John Wayne Cinema

From his first film role playing a guard in the 1926 film Bardelys The Magnificent to his final leading role and screen appearance in The Shootist in 1976, John Wayne’s screen persona embodied the values, societal roles, and ideological concerns of Americans more than any other film star in Hollywood history, (John 2004). From the 1939’s Stage Door, the film that made him a star, to his Oscar winning performance in 1969 for True Grit, John Wayne remained a number one box-office star for three decades. Born Marion Morrison in Iowa in 1907, Wayne’s pharmacist father moved the family to Glendale, California, in 1914 (John 2004). If Wayne was known for anything it was his grit and hard work. He excelled as a student and became class president and president of the debate team. He played football at USC, where he worked as a waiter for the fraternity of which h

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h popularity was Wayne’s ability to understand the societal values of a majority of Americans. He was adamantly opposed to anything that he considered un-American. Wayne supported and admired politicians like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Spiro Agnew, and Douglas McArthur, believing communism was ultimately a threat to American values. He was gregarious and democratically sociable more than most movie stars of his stature, often spending time on location drinking a beer with local blue-collar workers. When he saw High Noon, Wayne could not believe Americans would write such a screenplay. As he maintained, “Four guys come into town to gun down the sheriff. The sheriff is refused help everywhere so [Gary] Cooper goes out alone. It’s the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life! The last thing in the picture is ole Coop putting the U.S. Marshall’s badge under his foot and stepping on it! I’ll never regret having helped Foreman [the screenwriter] out of this country,” (Grenier 1996, 87). Wayne often received a great deal of animosity from liberals and from those who felt his “gun-ho” style was offensive to Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexicans. Wayne felt no guilt over injustices done to such gro
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