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New biography reveals the real John Wayne – My Blog

John Wayne starred in 169 movies, playing so many heroic cowboys that many Americans believed he had single-handedly won the West – and he came to believe it.

Yet Wayne was living a lie. Behind closed doors the man born Marion Morrison was a restless, melancholy, troubled actor struggling to live up to the screen persona he had created, a bombshell new biography reveals.
In John Wayne: The Life And Legend author Scott Eyman exposes a John Wayne very few knew.
Haunted by three failed marriages and bad relations with his children, he always struggled to win the respect he believed he deserved and felt forced to hide his sensitivity and artistic leanings.

For 25 years until 1974 he was one of the world’s top box-office stars, yet he worked almost until his ԁеаtһ not because of a love of acting, but because bad business deals and betrayals by friends meant that he never felt financially secure.
Instead the movie legend battled against his inner demons trying to live up to the John Wayne the world thought him to be. Despite his success he was tormented by his failures.
“The guy you see on the screen really isn’t me,” Wayne once admitted.
“I’m Duke Morrison and I never was and never will be a film personality like John Wayne.
“I know him well.
“I’m one of his closest students.


“I have to be.
“I make a living out of him.”
But playing the role of John Wayne off screen was tearing the actor apart, the new book reveals.
Wayne starred in Second World Wаr drama The Sands Of Iwo Jima, winning an Oscar nomination for his part as the quintessential US Marine.
In reality the actor was guilt-ridden having avoided military service during the conflict, staying home with his children while other stars from Henry Fonda to Ronald Reagan enlisted.
Wayne preferred the comfort of a yacht rather than a saddle and while his on-screen kisses may have been bashful, off screen he was a sex-hungry, unfaithful husband.
Wayne’s inner turmoil drove him to extremes.
He smoked up to six packs of cigarettes a day, consumed heroic quantities of booze and food, and made harsh demands of those around him.
He often woke at dawn and roused his family because he disliked being alone.
His second wife Esperanza Diaz accused him of infidelity, violence and emotional cruelty.
Born in Winterset, Iowa in 1907 he moved with his family to California at seven, the college football star worked as a movie prop-man and extra before being spotted by director John Ford who launched him as an actor.

Yet before his breakout role in 1939 Western drama Stagecoach, Wayne spent a decade honing his persona: “A voice, a name, a walk that would grow more pronounced in the future, an overall attitude,” writes Eyman.
A symbol of American machismo, simultaneously an outsider and an authority figure, Wayne played a series of idealised frontier Western heroes on screen.
He summed up his persona as “the character the average man wants himself, his brother or his kid to be.
“Always walk with your head held high.
“Look everybody straight in the eye.
“Never double-cross a pal.”
But Wayne’s jingoistic patriotism was also his undoing.
He spent 10 years and £1.2million of his own money making 1960 flop The Alamo.
“Everybody made money from it but me,” Wayne lamented.
His 1968 pro-Vietnam Wаr movie The Green Berets at least made money but alienated a younger generation that never forgave him.
Wayne endured the constant failure to live up to his screen persona.
When diagnosed with lung cancer in 1964 he poignantly recalled: “I sat there trying to be John Wayne.”
Surgery removed part of a lung but Wayne continued wheezing through a succession of mediocre Westerns to pay the bills, while rejecting stronger roles that didn’t fit his image, including Dirty Harry and The Dirty Dozen.
“He intended to play only men who mirrored his own beliefs, his own values,” says Eyman.
Yet while Wayne’s on-screen character was a man of constrained violence, in real life the actor was quick to apologise if his temper exploded.
From 1951 drama The Quiet Man until his ԁеаtһ from stomach cancer in 1979 at 72, Wayne gave every cast and crew member on all his movies a personalised coffee mug as a thank-you.
On screen he was a man of action and few words, yet off camera he played chess and bridge, would quote Shakespeare and Dickens and had a penchant for Tolkien.
Fans of his Westerns never knew that Wayne collected Eastern woodblock prints and native American kachina dolls.
The son of impoverished parents who struggled throughout their lives, Wayne never lost his passion for catalogue shopping, buying gifts for family and friends until “mail-order packages would arrive in bunches, 10 or 20 at a time,” reveals Eyman.
But Wayne could not find happinessin a mail-order catalogue and his personal life was tormented.
His mother Mary was cold and hypercritical no matter how successful he became.

She accepted Wayne’s frequent generosity with a sneer.
His father Clyde Morrison was a business failure who ԁıеԁ before seeing his son achieve stardom.
Wayne dedicated himself to his career but as a frequently absent father had a troubled relationship with his seven children.
Fears of inadequacy drove him to affairs that destroyed his three marriages.
A fling with screen siren Marlene Dietrich ended with Wayne being dumped by his first wife Josephine Saenz.
Though Wayne emboԁıеԁ machismo on screen it was Dietrich who was the sexual aggressor pursuing the actor, reveals Eyman.
When Dietrich spotted Wayne at a Hollywood restaurant she turned to her friend, a top film director, and purred: “Daddy, buy me that.”
They starred together in the 1940 hit Seven Sinners and Wayne began cheating on his wife.
When Wayne came on set Dietrich would leap into his arms and wrap her legs around him and he told friends that she gave him the best sexual experience of his life.
He never even complained when Dietrich spent time with close lesbian friends.
But the real-life Wayne could be indecisive, promising his wife to end the affair if only she stopped complaining about the German actress.
When his wife’s protests continued, Wayne admitted: “That’s when I knew the marriage was over.”
His on-off affair with Dietrich, however, spanned 20 years.
His second marriage, to Esperanza Diaz, was a volatile seven-year roller-coaster and his third wife Peruvian-born actress Pilar Pallette left him six years before his ԁеаtһ although they never divorced.
She complained that he was often absent, even when not working.
Wayne claimed family always came first but Pilar said: “Although he loved the children and me, there were times when we couldn’t compete with his career or his devotion to the Republican Party.”
A womaniser to the end, he spent his final years living with his secretary Pat Stacy.
But playing John Wayne was a full-time job and the actor spent much of his career battling to live up to the John Wayne fans knew.
He wore a wig in every movie after 1948, had plastic surgery to remove crows’ feet around his eyes in 1969 and in later years wore 3in lifts in his shoes as his 6ft 4in frame shrank with age.
Only at the end of his career did he dare to break away from his selfimposed rule of portraying all-American role models, winning an Oscar for 1969 western True Grit, playing over-the-hill drunkard Marshal Rooster Cogburn.
Wayne called it “my first decent role in 20 years – and my first chance to play a character role instead of John Wayne.”
But if playing John Wayne was the actor’s greatest role, it was also one he struggled with for a lifetime and never felt he mastered.

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Bruce Dern paid homage to Western past as ” Man Who Killed John Wayne ” – My Blog

Over the years, Bruce Dern has made quite a career in film. From acting to producing and just about every facet of the industry. One of his most notable roles, earlier in his career was when he killed John Wayne. That film, 1972’s The Cowboy, came up in his Goliath series.Dern’s series, Goliath features Billy Bob Thornton and others in a legal drama, unlike many others.


Throughout the series, the production crew has tried their best to incorporate some of the film legend’s old material into the show. A man who has worked with everyone from Alfred Hitchcock to John Wayne, Quentin Tarantino and more, has a lot to reflect on.

However, it was how they paid homage to that old John Wayne film that really surprised Dern. During the fourth and final season, Billy McBride has a dream in which Dern appears. Riding a horse and wearing a very familiar outfit.“But what they did that I didn’t know, they went back to Western Custom and got the 1972 exact costume I wore in The Cowboys when I killed John Wayne,” Bruce Dern said.

“They did stuff like that. I was totally surprised. I said, ‘S***, I’ve seen this stuff before.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, you wore it in The Cowboys when you killed John Wayne.’ Oh, my God.’” He continued, “Each day they’d come up with little things like that particularly for me. I really appreciated that. And that is Larry Trilling and big-time Billy Bob Thronton. He’s all about what was there before. I mean, we’re not inventing the wheel, so to speak. We’re trying to find new ways to communicate things. And I enjoyed the opportunity to do that.”Bruce Dern Made a Lot of Enemies Killing John WayneWhile the action was just part of a movie, The Cowboy had quite an influence on how many Western fans viewed Bruce Dern. Taking out The Duke is no small task. It comes with a lot of repercussions. Especially the way his character did it, shooting Wayne in the back after losing a fistfight…in front of a bunch of kids.

While the dramatics of the scene was a perfect example of those old classic Westerns, Dern never really shook the reputation with a certain generation of fans. However, while working with John Wayne, Dern received direct orders to disrespect Wayne on set.“But right at the start, he says to me, ‘I want you to do us a favor.’ He was including himself, [director] Mark Rydell, and the scriptwriters.” Dern explained that during the pep talk, “He [Wayne] gave me carte blanche to just treat him like a turd.” All so the kids acting on set as the cowboys would be scared of the bad guys.

Bruce Dern got into the role and listened to the orders that Wayne gave him. Now, the movie is a Western classic, and infamous in the minds and hearts of John Wayne fans everywhere.

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John Wayne or Jeff Bridges, who plays the role of Rooster Cogburn well? – My Blog

Two movies made 50 years apart, both based on a novel by the same name. Two different iconic actors took turns playing the rough-and-tumble marshal Rooster Cogburn in their respective versions of “True Grit.” John Wayne played him in the 1969 version, Jeff Bridges in 2010. Both were celebrated critically. Now, Duke’s official Instagram account is comparing the performances to see which one did it better.Of course, the question was posed by the John Wayne account. So it’s safe to say the people who responded in the comments were at least slightly biased toward the 1969 version.


Then again, both Rooster Cogburn actors were nominated for Academy Awards for their performances. So it’s really anybody’s game.“John Wayne & Jeff Bridges were both nominated for Oscars for their performance as Rooster Cogburn. Which version of the movie is your favorite, 1969 or 2010?” the Instagram caption read.

In the world of remakes, few movies do as much justice to their original counterparts as the 2010 version of “True Grit” from the Coen Brothers. There was no consensus among fans whatsoever. But some of the most popular sentiments seemed to be that the 1969 “True Grit” with John Wayne as Cogburn featured the more iconic performance. Though, many fans thought the 2010 movie was closer to the source text than the original.

“I have to fall on the side of the Duke. BUT, that’s the BEST remake of a film, I’ve ever seen! Loved them both,” a fan replied to the Instagram post.“2010 Much richer film and truer to the book’s feel. Wayne was robbed of an Oscar for the Searchers and this was a lifetime achievement award,” another added.Two Versions of ‘True Grit,’ Two Very Different Approaches to Character . One of the biggest complaints John Wayne fans had of Jeff Bridges’ approach to Rooster Cogburn was how disheveled he appeared.

“Jeff Bridges was horrible had marbles in house mouth and portrait Roster as a slob,” another fan replied to the post from John Wayne’s estate.But a different fan pointed out that, indeed, the portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in the novel by Charles Portis was one of a slobbish man.This isn’t to say that the Bridges performance is better for accuracy. It’s just that Henry Hathaway, the director of the 1969 “True Grit,” and the Coen brothers took different approaches to their movies. As a result, the actors contrasted greatly in their portrayals of Rooster Cogburn.

At the end of the day, however, the win may have to go to John Wayne on this one. After all, we’re still waiting on Jeff Bridges to reprise the role in a sequel. Duke did it in the 1975 film “Rooster Cogburn.”

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John Wayne’s ”expensive” sayings made the fans ”nod”’. – My Blog

John Wayne (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979) was an American movie Actor, director, and producer, known in movies like Stagecoach, Angel and the Bad Man, Red River, and The Shootist.They say that life is a good teacher and through them who lived this life we can learn a lot, especially from great people like John Wayne a.k.a Duke.Today I am going to share with you Wayne’s 5 rules you should be remembering in your daily life:


1. Money cannot buy happiness but its more comfortable to cry in a Mercedes than on a bicycle.
This is a long debate everywhere, rich people say that “those who say money can buy happiness are the ones who don’t have” and broke people reply that “you don’t know how miserable we are just because we don’t have coins in our pocket”.John Wayne made it clearer that though money cannot buy happiness but when unhappy moments arrive money can make someone comfortable.


2. Forgive your enemy but remember the bastard’s name.
Forgiving your enemy is in your favor, most of the time carrying such burden in your heart is more painful while the bastard doesn’t even know.Just to be careful, put their names somewhere in your mind. Once a soldier always a commando and once enemy, I don’t know.

3. Help someone when they are in trouble and they will remember you when they’re in trouble again.
Do what is right, help people but never expect something in return.According to John Wayne, the only thing you can expect from people is that if you have helped them in the hard times, they will remember you when they’re in trouble again.

4. Many people are alive only because it’s illegal to shoot them.
Everyone has enemies and some people do harm to us to the level we even wish to kill them. Not only our enemies would be killed if to kill was not illegal but also some innocents and powerless people.About this rule, something you have to learn is that we’re surrounded by people that don’t kill us only because it’s illegal.
5. Alcohol does not solve any problems, but then again, neither does milk.
Haha this rule is somehow funny but it is true on the other hand. You will find people telling you stop drinking alot it will solve nothing but at least you’ll have that sedative moment.Alcohol does not solve any problems, but then again, neither does milk.

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