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Icon Of America’s Booming Confidence – My Blog

Earlier this year, the Harris Poll released its annual list of America’s 10 favorite movie stars. There, among today’s big names — Depp and Jolie and Clooney — was a lone name from the past: John Wayne. He finished third — 32 years after his death. Such enduring popularity served as a reminder that Wayne wasn’t merely a towering movie star, he was one of the defining Americans of the 20th Century.When I was growing up, Wayne was a cultural given, a man whose fame and physical stature made him something of his own Mount Rushmore. It never occurred to me that the John Wayne we all knew was a figment, a hard-earned act of self-invention.His given name was Marion Morrison, and he was born in Winterset, Iowa, a few miles from my hometown. Part of the great migration to L.A., Marion spent his adolescence trying to escape his parents’ unhappy marriage and to win his mother’s love — which, incidentally, he never did. A chronic overachiever, he won a football scholarship to USC, but poorer than his frat brothers, he had to earn money by serving them their meals. Like so many others, the mortified Marion found himself drawn to the democratic fluidity of a Hollywood that was invented by social outsiders.Although Marion was quickly given a manly new moniker — he always thought of it as the single word, “Johnwayne” — he took his own sweet time becoming John Wayne. Over countless B movies, he taught himself to talk that strange hesitant talk, and he consciously created a trademark walk, all swinging shoulders and hips. Duke was ambitious, and when other male stars volunteered for WWII, he stayed home. Working in a Hollywood suddenly deprived of male stars, he made movie after movie, often playing the thing he pointedly was not — the indomitable American fighting man. No actor has ever been better at embodying male authority.Wayne’s voice and manner are so easy to parody, it can take a while to grasp that he was a marvelous, canny screen actor. At his most ambitious, as in Red River, Rio Grande, The Searchers and Rio Bravo, he could act brilliantly. Yet even in routine pictures, he dominated the screen as few stars ever have, often by appearing to do nothing. A master of silence, he knew the camera, was the best reactor this side of Cary Grant and didn’t fear emotion. Wayne let you feel his deep affection for his screen soulmate, Maureen O’Hara, who brought out his tenderness and middle-aged rue.

Americans care less about authenticity than a good show, and though Wayne’s life wasn’t heroic — he personally drank and smoked enough for the whole cast of Mad Men — his screen roles made him something grander than a mere hero. He became this country’s “Idea of the Hero.” From the mid-’40s through the ’50s, Wayne embodied the American Century in all its booming confidence. If this sometimes meant embodying the darkness of our national past — Ethan Edwards in The Searchers is a genocidal monomaniac — that was never counted against his fundamental goodness. America’s Duke was tough, honorable, ready to laugh and share a drink, and always ready to do what men had to do in order to see justice done. He didn’t ask you to like him. He asked you to live up to him.Over the years, Wayne’s monolithic image turned him into a cultural lightning rod. Even as he inspired decades of conservative iconography — you can find his echoes in Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Rick Perry — his Republican politics and patriarchal style made him a target during the 1960s and 1970s. Mocking Wayne was part of a whole generation’s rejection of authority.But time moves on, and watching his work today, I don’t care who he voted for. I’m moved by his film’s portrait of an America whose confidence had yet to be shaken and by Wayne’s uncynical ability to embody virtues that are well worth preserving: the contempt for pettiness and love of hard work; the courage to be lonely in pursuing your goals; the respect for individuals in all their cussedness; and above all, the willingness to fight and die for a cause bigger than yourself. All of that is John Wayne, and it’s neither male nor female, conservative nor liberal. What it is, and always was, is American.

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‘Black movie queen’ Maureen O’Hara – a close colleague of John Wayne passed away in front of the audience’s mourning. – My Blog

The star of the movie “Miracle on 34th Street”, a familiar co-star of actor John Wayne, has passed away due to old age and weakness. Maureen O’Hara, an Irish star, was once known as “the queen of movies. color”, died at his home in Boise, Idaho, USA, on October 24, at the age of 95.


The information was confirmed by Johnny Nicoletti, her long-time manager. “She passed away in the loving arms of her family, as well as on the soundtrack of the movie The Quiet Man that she loved so much,” one Maureen O’Hara’s relatives shared.

During her illustrious career, O’Hara had five times played the screen lover of actor John Wayne. She appeared in many classic Hollywood films, such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952). , Our Man in Havana (1959) and The Parent Trap (1961).

However, she never received an Oscar nomination. A year before Maureen O’Hara’s death, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to present her with an honorary Oscar for her service to Hollywood.

During the 1940s, when color film began to flourish, Maureen O’Hara appeared in a series of compelling works such as To the Shores of Tripoli (1942), The Black Swan (1942), The Spanish Main (1945). and The Quiet Man.

Possessing fair skin, red hair, as well as green eyes, she “shines like the sun on a silver screen,” as the New York Times described it. It was Dr. Herbert Kalmus, the inventor of color film, who gave Maureen O’Hara the nickname “color film queen”.

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The reason why John Wayne is labeled ‘Draft Dodger’ in Wor ւ ԁ War II . – My Blog

When actor John Wayne visited American soldiers in Vietnam in the summer of 1966, he was warmly welcomed. As he spoke to groups and individuals, he was presented gifts and letters from American and South Vietnamese troops alike. This was not the case during his USO tours in 1942 and ’43.According to author Garry Wills’ 1998 book, “John Wayne’ America: the Politics of Celebrity,” the actor received a chorus of boos when he walked onto the USO stages in Australia and the Pacific Islands. Those audiences were filled with combat veterans. Wayne, in his mid-30s, was not one of them.


Around the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Wayne was not the big-name actor we remember him being today. He was fresh off the box-office success of the 1939 film “Stagecoach.”Being drafted or enlisting was going to have a serious impact on his rising star. Depending on how long the ԝаr lasted, Wayne reportedly worried he might be too old to be a leading man when he came home.

Other actors, both well-established and rising in fame, rushed off to do their part. Clark Gable joined the Army Air Forces and, despite the studios’ efforts to get him into a motion picture unit, served as an aerial ɡսոոеr over Europe. Jimmy Stewart was initially ineligible for the draft, given his low weight, but like some amazing version of Captain America, he drank beer until he qualified.In his 2014 book, “American Titan: Searching for John Wayne,” author Marc Eliot alleges Wayne was having an affair with actress Marlene Dietrich. He says the possibility of losing this relationship was the real reason Wayne didn’t want to go to ԝаr.

But even Dietrich would do her part, smuggling Jewish people out of Europe, entertaining troops on the front lines (she crossed into Germany alongside Gen. George S. Patton) and maybe even being an operative for the Office of Strategic Services.Wayne never enlisted and even filed for a 3-A draft deferment, which meant that if the sole provider for a family of four were drafted, it would cause his family undue hardship. The closest he would ever come to Worւԁ Wаr II service would be portraying the actions of others on the silver screen.

With his leading man competition fighting the ԝаr and out of the way, Wayne became Hollywood’s top leading man. During the ԝаr, Wayne starred in a number of western films as well as Worւԁ Wаr II movies, including 1942’s “Flying Tigers” and 1944’s “The Fighting Seabees.” According to Eliot, Wayne told friends the best thing he could do for the ԝаr was make movies to support the troops. Eventually, the government agreed.

At one point during the ԝаr, the need for more men in uniform caused the U.S. military brass to change Wayne’s draft status to 1-A, fit for duty. But Hollywood studios intervened on his behalf, arguing that the actor’s star power was a boon for ԝаrtime propaganda and the morale of the troops. He was given a special 2-A status, which back then meant he was deferred in “support of national interest.”The decision not to serve or to avoid it entirely (depending on how you look at the actor) haunted Wayne for the rest of his life. His third wife, Pilar Wayne, says he became a “super-patriot for the rest of his life trying to atone for staying at home.”

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John Wayne Wanted to Make His Home Alarm a Hilarious Tape Recording of His Voice: ‘I See You, You Son of a B****’

John Wayne Wanted to Make His Home Alarm a Hilarious Tape Recording of His Voice: ‘I See You, You Son of a B****’

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