded very differently to his two faces. The unyielding man of war in Sands of Iwo Jima makes me want to go AWOL. The unyielding man of the West who yields in the final moments of Red River by not killing his sworn enemy makes me weep, tapping a reservoir of emotion I didn't know I possessed.

In my moviegoing life, Wayne is responsible for more cinematic epiphanies than I can count. Is it great acting? He called it reacting. I'd call it presence.

"How can I hate John Wayne upholding [Barry] Goldwater and yet love him tenderly when he sweeps Natalie Wood into his arms in the last reel of The Searchers?" asked French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. His Wayne-bivalence is not mine. My feelings about an artist's politics rarely get in the way of appreciating his art.

I'd put it this way:

Wayne as Sgt. Stryker in Sands of Iwo Jima, turning ordinary Joes into murder machines with "I'm gonna ride you till you can't stand up and when you stand up, you'll be Marines"? Gag.

Wayne as the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach, falling sideways while firing his Winchester, dispatching three bad guys in the time it takes to hit the dirt? Gasp.

It was in Stagecoach (1939), probably the actor's hundredth film (he made so many cheapies at Republic Studios that there is no canonical count) that John Wayne sprung, fully formed, from the forehead of director John Ford.

In this film that launched the modern western, legitimizing a B-movie genre, Wayne's Ringo Kid seemed both solid and liquid. Manifest Destiny in cowboy boots, he was carved from Monument Valley's red rock with a sinuous movement as fluid as mercury.

A 10-year-old peacenik watching Stagecoach on TV circa 1963 saw Wayne as a mythic figure - we had men of action then, kiddos, we didn't have action figures - like Apollo or Odysseus in the Classics Illustrated comics she hoarded. At 10, I didn't connect the laconic prime cut of Homo erectus with the beefy ideologue campaigning for presidential contender Barry Goldwater.

That came five years later, when Wayne's The Green Berets, his justification for U.S. involvement in Vietnam, was released. It was the first - and last - movie I ever picketed. Maybe that's because when I mentioned my affection for Wayne's Red River and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a fellow protester threatened to boot me from the line.

This is how polarizing a figure The Duke still is. Four decades later when I turn on a Wayne movie, my husband leaves the room.

Many continue to detect in The Duke's screen persona a dangerous might-makes-right imperialism, his presence a metaphor for American indomitability. It's certainly there, in Battle of Iwo Jima and Green Berets. But that's not all The Duke is.

It's in those Wayne films I don't much like that he's a one-dimensional figure whose stubborn stride betrays arrogant certainty. In the Wayne movies that I love - Red River, The Quiet Man and The Searchers (and here I'd include a war film such as They Were Expendable) - his rhythm is different; you can detect his uncertainty in his afterbeat.

Wayne's best directors - Howard Hawks in Red River and Rio Bravo, Ford in The Searchers and Liberty Valance - saw through the alpha male's protective confidence to the challenged authoritarian beneath. They knew the drama of a Wayne performance was in what Jack Kroll eulogized as the actor's "divided, complicated, self-questioning humanity."

Growing up, I thought of Wayne as Hollywood's heroic archetype, and actors such as Montgomery Clift (who costarred with him in Red River), Marlon Brando and Paul Newman as the antihero reaction.

By this token, Wayne sired the unsmiling masculinity of Clint Eastwood (of Dirty Harry, a role Wayne lobbied for), Bruce Willis and Russell Crowe, while Clift sired the puckish, boyish, less threatening maleness of Jack Nicholson, Harrison Ford and Johnny Depp.

But upon rewatching and rethinking Wayne, to use such poles is to simplify him - and the other actors who followed in his bootsteps.

For isn't Red River's Tom Dunson, the adoptive father who vows to kill his son, Matthew Garth (Clift), more antihero than hero?

Isn't The Searchers' Ethan Edwards, on a mission to kill the Comanche who abducted his niece (Natalie Wood), as well as the violated girl herself, an alienated antihero of the Clift and Brando kind?

And isn't Liberty Valance's Tom Doniphon one who refuses to claim a hero's glory and lets it accrue to his rival?

For Duke's hundredth, may I pay tribute to his best selves?

As Tom Dunson in Red River he showed me the limits of revenge. As Sean Thornton, who courts and claims his flame-haired bride in The Quiet Man, he showed me the limits of pride.

But most of all, as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, Wayne's toughness brings an unexpected tenderness into sharp relief, enveloping me in the infinite heart of reconciliation.

The Essential John Wayne

Here are some of movie critic Carrie Rickey's picks:

Stagecoach (1939) set among the natural landmarks of Monument Valley, John Ford's landmark western features Wayne as rifleman Ringo Kid, the role that made him a star.

Red River (194 Wayne rides herd on his cattlemen, including adoptive son Montgomery Clift, and the explosive result is Mutiny on the Bounty played out on the scenic Chisholm Trail. Directed by Howard Hawks.

The Quiet Man (1952) American boxer Wayne retires his gloves and returns to a picturesque Irish village where he claims his ancestral cottage and a spirited colleen (Maureen O'Hara) in Ford's Technicolor delight.

The Searchers (1956) As that human fury Ethan Edwards, The Duke sets out to hunt down the Comanches who killed his brother and kidnapped his niece (Natalie Wood) in this gripping drama of revenge and reconciliation.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Jimmy Stewart as the tenderfoot and Wayne as the tough guy whose uncredited act of frontier justice makes his friend (and romantic rival) a hero.

The Shootist (1976) In his swan song, The Duke is a legendary gunfighter, now terminally ill, recruited for one last showdown. With Lauren Bacall and Ron Howard.

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. Read her blog, Flickgrrl, at go.philly.com/flickgrrl.

Ellie

[Deduke]

I like John Wayne <br />
<br />
Yes, I know he wasn't in the military. He wasn't actually Sgt Stryker on Iwo Jima. But he was John By-God Wayne. <br />
I also like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. While we're at it,...

[thedrifter]

Happy Birthday, Duke
By Larry Thornberry
Published 5/24/2007 12:07:16 AM

If the Duke had just taken better care of himself, like maybe not smoking four packs of cigarettes a day for decades, he would turn 100 on Saturday. For what he did both to entertain and to inspire us in his long movie career, he has certainly earned peaceful rest for Eternity. But we could sure use the old cowpoke today.

Marion Robert Morrison, who would later adopt the screen name John Wayne, entered this world at Winterset, Iowa, on May 26, 1907. Who could have guessed that this child of the Midwest would become the nation's most popular actor, and perhaps the greatest explicator of America's best values? Values, which when we lived them, helped us defeat fascism, work our way out of the Great Depression, and build an economy and a way of life for the world to admire while remaining the strongest military power the world has ever seen.

Not too shabby for a country that began as an escape valve and dumping ground for a small band of cranky Puritans from England.

The Duke learned his craft in dozens of B westerns during the thirties. But after the success of Stagecoach in 1939, he was never far from number one in America's movie scorecard for the next three and a half decades. He was ranked in the top 10 box office attractions from 25 straight years. No other actor has come close to that.

Even now, almost 28 years after the Duke went to that great ranch-house in the sky, and long after his rock-ribbed conservative values and patriotism ceased being popular, even tolerated, in Hollywood, the Duke is still popular with regular walking-around Americans. TiVo's weekly list of the 10 most requested movie actors almost always includes the Duke. In 1999, a full 23 years after the Duke's last movie, The Shootist, a Reuters/Zogby poll found that the Duke and Katharine Hepburn were America's favorite movie actor and actress.


THERE'S LITTLE MYSTERY ABOUT the Duke's appeal. He worked hard at his craft. He had the God-given physique of a real hero. Some good scripts came his way, and he worked with gifted directors like John Ford and Howard Hawks. It also didn't hurt that his horse operas were beautifully filmed in America's physically spectacular Southwest. But beyond this, the characters the Duke played and the stories his movies told embody the bold and conservative values of America's salad days.

The Duke's movie soldiers and Marines and naval officers and cowboys were straight-forward, tough, honest, strong, reliable, brave, competent, hard-working, patriotic, and self-reliant before these qualities became un-PC. His movies were about good versus evil, and it didn't take a Ph.D. in ethics to see which was which, or which side the Duke was on. If the Duke ever encountered a nuance, he didn't waste much time on it.

Few public figures have fit their times better than the Duke fit his. But even at the peak of his popularity, liberal academics and journalists of the day didn't cotton to the Duke's work. His movies were a little much for elites, even back then. But while tony reviewers wrote sneeringly of the Duke's movies, Americans flocked to those same movies by the millions.

It's hard to guess how the Duke would be received today, or even if he could find work in contemporary Hollywood. There are plenty of red-blooded Americans who could make up a market for more of the Duke. But the values of the New York, Malibu bed-wetters pretty much have a lock on today's Hollywood. It's a legitimate question whether Hollywood would be big enough for both George Clooney and John Wayne.

It would be nice to see a real, full-service American hero like the Duke on the silver screen again. The current lot of leading men is pretty pallid by comparison. Show of hands, how many of you really believe in the likes of Kevin Costner, Michael Douglass, or Val Kilmer as tough guys? Cowboys? These guys belong having a Cherry Garcia at Ben & Jerry's, not knocking off the trail dust with a straight shot at the Longhorn. Good grief, Val Kilmer would have to get a note from his mother to ride the range.


BUT THIS LINE OF SPECULATION is only good for conversation. The big guy is gone, God rest his soul. But his movies aren't. They still show up frequently on television and most are available to purchase. To take advantage of the considerable Wayne sentiment, likely to be stimulated by news stories of the centennial, Paramount is issuing "The John Wayne Century Collection" and Warner will release "The John Wayne Film Collection."

But even without these new editions, there are plenty of the Duke's movies on the market. It would be hard to find a better entertainment buy than some classic Duke such as: Red River, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (my favorite), Sands of Iwo Jima, The Quiet Man, Hondo, Rio Bravo, The Horse Soldiers, In Harm's Way, True Grit, The Cowboys, Rooster Cogburn, The Shootist, et al.

The Duke's movies are action flicks and contain violence. But the violence is not gratuitous, it's always in furtherance of the plot, and in the name of good duking it out (excuse the expression) with evil. No spurting blood or exploding organs. Cowboys and Indians get shot and fall off their horses. There's the odd fist fight. That's about it. There's romance in the movies, and no attempt to suggest, as some fifties movies did, that sex doesn't exist. But the heavy breathing takes place off stage. Nothing in the Duke's movies that it would be difficult to explain to the kids.

The Duke played military heroes on the screen, but he never served in the military for real. He was almost 35, married, and father of four when Pearl Harbor was attacked. So he wasn't called. But many family men in Hollywood older than the Duke signed up. The Duke felt guilty about his lack of World War II military service for the rest of his life. But he served his country in other ways. Well enough to be called a Great American by any standard.

So this Saturday, when the sun is finally below the yardarm, let's all hoist one for the Duke. Our number one cowboy, a great entertainer and a great American. Can you do that, Pilgrim?

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Carlson: Sniper fired on the Duke, Marines, DM man says
JOHN CARLSON'S IOWA

May 25, 2007

There's a paragraph in an online biography of John Wayne that proclaims, "While visiting the troops in Vietnam in June 1966, a bullet struck Wayne's bicycle. Although he was not within a hundred yards of it at the time, the newspapers reported he had narrowly escaped death at the hands of a sniper."

I read this brief account to Jack Baird, who took two full seconds to offer the following analysis: "Bull."

Or something close to that.

"You want to know what happened that day?" asked Baird, a 73-year-old retired Marine Corps master sergeant in Des Moines. "I was right there. Come on over and I'll tell you about it."

This wouldn't ordinarily seem important, given all that's going on in the world. The fact is, it doesn't make that much difference.

But this would have been the Iowa-born Wayne's 100th birthday, and Winterset is hosting members of the late actor's family and thousands of movie fans at a big celebration this weekend.

So it is a good time to set the record straight about a man who was involved in probably more on-screen gunfights than anybody in movie history.

Wayne was a cavalry officer. He flew fighter planes in China and commanded great ships at sea. He led a squad of Marines on Iwo Jima and hundreds of soldiers in Vietnam.

All on the screen.

He never wore the uniform for real, and that bothers some people, given Wayne's conservative politics and the fact that he supposedly never heard a shot fired in anger.

Which brings us to Baird, who spent a couple of days with Wayne in Vietnam in June 1966, when the actor was on a goodwill tour.

"I was in the Marine Corps, assigned to duties as a reporter and photographer with Stars and Stripes," said Baird, who retired from the military in 1971 and now owns a printing and advertising business in Des Moines. "I was with Wayne, writing about him, and we went to Chu Lai."

That's where Wayne was meeting with some Marines on the beach, signing autographs, having his picture taken with the guys and shaking hands.

And that, Baird says, is where and when he, Wayne and some other Marines were fired on by a sniper.

Here's the top of the article Baird wrote for the June 22, 1966, edition of Stars and Stripes under the headline "Wayne Shrugs Off Sniper Shots":

"Three to five rounds of Viet Cong sniper fire struck the ground within 50 feet of film actor John Wayne Monday while he was signing autographs for U.S. Marines here. It was the first time Wayne, the he-man hero of scores of westerns and war movies, had actually been shot at - and the towering grey-haired 6-footer passed it off as lightly as he would in a movie script.

" 'Hell,' said the 58-year-old Wayne, 'I didn't even know I was being fired at until the Marines started running for cover, but I did hear the thunk-thunk (of the bullets striking the ground.)' Wayne went right on signing his name on steel helmets after the sniper vanished."

Said Baird, "I doubt if the sniper even knew it was John Wayne. But he sure was a big target standing out there. We were on the beach, and the sand was flying up all around us."

Baird said it happened so fast he didn't have time to push Wayne to the ground.

"I thought it would make a pretty good news story," said Baird. "I wrote it up for Stars and Stripes, but I don't think the wires or anybody else picked it up."

The business about Wayne being 100 yards away and his bicycle being hit is ridiculous, Baird said, referring to the report on the often-cited, usually reliable Internet Movie Database.

"Wayne on a bicycle? In Vietnam? Are you kidding me?" Baird asked.

The Des Moines man went on to knock down one other Wayne myth.

"We were together a couple of days," said Baird. "We went back to the press center after the sniper shooting and had a few drinks. I'd always heard he was a bourbon man. It was scotch. At least that day. Trust me."

Columnist John Carlson can be reached at (515) 284-8204 or jcarlson@dmreg.com

Ellie

[thedrifter]

May 25, 2007, 7:03PM
On his 100th birthday, 100 reasons to love John Wayne

By SCOTT EYMAN
Cox News Service

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — John Wayne was born May 26, 1907, in Winterset, Iowa, 100 years ago. Alone among his generation of movie stars, he remains an apparently permanent image of American masculinity.

You can accept his representation of manhood or you can reject it, but you can't ignore it.

Like Elvis Presley, he was a pure product of America, unthinkable in any other culture. Unlike Elvis, he never went crazy, never lost his faith in his essential rightness — in several senses of the word — never really tried to adapt to changing times. Blessedly, he never hid behind irony.

He was John Wayne, and here are 100 reasons to cherish his memory, some of them from his movies, some of them drawn from Wayne in conversation.

1. Because he loved the movie business.

2. That walk.

3. "You may not like every film, but my fans will always come back because they know I won't be mean, I won't be small, and like an old friend, I won't let them down."

4. Because nobody else started out as such a bad actor and got so good.

5. Because he embodied American masculinity at midcentury and imposed an image on our idea of masculinity's past.

6. "A man ought to do what he thinks is right" (Hondo).

7. For the gentle way he could treat a fragile woman.

8. For the rump-slapping way he could treat a strong woman.

9. Hondo.

10. Because of his work ethic — in an acting career that spanned nearly 50 years, he starred in, by actual count, 156 movies.

11. "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to others, and I require the same from them" (The Shootist).

12. Because at one time or another he worked at nearly all the crafts that go into making movies, from props to costumes to stunting to acting to producing to directing.

13. "I'm going to kill you, Matt" (Red River).

14. For the incredibly cool way he cocks his rifle by twirling it in both Stagecoach and True Grit.

15. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

16. Because all he has to do to dominate a scene is to enter it.

17. Because, in spite of his reputation for invulnerability, he eagerly took on the task of playing deeply lonely men who die.

18. Red River.

19. For his abiding good taste in directors: John Ford, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, Henry Hathaway.

20. For the way a supposedly limited personality actor could match anything gifted younger actors like Montgomery Clift threw at him.

21. "Lest we forget" (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon).

22. Because when he worked with Maureen O'Hara they created believable domestic relationships that were about sex as well as love.

23. Because he possessed a stubbornness that was practically biblical: 100 cigarettes a day for decades, and after he lost a lung to cancer he promptly began smoking small cigars.

24. Because he had a sense of humor about the construct known as "John Wayne."

25. Rio Grande.

26. Because he was the first one on the set in the morning and the last one to leave.

27. For the implacable way he walks through a herd of cattle at the end of Red River.

28. "I wouldn't do that if I was you" (Hondo).

29. The Long Voyage Home.

30. Because he would play anything except weak.

31. Because he created Ethan Edwards, one of the darkest characters in the literature of the movies

32. Because he was a huge man who moved like a dancer.

33. Because it didn't make any difference whether the movie was great, good or terrible, it was still John Wayne.

34. The voice.

35. "That'll be the day" (The Searchers).

36. Island in the Sky.

37. Because he could hold his liquor.

38. Because he wore a bunny costume on Laugh-In.

39. For the look on his face when Kim Darby asks him to be buried next to her in True Grit.

40. Because when he said something, he meant it.

41. They Were Expendable.

42. "Republic . . . I like the sound of the word" (The Alamo).

43. The Quiet Man.

44. Because he was completely different for different directors. For Ford, he was a lonely romantic; for Hawks, he was a low-key professional.

45. Because all his wives were Latinas.

46. For being among the first actors to take responsibility for his own career by starting his own production company after World War II.

47. For producing Seven Men From Now, a great Western, and the second-best movie (after Ride the High Country) Randolph Scott ever made.

48. "I have faith in a supreme being. I don't believe in organized religion because there are too many of them and I just don't think God could be so disorganized as to have all that many churches claiming his authority."

49. Fort Apache.

50. For providing the matrix for generations of Marines in The Sands of Iwo Jima.

51. Because he appeared in the Motion Picture Herald's Top Ten Box Office Stars every year from 1949 to 1973.

52. Because he was never afraid to play against another dominating leading man: Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Lee Marvin, etc.

53. Because he survived playing Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.

54. Because he didn't mind playing a one-eyed old fat man.

55. Because of the reason he became an actor: "For $75 a week, you could be a star. I jumped."

56. "Westerns are closer to art than anything else in the motion-picture business."

57. Because he never gave a damn about critics.

58. Because on-screen he always wanted a woman who was his full equal.

59. Because his characters were always willing to endure the consequences of their actions.

60. For having the integrity to put his money where his political mouth was and produce, direct and star in The Alamo and The Green Berets.

61. For the look on his face when Dean Martin fishes for a coin in a spittoon in Rio Bravo.

62. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

63. For the maturity and grace of his love affair with Patricia Neal in In Harm's Way.

64. Because he played a very good game of chess.

65. Because he was loyal.

66. "You're awful pretty when you're angry" (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).

67. For the way he stops wearing his toupee in the second half of The Wings of Eagles and the performance is so intense that nobody ever notices.

68. Three Godfathers.

69. "Fill your hand, you son of a *****!" (True Grit).

70. Because he never had a sense of entitlement toward his career.

71. Because until middle age, he would do most of his stunts himself.

72. Because he had a superb collection of Navajo kachina dolls, as well as of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell sculptures.

73. "I know how to get my way. I don't argue; I become adamant."

74. Because he loved dogs, and not the ones you'd think. He had springer spaniels and dachshunds.

75. Because he could suggest a terrible sorrow beneath a heroic exterior.

76. Because the dog in Hondo was actually played by Lassie, and when he won the dog in a card game from trainer Rudd Weatherwax, he gave him back.

77. Because for 30 years, the BBC ran a John Wayne movie on Christmas Day.

78. "I've been in more bad pictures than just about anybody in the business."

79. "Give the cameraman a chance to photograph something besides walls and doors and tea tables. Don't let your story expire for lack of air."

80. "I stopped getting the girl about 10 years ago. Which is just as well, because I'd forgotten what I wanted her for."

81. Because his favorite hobby was deep-sea fishing.

82. "I never had a (expletive) artistic problem in my life, never, and I've worked with the best of them."

83. "Come up and see a fat old man sometime!" (True Grit).

84. Because his favorite drink was tequila.

85. "All I do is sell sincerity, and I've been selling the hell out of that since I started."

86. For the graceful way he confronted the disease that was already taking his life in The Shootist.

87. Because when he was dying of cancer, in excruciating pain, he never complained.

88. Because the more a director challenged him, the better he got.

89. Because the words "John Wayne" imply a point of view encapsulating not just movies but the world.

90. Because he owned all 20 volumes of Edward Curtis' The North American Indian.

91. "Maureen O'Hara is the female equivalent of me. She could rough me up, and I could rough her up."

92. Rio Bravo.

93. "I made Rio Bravo because I didn't like High Noon. I didn't think a good town marshal was going to run around town like a chicken with his head cut off asking everyone to help."

94. "All I ever cared about was that the public liked my pictures."

95. "For years I've played the kind of man I'd like to have been."

96. "As sure as the turnin' of the earth" (The Searchers).

97. "The hardest thing to do in a scene is nothing. The trick is making every nuance minimal. One look that works is better than 20 lines of dialogue."

98. Because his greatest achievement was creating John Wayne.

99. For the way he lifts Natalie Wood above his head in The Searchers, then quickly brings her down to cradle her like a child.

100. For his kindness and generosity to a young writer 35 years ago.

Ellie