10 Awesome Things You Should Know About John Wayne

 

John Wayne has always been looked up to as a hero even though he has never fought a war or rescued someone. Wayne has appeared in nearly 250 movies with some of his best roles being taken when he was in his late sixties.

Here are 10 facts about this American icon that you absolutely SHOULD know!

1. Stalin ordered his death

Joseph Stalin was extremely outraged by the anti-communist sentiments that were expressed by Wayne in the late 1940s. According to sources including an unnamed Soviet source and Stalin’s successor Premier Nikita Khrushchev, two KGB assassins were dispatched to kill the movie star in 1951. However, they were intercepted by the FBI. The FBI also managed to foil other plans to kill Wayne, including a sniper attack during his visit to Vietnam in 1966.

2. Cancer

Wayne’s most inappropriate role in a movie was the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan in the 1956 film The Conqueror. A large part of this film was shot in Utah close to Nevada’s nuclear test sites. A few years later a large number of people on set were diagnosed with cancer including two of Wayne’s sons. Wayne himself lost 4 ribs and his entire left lung to cancer in 1964 and finally died of stomach cancer at the age of 72 in 1979. In 1985, Wayne’s estate allowed the John Wayne Cancer Foundation to use his name as an advocate program to fight cancer.

3. Marion and the Duke

John was born with the name Marion Robert Morrison on May 26th, 1907. His parents liked the name Robert and decided to use it for their next child so Marion’s middle name was changed to Michael. Marion never went anywhere without his Airedale terrier Duke. The two were always seen together and the local firefighters started to call the boy “Little Duke” which he liked a lot more than the feminine name “Marion”.

When he start working in the film industry he appeared as Duke Morrison and later in 1930 the director Raul Walsh started billing him as John Wayne. The actor had no say in the matter but he still preferred to go by the name Duke.

4. Football career

his statue in orange county airport

Being 6 feet 4 inches tall, Wayne was massive for someone born 100 years ago. He scored a football scholarship to the University of Southern California and played as an offensive tackle. His coach Howard Jones found him a job at Fox Studies as a labourer and prop man.

When he was out surfing in his junior year, Wayne injured his shoulder and was too hurt to play after which he devoted all his time to Fox Studios.

5. Draft dodging

Several of Wayne’s major roles showcased him as a war hero however he was never a part of the military. He was too young to be a part of the army during the first world war and by the time the US got into the second world war, he was 34 and just starting to get famous.

He had several health issues including a bad back, ear infections and his torn shoulder that killed his career as a football player. If he went through a physical he would have been stamped as unfit for service. Instead, the studio applied for him to receive a 3-A deferment (“hardship to dependents”) because he had a family.

Wayne did more for the war by being a part of movies that added an element of glamour to the military. During the war, he also worked for the OSS and spend months doing USO appearances or the troops.

6. Chess

Wayne was very fond of playing chess and was a skilled player. However, he was not above using duplicitous means if he could get away with it. During his shoot for Chisum in the 1970’s Wayne made friends with Christopher Mitchum the son of Hollywood legend Robert Mitchum. They would play chess together and Wayne would cheat by moving 2 pieces simultaneously while using his big hands to block Chris’s view. The next game Christopher called him out on it and his response was “Well, I was wondering when you were going to say something. Set ‘em up. We’ll play again.”

7. Wayne’s boxer relative

American boxer Tommy Morrison who held the WBO and ICB heavyweight championship titles happened to be Wayne’s grandnephew and went be the nickname “The Duke”. In 1996, Tommy announced he had contracted HIV due to a “permissive, fast, and reckless lifestyle.”

He dropped out of boxing and had some trouble with the law. He also hid away in a cave for some time. In 2006, he emerged saying the HIV tests were false positives. In 2007, he was tested negative, likely due to tampering of blood samples.

In fact, Morrison still had HIV and did very little to fight his infection. He eventually died of AIDS-related complications at the age of 44 in 2013.

8. Yakima Canutt

Yakima Canutt was a rodeo world champion and worked closely with Wayne. Their greatest innovations were creating methods to produce fight scenes that were exciting and realistic. Many of Wayne’s signature mannerisms came directly from Yakima like for example the towering saunter and the squinting.

Cannutt suffered a large number of serious injuries including broken ribs and legs. He had been under a fallen horse which severed his intestines, and the horn of a bull had ripped his face open. However, he died of natural causes at the age of 89.

9. Bald

Wayne was never the kind of person to go to a plastic surgeon to preserve his youthful looks. However, in the 1940s when his hair started to thin he began wearing wigs for his movies and to certain public appearances. This could have been on request of the studio. It was no secret that he was bald when spending time with his family or friends and he was far from shy about being photographed without his wig.

In 1974, he made an appearance at Harvard University where he refused to flinch while answering a series of questions from the student body. He was 70 at the point and had a great time with the students. When a student asked him “Where did you get that phoney toupee?” his reply was humorous “It’s not phoney. It’s real hair. Of course, it’s not mine, but it’s real.”

10. Red Meat

The weirdest rumour that went around about Wayne was the fact that after his death, an autopsy found several pounds (some sources say 40) of undigested red meat in his digestive tract. However, these rumours can be disregarded without even considering the biological impossibilities. Wayne was 72 when he died and had been suffering from cancer for a long time.