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John Wayne

John Wayne Once Revealed His Favorite Western Scene He Ever Filmed

John Wayne is known as the gritty, rugged cowboy who will go to any length, including putting his own life at risk, to save his town or those he loves. Though his catalog isn’t wall-to-wall action films, the movies for which he’s best known involve shootouts, chasing outlaws on horseback, and plenty of high-stakes stunts.

Surprisingly, however, the scene The Duke calls his best involves neither a galloping steed nor a deadly gun battle. In fact, it breaks from his typically unwavering machismo entirely. Rather than a brave defense of the Alamo or a passionate sequence with a love interest, John Wayne’s favorite scene is a melancholy-filled moment in True Grit (1969).

In the film, a 62-year-old Wayne plays Rooster Cogburn, a one-eyed federal marshal who’s let himself go. The Duke’s favorite scene is a rare one for a John Wayne character. During a stakeout, Cogburn opens up about his failed marriage, his relationship with his son, and his days making ends meet as a bank robber. In that moment, all the stoic roughness melts away and is replaced by a touching wistfulness.

For John Wayne, the break from his typical strapping cowboy persona was welcome. “It’s sure as hell my first decent role in 20 years,” he said of True Grit in an interview with Roger Ebert. “And my first chance to play a character role instead of John Wayne. Ordinarily, they just stand me there and run everybody up against me.”

John Wayne Once Described Creating the Western Genre

The Western genre can’t be discussed without mentioning The Duke. The original cowboys, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, changed the face of cinema forever, shaping Westerns as we know them today. For Wayne, that was something for which he felt an immense amount of pride. Even in 1969, he knew that he had built a legacy that would last forever.

“I’m very conscious that people criticize Hollywood,” Wayne explained to Roger Ebert. “Yet we’ve created a form, the Western, that can be understood in every country. The good guys against the bad guys. No nuances. 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.”

“When you think about the Western…ones I’ve made, for example,” he continued. “Stagecoach, Red River, The Searchers, a picture named Hondo 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.”

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John Wayne

John Wayne: Get to Know The Duke’s 7 Children

Actor John Wayne, known as The Duke by many dads and cowboy movie lovers, was a Hollywood and American icon. His western movies, such as The Searchers, Stagecoach, and Rio Grande, often overseen by director John Ford, are still iconic pieces of Hollywood western lore.

But the man who starred in The Quiet Man and Sands of Iwo Jima and as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (his only Academy Award win) was far more than just an actor. He was a family man as well. John Wayne had seven children in total from two marriages (another marriage resulted in no children).

Get to know all of John Wane’s kids below.

1. Michael Wayne (November 23, 1934 – April 2, 2003)

The John Wayne Foundation’s former president and chairman of the board is John Wayne’s first child. He started his film career as a production assistant on The Quiet Man and worked for his father’s production company, Batjac Productions. Michael also served as a producer on several of his famous dad’s movies, including The Green Berets, Cahill U.S. Marshal, McLintock! and The Alamo.

2. Mary Antonia “Toni” Wayne LaCava (February 25, 1936 – December 6, 2000)

Born in Los Angeles, California, Toni was the Oscar winner’s first daughter. Like her older brother, she appeared in The Quiet Man in a cameo role. Toni also had an uncredited role in The Alamo.

In 1956 she married Donald La Cava. The couple would go on to have eight children: Anita, Mark, Brigid, Kevin, Christopher, Peter, David and Brendan. She spent the rest of her life privately, as a mother and wife.

3. Patrick Wayne (born July 15, 1939)

Patrick John Morrison, or as he’s known on the screen, Patrick Wayne, is the legendary American actor’s second son. Patrick has had a prolific acting career, including in films like Mister Roberts and The Searchers, which starred his father as well. Patrick also had a great career in sci-fi, starring in films like Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger and The People That Time Forgot. Patrick also screen-tested for the role of Superman.

4. Melinda Wayne Munoz (born December 3, 1940)

John Wayne’s second daughter also had multiple appearances in his films as a child, but did not go into acting long term. Currently, Melinda lives in Newport Beach in Orange County, California, on Balboa, Island. She married Gregory Robert Munoz in 1964. The couple had five children together before divorcing in 1985.

5. Aissa Wayne (born March 31, 1956)

Aissa Wayne, like the rest of her siblings, had cameos in her dad’s movies as a kid, but she grew up to be a high-powered attorney.

According to her website, “Ms. Wayne is an experienced trial attorney having been trained as a criminal prosecutor for the City of Los Angeles. Our associate attorneys, Of Counsel and paralegals are qualified and experienced in the area of Family Law.”

6. John Ethan Wayne (born February 22, 1962)

The current director of John Wayne Enterprises and the John Wayne Cancer Foundation, which was founded after John Wayne died of stomach cancer, Ethan Wayne very much followed in dad’s footsteps. The actor has appeared in the NBC TV movie The Alamo: 13 Days to Glory, the CBS soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful, and the television series Adam-12.

7. Marisa Wayne (born February 22, 1966)

The daughter of John Wayne and his third wife, Pilar Pallete Wayne, was born on February 22, 1966, in Burbank, California. Marisa, like her other siblings, had cameos in a couple of her dad’s movies. She did not, however, pursue acting. She married Tony Ditteaux on May 4, 2005, and the pair have had two children.

Granddaughter Jennifer Wayne

The granddaughter of John Wayne and Pilar Wayne and the daughter of Aissa Wayne has followed in granddad’s footsteps, in a sense. No, she’s not an actress, but she is a performer. The country music singer and songwriter performs in the band Runaway June, who have hit songs including “Buy My Own Drinks” and “Head Over Heels.”

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John Wayne

John Wayne sends fans the last message of his life in ”The Shootist”.

John Wayne. What can you say about him? Whether you enjoy the man’s work or not, there’s no denying that he has made a massive impact on film history and pop culture. But even as a fan, I can’t defend every aspect of the Duke, like the guy’s acting. I can’t think of anyone who’s watched a John Wayne film for his acting chops.

The man was more known for his screen persona than his acting abilities, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have some good advice on acting.There are, however, a couple of films in which Duke pull off a pretty good performance . There’s his iconic role as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956) where he played a cold-hearted and cynical war veteran searching for his niece.

Then there’s his Oscar-winning performance as the one-eyed, fat, drunken Marshal Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn in True Grit (1969). But in this column, I’m going to talk about his last performance in a feature film :Тһе Տһootıѕt (1976), directed by Don Siegel.Based on the Glendon Swarthout novel of the same name, the film tells the story of an aging gunfighter named JB Books, played by Duke, who at the dawn of the 20th century finds out he has terminal cancer.

Per this news, he decided to try and spend his final days in peace. But as rumors spread about him through the tiny town of Carson City, Nevada, more people want to get a piece of him. It eventually climaxes with Books realizing that he’ll never escape his past and going out the only way he knows how.Before I go on about John Wayne in the film, I have to talk about the rest of the cast.

This film boasts an all-star ensemble, many of whom took the role purely as a favor to Wayne. There’s Dr. Hostetler (James Stewart) who delivers the bad news to Books about his health and becomes a closer friend throughout the film. “You know, Books,” he says, “I’m not an especially brave man. But, if I were you and had lived my entire life the way you have, I don’t think that the ԁеаtһ I just described to you is the one I would choose.”

Then there’s the late, great Lauren Bacall as the widowed boarding house owner Bond Rogers and Oscar-winning director Ron Howard as her wide-eyed idolizing son. The film also features a slew of great TV and Western legends — Richard Boone as the vengeance seeking Mike Sweeney, John Carradine as the town’s undertaker Hezekiah Beckum, Bill McKinney as the ill-tempered Jay Cobb, Scatman Crothers as the liver-stable owner Moses Brown, and Harry Morgan as the fast-talking and loud Marshal Thibido.

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John Wayne

How Maureen O’Hara Broke Her Hand During Iconic Scene With John Wayne

John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara starred in five films together over the course of their impressive movie careers. The only thing greater than their off-screen friendship was their on-screen chemistry.

Even though the pair had undeniable affection for each other, their film takes weren’t always flawless. In fact, one of their most memorable movie scenes resulted in O’Hara breaking her wrist. The scene takes place in The Quiet Man, a movie that was considered to be a passion project for director John Ford…the same man who introduced John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara at a party.

In a 2004 interview with Diane Sawyer, Maureen O’Hara shared a behind-the-scenes details about how filming a scene with John Wayne while she was angry at him resulted in her broken wrist.

“That particular day I was mad at him,” O’Hara recalled of a day on the set of The Quiet Man. “I was hitting him for real and I was intending to break his jaw. As you’ll see, as I hauled off to hit him, he puts his hand up and stops it. In that moment he snaps my wrist back and cracked a bone in my wrist.”

O’Hara finished filming the scene then went to the hospital. She later returned to the set to continue working because “you got no sympathy.”

O’Hara went on to explain in the interview that she was angry because John Wayne and the movie’s director had put down sheep’s dung for the scene where Wayne’s character drags O’Hara’s on the ground.

“Let me tell you, it stinks!” O’Hara said. “They loved tormenting me. Probably because I reacted. If I had had the sense not to even react they probably would have quit tormenting me.”

Hear Maureen O’Hara talk about breaking her hand while taking a swing at John Wayne in the clip below.

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