When was actor john wayne born

Levy, Emanuel. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, McGhee, Richard D. John Wayne: Actor, Artist, Hero. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, Roberts, Randy, and James S. John Wayne: American. New York: Free Press, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Toggle navigation. Becoming "John Wayne" Wayne's first real break came in , when through the intervention of Ford he was cast as the lead in a major Fox production, the Western movie The Big Trail.

Superstar Wayne appeared in over seventy-five films between and when The Shootist, his last film, a Western, was released. Later career Wayne's politics also influenced his activities as a producer and director. User Contributions:. Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: Name:. E-mail: Show my email publicly.

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Show all 6 episodes. Warmth TV Movie Self. Self uncredited. Self - Interviewee. Self - Host. Self - Mystery Guest. Self - Awards Presenter. Self - Actor. Self - Special Guest. Hide Show Archive footage credits. Sheriff John T. TV Series documentary Self - Genghis Khan. Politicians TV Movie documentary Self. Cole Thornton uncredited. Il pittore che fece sognare Hollywood Documentary Self. Matt Masters. John Phillips. Untouchable Documentary.

Video documentary Self. Cooper Documentary Ethan Edwards. Documentary Self uncredited. Haben Sie welche? Thomas Dunson. Stony Brooke. You've seen what happens to some Oscar winners. They spend the rest of their lives turning down scripts while searching for the great role to win another one.

Hell, I hope I'm never even nominated again. It's meat-and-potato roles for me from now on. I hope that seeing the battle of the Alamo will remind Americans that liberty and freedom don't come cheap. This picture, well, I guess making it has made me feel useful to my country.

I would just about break even if I sold everything right now. But I've beaten the son of a bitch. Maybe I can give some poor bastard a little hope by being honest. I want people to know cancer can be licked. My advisers all told me that the public doesn't want its movie heroes associated with serious illness like cancer, that it destroys their image.

Well, I don't care much about images, and, anyway, I would have thought there was a lot better image in the fact that John Wayne had cancer and licked it. Talk someone you like into getting a checkup.

Nag someone you love into getting a checkup. And while you're at it, send a check to the American Cancer Society. It's great to be alive. But I think my favorite will always be the next one. And I hope I can keep at it another fifty years - or at least until I can get it right. There has to be, you know; it's just to me, that's just a normal thing, to have that kind of faith.

The fact that He's let me stick around a little longer certainly goes great with me, and I want to hang around as long as I'm healthy and not in anybody's way. Life's been good to me, and I want some more of it. Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I'm not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be.

I was proud when President Nixon [ Richard Nixon ] ordered the mining of Haiphong Harbor, which we should have done long ago, because I think we're helping a brave little country defend herself against Communist invasion. Did you ever see reviews like that? Reviews with hatred and nastiness. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm no stranger to this podium. I've come up here and picked up these beautiful golden men before, but always for friends. I was very clever and witty that night - the envy of, even, Bob Hope.

But tonight I don't feel very clever, very witty. I feel very grateful, very humble, and I owe thanks to many, many people. I want to thank the members of the Academy. To all you people who are watching on television, thank you for taking such warm interest in our glorious industry. Good night. When you come slam bang up against trouble, it never looks half as bad if you face up to it.

A man's got to have a code, a creed to live by, no matter his job. When the road looks rough ahead, remember the Man Upstairs and the word "Hope". Hang onto both and tough it out. We've made mistakes along the way, but that's no reason to start tearing up the best flag God ever gave to any country. The West - the very words go straight to that place of the heart where Americans feel the spirit of pride in their western heritage - the triumph of personal courage over any obstacle, whether nature or man.

There's a lot of yella bastards in the country who would like to call patriotism old-fashioned. With all that leftist activity, I was quite obviously on the other side. I was invited at first to a coupla cell meetings, and I played the lamb to listen to 'em for a while. The only guy that ever fooled me was the director Edward Dmytryk.

I made a picture with him called Back to Bataan He started talking about the masses, and as soon as he started using that word - which is from their book, not ours - I knew he was a Commie.

My main object in making a motion picture is entertainment. If at the same time I can strike a blow for liberty, then I'll stick one in. I think those blacklisted people should have been sent over to Russia. They'd have been taken care of over there, and if the Commies ever won over here, why hell, those guys would be the first ones they'd take care of - after me.

I said there was a tall, lanky kid that led airplanes across Berlin. He was an actor, but that day, I said, he was a colonel. Colonel Jimmy Stewart [ James Stewart ]. This so-called intellectual group aren't in touch with the American people, regardless of [ J.

In spite of them the American people do not feel that way. Instead of taking a census, they ought to count the tickets that were sold to that picture. In spite of the fact that Rooster Cogburn would shoot a fella between the eyes, he'd judge that fella before he did it. He was merely trying to make the area in which he was marshal livable for the most number of people.

I wrote to the head man at General Motors and said, "I'm gonna have to desert you if you don't stop making cars for women. Paul Newman would have been a much more important star if he hadn't always tried to be an anti-hero, to show the human feet of clay.

Contrary to what people think, I'm no politician, and when I have something to say I say it through my movies. I felt awkward romancing a young girl at my age.

Marshal ] It just wasn't a well done picture. It needed better writing, it needed a little better care in making. I had the feeling my career was going to decline back in ' I'd just had a big hit with The Green Berets , but I wasn't getting any younger and I knew Hellfighters wasn't going to set the box office on fire.

Then I read a script for a film called True Grit That isn't the American people who settled this country. Raoul Walsh -- the heartiness and lustiness he gave to pictures I thought was tremendous.

To me, at least, it simply degrades the Medal of Honor. The whole story makes a mockery of America's highest award for valor. The whole premise of the story was wrong, illogical, because they don't pick the type of men the movie picked to win the award, and that can be proved by the very history of the award.

Yates ' failed attempts to make a star out of wife Vera Ralston ] Yates was one of the smartest businessmen I ever met. I respected him in many ways, and he liked me. But when it came to the woman he loved, his business brains just went flyin' out the window.

I've always been mad at Yates about this, because we lost the chance to have one damn fine movie. I know what the critics think--that I can't act. What is a great actor anyway? Of course, you could say a great actor is one who can play many different parts, like [ Laurence Olivier ] can.

But all the parts I play are tailor-made for me. It makes you want to cry. At least Jimmy was over there to see the kid a few months ago. That's something. But it makes you want to cry. And [ Robert Taylor ]'s going was terrible. He was terminal since they opened him up. I know what he went through. They ripped a lung out of me. I thank God I'm still here. All the real motion picture people have always made family pictures. But the downbeats and the so-called intelligentsia got in when the government stupidly split up the production companies and the theaters.

The old giants--[ Louis B. Mayer ], [ Irving Thalberg ], even Harry Cohn , despite the fact that personally I couldn't stand him--were good for this industry. Now the goddamned stock manipulators have taken over. They don't know a goddamned thing about making movies. They make something dirty, and it makes money, and they say, "Jesus, let's make one a little dirtier, maybe it'll make more money". And now even the bankers are getting their noses into it. I'll give you an example.

Take that girl, Julie Andrews , a refreshing, openhearted girl, a wonderful performer. But she wanted to be a Theda Bara. And they went along with her, and the picture fell flat on its ass.

A [ Samuel Goldwyn ] would have told her, "Look, my dear, you can't change your sweet and lovely image". But you know, I'm very conscious that people criticize Hollywood. Yet we've created a form, the Western, that can be understood in every country.

The good guys against the bad guys. And the horse is the best vehicle of action in our medium. You take action, a scene, and scenery, and cut them together, and you never miss. Action, scene, scenery. But when you think about the Western--ones I've made, for example.

Stagecoach , Red River , The Searchers , a picture named Hondo that had a little depth to it--it's an American art form. It represents what this country is about. In True Grit , for example, that scene where Rooster shoots the rat.

That was a kind of reference to today's problems. Oh, not that "True Grit" has a message or anything. But that scene was about less accommodation, and more justice. They keep bringing up the fact that America's for the downtrodden.

But this new thing of genuflecting to the downtrodden, I don't go along with that. We ought to go back to praising the kids who get good grades, instead of making excuses for the ones who shoot the neighborhood grocery man. But, hell, I don't want to get started on that! But back to True Grit Henry Hathaway used the backgrounds in such a way that it became almost a fantasy.

Remember that one scene, where old Rooster is facing those four men across the meadow, and he takes the reins in his teeth and charges? Fill your hands, you varmints! That's Henry at work. It's a real meadow, but it looks almost dreamlike. Henry made it a fantasy and yet he kept it an honest Western. You get something of that in the character of Rooster. Well, they say he's not like what I've done before, and I even say that, but he does have facets of the John Wayne character, huh?

I think he does. Of course, they give me that John Wayne stuff so much, claim I always play the same role. Seems like nobody remembers how different the fellas were in The Quiet Man Or Sands of Iwo Jima To stay a star, you have to bring along some of your own personality. Thousands of good actors can carry a scene, but a star has to carry the scene and still, without intruding, allow some of his character into it.

I liked that. You know, in the book Mattie loses her hand from the snakebite, and I die, and the last scene in the book has her looking at my grave. But the way Marguerite Roberts wrote the screenplay, she gave it an uplift.

Mattie and Rooster both go to visit her family plot, after she gets cured of the snakebite. By now it's winter. And she offers to let Rooster be buried there some day, seeing as how he has no family of his own. Rooster's happy to accept, long as he doesn't have to take her up on it too quick. So then he gets on his horse and says, "Come and see a fat old man sometime". And then he spurs the horse and jumps a fence, just to show he still can. I listen to both sides before I make up my mind.

Doesn't that make you a liberal? Not in today's terms, it doesn't. These days, you have to be a fucking left-wing radical to be a liberal. Politically, though.

I've mellowed. I'm glad I won't be around much longer to see what they do with it. The men who control the big studios today are stock manipulators and bankers. They know nothing about our business. They're in it for the buck. The only thing they can do is say, "Jeez, that picture with what's-her-name running around the park naked made money, so let's make another one.

If that's what they want, let's give it to them. Look at 20th Century-Fox, where they're making movies like Myra Breckinridge Why doesn't that son of a bitch Darryl F. Zanuck get himself a striped silk shirt and learn how to play the piano? Then he could work in any room in the house. As much as I couldn't stand some of the old-time moguls - especially Harry Cohn - these men took an interest in the future of their business.

They had integrity. There was a stretch when they realized that they'd made a hero out of the goddamn gangster heavy in crime movies, that they were doing a discredit to our country. So the moguls voluntarily took it upon themselves to stop making gangster pictures. No censorship from the outside. They were responsible to the public. But today's executives don't give a damn.

In their efforts to grab the box office that these sex pictures are attracting, they're producing garbage. They're taking advantage of the fact that nobody wants to be called a bluenose. But they're going to reach the point where the American people will say, "The hell with this! Every time they rate a picture, they let a little more go. Ratings are ridiculous to begin with.

There was no need for rated pictures when the major studios were in control. Movies were once made for the whole family. Now, with the kind of junk the studios are cranking out-and the jacked-up prices they're charging for the privilege of seeing it - the average family is staying home and watching television.

I'm quite sure that within two or three years, Americans will be completely fed up with these perverted films. But don't get me wrong. As far as a man and a woman is concerned, I'm awfully happy there's a thing called sex.

It's an extra something God gave us. I see no reason why it shouldn't be in pictures. Healthy, lusty sex is wonderful. When you get hairy, sweaty bodies in the foreground, it becomes distasteful, unless you use a pretty heavy gauze.

They were done with intimation. They got over everything these other pictures do without showing the hair and the sweat. When you think of the wonderful picture fare we've had through the years and realize we've come to this shit, it's disgusting. If they want to continue making those pictures, fine. But my career will have ended. I've already reached a pretty good height right now in a business that I feel is going to fade out from its own vulgarity. Perhaps we have run out of imagination on how to effect illusion because of the satiating realism of a real war on television.

But haven't we got enough of that in real life? Why can't the same point be made just as effectively in a drama without all the gore? The violence in my pictures, for example, is lusty and a little bit humorous, because I believe humor nullifies violence.

Like in one picture, directed by Henry Hathaway [ The Sons of Katie Elder ], this heavy was sticking a guy's head in a barrel of water. I'm watching this and I don't like it one bit, so I pick up this pick handle and I yell, "Hey! Down he went--with no spurting blood. Well, that got a hell of a laugh because of the way I did it.

That's my kind of violence. This time we didn't. It's profanity, all right, but I doubt if there's anybody in the United States who hasn't heard the expression "son of a bitch" or "bastard". We felt it was acceptable in this instance. At the emotional high point in that particular picture, I felt it was OK to use it. It would have been pretty hard to say "you illegitimate sons of so-and-so! Rooster Cogburn's attitude toward life was maybe a little different, but he was basically the same character I've always played.

They made me a singing cowboy. The fact that I couldn't sing--or play the guitar--became terribly embarrassing to me, especially on personal appearances. But I couldn't take along the fella who played the guitar out on one side of the camera and the fella who sang on the other side of the camera.

So finally I went to the head of the studio and said. They went out and brought the best hillbilly recording artist in the country to Hollywood to take my place. For the first couple of pictures, they had a hard time selling him, but he finally caught on. His name was Gene Autry. It was before I made Stagecoach --the picture that really made me a star. Rio Lobo certainly wasn't any different from most of my Westerns.

Nor was Chisum , the one before that. But there still seems to be a very hearty public appetite for this kind of film--what some writers call a typical John Wayne Western. That's a label they use disparagingly. If I depended on the critics' judgment and recognition, I'd never have gone into the motion-picture business. Sure it did--even if it took the industry 40 years to get around to it [awarding him an Oscar].

I know the Marines and all the American armed forces were quite proud of my portrayal of Stryker, the Marine sergeant in "Iwo". But I really didn't need an Oscar. I'm a box-office champion with a record they're going to have to run to catch. And they won't. Let's say I hope that I appeal to the more carefree times in a person's life rather than to his reasoning adulthood.

I'd just like to be an image that reminds someone of joy rather than of the problems of the world. Luckily so far, it seems they kind of consider me an older friend, somebody believable and down-to-earth. I've avoided being mean or petty, but I've never avoided being rough or tough. I've only played one cautious part in my life, in Allegheny Uprising My parts have ranged from that rather dull character to Ralls in Wake of the Red Witch , who was a nice enough fella sober, but bestial when he was drunk, and certainly a rebel.

I've played many parts in which I've rebelled against something in society. I was never much of a joiner. Kids do join things, but they also like to consider themselves individuals capable of thinking for themselves. So do I. Entertainers like Steve Allen and his cronies who went up to Northern California and held placards to save the life of that guy Caryl Chessman. I just don't understand these things.

I can't understand why our national leadership isn't willing to take the responsibility of leadership instead of checking polls and listening to the few that scream. Why are we allowing ourselves to become a mobocracy instead of a democracy? When you allow unlawful acts to go unpunished, you're moving toward a government of men rather than a government of law; you're moving toward anarchy.

And that's exactly what we're doing. We allow dirty loudmouths to publicly call policemen pigs; we let a fella like William Kunstler make a speech to the Black Panthers saying that the ghetto is theirs, and that if police come into it, they have a right to shoot them. Why is that dirty, no-good son of a bitch allowed to practice law?

Quite obviously, the Black Panthers represent a danger to society. They're a violent group of young men and women - adventurous, opinionated and dedicated - and they throw their disdain in our face.

Now, I hear some of these liberals saying they'd like to be held as white hostages in the Black Panther offices and stay there so that they could see what happens on these early-morning police raids. It might be a better idea for these good citizens to go with the police on a raid.

When they search a Panther hideout for firearms, let these do-gooders knock and say, "Open the door in the name of the law" and get shot at. They're standing up for what they feel is right, not for what they think is right--'cause they don't think. As a kid, the Panther ideas probably would have intrigued me. When I was a little kid, you could be adventurous like that without hurting anybody.

There were periods when you could blow the valve and let off some steam. Like Halloween. Wayne's career as an actor took another leap forward when he worked with director Howard Hawks in Red River The western drama provided Wayne with an opportunity to show his talents as an actor, not just an action hero.

Playing the conflicted cattleman Tom Dunson, he took on a darker sort of character. He deftly handled his character's slow collapse and difficult relationship with his adopted son played by Montgomery Clift.

Taking on a war drama, Wayne gave a strong performance in Sands of Iwo Jima , which garnered him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Playing an American boxer with a bad reputation, his character moved to Ireland where he fell in love with a local woman O'Hara. This film is considered Wayne's most convincing leading romantic role by many critics. A well-known conservative and anticommunist, Wayne merged his personal beliefs and his professional life in 's Big Jim McLain.

He played an investigator working for the U. House Un-American Activities Committee, which worked to root out communists in all aspects of public life. Off screen, Wayne played a leading role in the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and even served as its president for a time.

The organization was a group of conservatives who wanted to stop communists from working in the film industry, and other members included Gary Cooper and Ronald Reagan. In , Wayne starred in another Ford western, The Searchers , and again showed some dramatic range as the morally questionable Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards.

He soon after reteamed with Howard Hawks for Rio Bravo Playing a local sheriff, Wayne's character must face off against a powerful rancher and his henchmen who want to free his jailed brother. The unusual cast included Dean Martin and Angie Dickinson. Wayne made his directorial debut with The Alamo Starring in the film as Davy Crockett , he received decidedly mixed reviews for both his on- and off-screen efforts.

Continuing to work steadily, Wayne refused to even let illness slow him down. He successfully battled lung cancer in To defeat the disease, Wayne had to have a lung and several ribs removed. In the later part of the s, Wayne had some great successes and failures. He co-starred with Robert Mitchum in El Dorado , which was well-received.