2011-09-24

JOHN WAYNE'S LIFE (2)

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He was a Master Mason. In other words, he was a good man who became a member of the Masonic Fraternity.
Pictured on a 37¢ USA commemorative stamp in the Legends of Hollywood series, issued on Thursday, September 9th, 2004. The first-day ceremonies were held at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
Was a member of the first class to be inducted into the DeMolay Hall of Fame on Monday, November 13th, 1986.
Although he complained that High Noon (1952) was "un-American", when he collected Gary Cooper's Oscar on his behalf, he also complained that he wasn't offered the part himself. He later teamed up with director Howard Hawks to tell the story his way in Rio Bravo (1959).
Despite his association with being solely Irish, he was equal parts Scottish, Irish and English.




While making The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958), he apparently became so enraged with director John Huston (who was something of a tough guy himself and was nearly as tall as Wayne but not as massive) that he throttled and punched him out. It is unknown what Huston did to earn the beating, but the director was known to have a mean streak. Wayne later re-enacted the incident for Peter Bogdanovich, who was somewhat terrified to be used as a substitute for Huston.
He was voted the 4th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Premiere Magazine.
Was named the #13 greatest actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends list by the American Film Institute
Eagerly sought the role of Gen. George S. Patton in Patton (1970), but was turned down by the producer.
Posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, by President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Brother of Robert E. Morrison.
Addressed the Republican National Convention on its opening day in 1968.
On Monday, June 11th, 1979, the flame of the Olympic Torch at the Coliseum in Los Angeles, was lit for honoring him, in memory. It remained lit until the funeral four days later, Friday, June 15th, 1979.
Maureen O'Hara presented him with the People's Choice Award for most popular motion picture actor in 1976.
During the filming of The Undefeated (1969), he fell from his horse and fractured three ribs. He couldn't work for almost two weeks. Then he tore a ligament in his shoulder and couldn't use one arm at all. The director, Andrew V. McLaglen, could only film him from an angle for the rest of the picture. His only concern throughout was not to disappoint his fans, despite being in terrible pain.
According to movie industry columnist James Bacon, Wayne's producers issued phony press releases when he was hospitalized for cancer surgery in September 1964, claiming the star was being treated for lung congestion. "Those bastards who make pictures only think of the box office," he told Bacon, as recounted in 1979 by the columnist. "They figure Duke Wayne with cancer isn't a good image. I was too doped up at the time to argue with them, but I'm telling you the truth now. You know I never lie." After Bacon broke the story of the Duke's cancer, thousands of cancer victims and their relatives wrote to Wayne saying that his battle against the disease had given them hope.
He underwent surgery to have a cancerous left lung removed on Wednesday, September 16th, 1964, in a six-hour operation. Press releases at the time reported that Wayne was in Los Angeles' Good Samaritan Hospital to be treated for lung congestion. When Hollywood columnist James Bacon went to the hospital to see Wayne, he was told by a nurse that Wayne wasn't having visitors. According to a Monday, June 27th, 1978, "Us" magazine article, Wayne said to his nurse from his room, "Let that son of a bitch come in." When Bacon sat down in his room, Wayne told him, "Well, I licked the Big C." Wayne confessed that his five-packs-a-day cigarette habit had caused a lung tumor the size of a golf ball, necessitating the removal of the entire lung. One day following surgery, Wayne began coughing so violently he ruptured his stitches and damaged delicate tissue. His face and hands began to swell up from a mixture of fluid and air, but the doctors didn't dare operate again so soon. Five days later they drained the fluid and repaired the stitches. On Tuesday, December 29th, 1964, Wayne held a press conference at his Encino ranch, against the advice of his agent and advisers, where he announced, "I licked the Big C. I know the man upstairs will pull the plug when he wants to, but I don't want to end my life being sick. I want to go out on two feet, in action." Before he had left the hospital on 19 October 19th, Wayne received the news that his 52-year-old brother Robert E. Morrison had lung cancer.
Regretted playing Temujin in The Conqueror (1956) so much that he visibly shuddered whenever anyone mentioned the film's name. He once remarked that the moral of the film was "not to make an ass of yourself trying to play parts you're not suited for."
In 1978, after recovering from open heart surgery, he had a script commissioned for a film called "Beau John" in which he would star with Ron Howard, but due to his declining health it never happened.
In November 2003 he once again commanded a top-ten spot in the annual Harris Poll asking Americans to name their favorite movie star. No other deceased star has achieved such ranking since Harris began asking the question in 1993. In a 2001 Gallup Poll, Americans selected Wayne as their favorite movie star of all time.
Increasingly by the early 1960s Wayne used to wear three or four-inch lifts in his shoes, a practice that mystified friends and co-stars like Bobby Darin's Capucine's and Robert Mitchum's because he stood 6'4". It was possibly due to his increasing weight, health problems, and age that he wasn't able to loom as tall without lifts.
He made several films early in his career as a "singing" cowboy. His singing voice was supplied by a singer hidden off camera.
In 1971 he displayed a sense of humor when he appeared on "The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour" (1969) in his usual western screen costume, flashing the peace sign to the show's other guests that week, the then-hot rock band Three Dog Night.
Of his many film roles, his personal favorite was that of Ethan Edwards from The Searchers (1956). Wayne even went so far as to name his son Ethan after that character.
In 1979, as it became known that Wayne was dying of cancer, Barry Goldwater introduced legislation to award him the Congressional Gold Medal. Maureen O'Hara and Elizabeth Taylor flew to Washington to give testimony, and signed statements in support of the motion from Frank Sinatra, Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon, Kirk Douglas, James Stewart and Katharine Hepburn were read out. The bill was passed unanimously, and the medal was presented to the Wayne family in the following year.
In 1974, with the Vietnam war still continuing, The Harvard Lampoon invited Wayne to The Harvard Square Theater to award him the "Brass Balls Award" for his "Outstanding machismo and a penchant for punching people". Wayne accepted and arrived riding atop an armored personnel carrier manned by the "Black Knights" of Troop D, Fifth Regiment. Wayne took the stage and ad-libbed his way through a series of derogatory questions with adroitness, displaying an agile wit that completely won over the audience of students.
On Saturday, June 9th, 1979, the Archbishop of Panama arrived at the hospital and baptized Wayne into the Roman Catholic Church. Wayne was given a Catholic funeral service, but his grave went unmarked until 1999 when he finally received a headstone.
Mentioned in many songs, including Jimmy Buffet's "Incommunicado", Tom Lehrer's "Send The Marines", Ray Stevens' "Beside Myself", Paula Cole's "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?", Queen's "Bicycle Race" and Bruce Dickinson's (of Iron Maiden fame) "Sacred Cowboys".
Along with Charlton Heston, Wayne was offered and turned down the role of Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell in Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979), because he felt the film was an insult to World War II veterans, and also due to his own declining health.
Underwent surgery for an enlarged prostate in December 1976.
According to "The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows" (8th Edition, pg. 495), Wayne was the first choice to play Marshal Matt Dillon on "Gunsmoke" (1955), but declined because he did not want to commit to a weekly TV series. He did, however, recommend his friend James Arness for the role, and gave the on-camera introduction in the pilot episode.
His performance as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956) is ranked #87 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
After meeting the late Superman (1978) star Christopher Reeve at the 1979 Academy Awards, Wayne turned to Cary Grant and said, "This is our new man. He's taking over.".
In 1973 Clint Eastwood wrote to Wayne, suggesting they star in a western together. Wayne wrote back an angry response criticizing the revisionist style and violence of Eastwood's latest western, High Plains Drifter (1973). Consequently Eastwood did not reply and no film was made.
His final public appearance was to present the Best Picture Oscar to The Deer Hunter (1978) at The 51st Annual Academy Awards (1979) (TV). It was not a film Wayne was fond of, since it presented a very different view of the Vietnam War than his own movie, The Green Berets (1968), had a decade earlier.
He allegedly turned down Dirty Harry (1971) because he felt the role of Harry Callahan was too far removed from his screen image. When he saw the movie he realized it wasn't so different from the roles he had traditionally played, and made two cop dramas of his own, McQ (1974) and Brannigan (1975). Director Don Siegel later commented, "Wayne couldn't have played Harry. He was too old. He was too old to play McQ which was a poor copy of Bullitt.".
He made three movies with Kirk Douglas, despite the fact that the two men did not like each other and had very different political ideologies. Wayne was a conservative Republican while Douglas was a very liberal Democrat. Wayne criticized Douglas for playing Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), and publicly criticized him for hiring blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, one of the "Hollywood Ten", to write the screenplay for Spartacus (1960). Douglas later praised Wayne as a true professional who would work with anybody if he felt they were right for the part.
One of the most unusual Oscar moments happened when major liberal Barbra Streisand presented Vietnam war hawk Wayne with his Best Actor Oscar at The 42nd Annual Academy Awards (1970) (TV).
Wayne publicly criticized director Sam Peckinpah for his film The Wild Bunch (1969), which he claimed "destroyed the myth of the Old West".
The inscription on the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to him in 1979 reads, simply, "John Wayne, American."
Although never hailed as a great actor in the classic sense, Wayne was quite accomplished on stage in high school. He even represented Glendale High School in the prestigious 1925 Southern California Shakespeare Competition, performing a passage from "Henry VIII".
Despite being best known as a conservative Republican, Wayne's politics throughout his life were fluid. He later claimed to have considered himself a socialist during his first year of college. As a young actor in Hollywood, he described himself as a liberal, and voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election. In 1938 he attended a fund raiser for a Democratic candidate in New York, but soon afterwards "realized Democrats didn't stand for the same things I did". Henry Fonda believed Wayne called himself a liberal just so he wouldn't fall out with director John Ford, an activist liberal Democrat. It really wasn't until the 1940s that Wayne moved fully to the right on the political spectrum. But even then, he was not always in lockstep with the rest of the conservative movement - a fact that was nonetheless unknown to the public until 1978, when he openly differed with the Republican Party over the issue of the Panama Canal. Conservatives wanted America to retain full control, but Wayne, believing that the Panamanians had the right to the canal, sided with President Jimmy Carter and the Democrats to win passage of the treaty returning the canal in the Senate. Carter openly credited Wayne with being a decisive factor in convincing some Republican Senators to support the measure.
According to Michael Munn's "John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth", in 1959, Wayne was personally told by Nikita Khrushchev, when the Soviet Premier was visiting the United States on a goodwill tour, that Joseph Stalin and China's Zedong Mao had each ordered Wayne to be killed. Both dictators had considered Wayne to be a leading icon of American democracy, and thus a symbol of resistance to Communism through his active support for blacklisting in Hollywood, and they believed his death would be a major morale blow to the United States. Khrushchev told Wayne he had rescinded Stalin's order upon his predecessor's demise in March 1953, but Mao supposedly continued to demand Wayne's assassination well into the 1960s.


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