John Wayne

How John Wayne Helped Revolutionize The Art Of On-Screen Fighting

Before John Wayne began making low-budget Westerns in the 1930s, stunt performers were rarely, if ever, acknowledged or given credit for their work. Studios didn’t want to break the illusion to reveal that it wasn’t the main star on-screen performing their own stunts, so the practice became one of Hollywood’s biggest secrets. Looking back on the history of stunts from the era, the British Action Academy noted that, during that time, studios and directors began demanding more dangerous stunts that resulted in a large increase in on-set fatalities.

The marquee star wasn’t in mortal jeopardy and some actors like Harold Lloyd had it written into their contracts that it could never be revealed when a stuntman was utilized. Tom Mix, the first bonafide movie star, always claimed that he was the one who made the famous horse jump across the Beale’s Cut ravine in John Ford’s 1923 short film, “3 Jumps Ahead.” However, Mix biographer Robert S. Birchard, author of “King Cowboy: Tom Mix and the Movies,” insisted that it was actually a stuntman and horse trainer named Earl Simpson.
Up until the era of John Wayne, there was always a clear delineation between actor and stuntman. Once talkies became mainstream, the Western remained popular but the genre was relegated to B-movie status. After the failure of his first starring role in “The Big Trail,” Wayne took an interest in learning more about stunt work, becoming proficient in horse riding and the general cowboying skills needed to look the part on-screen. Over the next decade, Wayne would hone his skills and become fast friends with the legendary stuntmen Yakima Canutt. In the years ahead, Wayne would help usher in an entirely new approach to fight choreography that proved safer for performers and more realistic to audiences.
Acting like a real-life street fighter

Warner Bros.Most of John Wayne’s greatest movie moments involve punching something or someone. The sound of his punch alone echoed throughout movie halls and became a famous signature of his. Since the actors weren’t really punching each other, the sound of the hit would be added later in post and it always seemed like the hero’s punch was always a little louder. Back when the action star began his career, however, the actors really were making contact. “At that time, in pictures, the way they did a fight was, you and your opponent, you hit each other in the shoulders and faked it to look like real,” Wayne said in an interview in author Maurice Zolotow’s biography “Shooting Star.” Wanting the fights to be as realistic as possible, Wayne emulated world heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, studying old newsreels of Dempsey training before a bout.
Unfortunately for performers like Yak Canutt, someone who found himself on the other end of those punches on more than one occasion, Wayne’s commitment to authenticity resulted in some real abuse. “I wouldn’t hold back when I felt myself gettin’ all worked up with hatred for a villain,” Wayne recalled. “I wanted to kill the son-of-a-b****. Matter of fact, I guess I liked these fight scenes more than any other stunts we did.”
Canutt went on to perform incredibly dangerous, spectacular stunts in “Stagecoach” and “Zorro’s Fighting Legion,” but he went up against John Wayne’s fists first. Complaints from Canutt and a little ingenuity from director Robert Bradbury (“West of the Divide,” “Westward Ho”) wound up leading to a completely new way to shoot a fight scene, with a technique still used today.
Inventing a new camera trick

United ArtistsInstead of punching the daylights out of his co-stars until they were black and blue, John Wayne described the day when director Robert Bradbury, one of Wayne’s early cohorts and collaborators, had a moment of inspiration. As told in the “Shooting Star” biography:
“[Bradbury] said that he thought if he placed the camera at a certain angle it would look as if my fist was making contact with Yak’s face, though my fist was passing by his face, not even grazing it. We tried it out one day, and when we saw the rushes we saw how good it looked. Bradbury invented this trick, which he called the pass system. Other stuntmen and directors picked up on it, and it became the established way of doing a fight.”
Before this simple but brilliant idea of the pass system was invented, there just wasn’t a lot of thought paid to protecting actors and efforts to make movie sets a little safer were still in early stages of development. Something as basic as changing the angle of the shot immediately lessened the blows performers were taking without compromising a fight scene’s believability. Wayne loved it because he could still pack just as much power into his punches. In the famous fight against Vic McLagen in “The Quiet Man,” Wayne played a retired American prizefighter for the first time. Watching the brawl, it’s clear both actors aren’t holding anything back but, miraculously, they never made physical contact once.
For a heavy like John Wayne who loved a good battle, the new technique was a welcome tool in his arsenal that allowed him to keep punching for years to come, in films such as 1975’s “Brannigan.” “I had plenty of fights on-screen. I’ve been told I’ve done more fighting in pictures than any other star –- and I’ve also had a few fights off the screen.”

John Wayne

John Wayne and the ‘Bonanza’ cast once appeared together at a special event.

Some of television’s most iconic western stars came together in the 1990s giving fans the best beer commercials ever made. It’s a throwback to some of our favorite western families as The Duke himself, John Wayne, joins forces with the Bonanza team in a marriage of classic television footage; technology; an old-fashioned storyline; and a good, cold Coors Light.

And, the result is an awesome one. The cast of Bonanza and John Wayne weren’t around at the time of the development of the commercial. However, technology inserts the western heroes directly into the storyline.

The hilarious ad begins as two rough-looking men barge into a bar. The decidedly intimidating patrons soon notice a couple of cold bottles of Coors light sitting at the bar. The men decide to make themselves at home and drink up the “free beer.”The men are surly and certainly have no desire to make friends at the establishment. However, the bartender warns the two that they may be pushing their luck.

“I gotta warn you boys, those seats are taken,” the bartender says. A nice gesture no doubt. But it does little to sway the beer-drinking bullies. Then another bar-goer shows up, telling the men that these are “our beers.”The two large men don’t seem to care, however. And they soon begin to give the Coors light owner a rough time, finally asking “who do you think you are, John Wayne?”

1990s Coors Ad Has Legendary Cowboy John Wayne Doing What John Wayne Does Best : Now, few who watched this commercial back in the day were likely expecting what came next. However, it seems that in a Coors commercial, if you summon The Duke, The Duke shall appear ! “No,” says a familiar voice off-screen. “That would be me,” the commenter continues just as we see John Wayne step into view.https://www.youtube.com/embed/iwdcsPqS1x0

However, one of the beer thieves doesn’t see the iconic cowboy just yet and he responds by saying “yeah right, and I’m Ben Cartwright.” “No, he’s over there,” says the bar-goer whose beers have been stolen. Sure enough, the camera pans to the other end of the bar revealing the familiar faces of the Bonanza cast. That’s right, Ben Cartwright and the rest of the Bonanza clan including Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, Pernell Roberts, and Dan Blocker are all standing tall. Looking as if they have just stepped off the Ponderosa Ranch.

Well, soon the barroom bullies realize that their ill-tempers have no place when sitting in a bar with John Wayne and the Cartwrights. So, they offer to buy a round of beer for the house. A happy ending for all.

John Wayne

Synthesize the tragic deaths that John Wayne excellently performed in the movie.

From 1928’s Noah’s Ark to 1976’s The Shootist, we compiled every film in which a character portrayed by Hollywood legend John Wayne met their end . Nicknamed “Duke,” John Wayne is one of Hollywood’s enduring icons. With a filmography that spanned five decades, he is preeminent known for his work in Westerns and epics such as The Searchers, Stagecoach, and The Alamo.

John Wayne even won an Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in the original True Grit.While many of the characters that John Wayne played were often the white-hat hero who saved the day and rode off into the sunset, there were a handful of films in his extensive acting career in which his character did not survive to the end credits.

While there are nine films in which John Wayne’s character is confirmed to have died on screen, there are five films in which his character dies in the background, off-screen, or his fate is left ambiguous.

In Noah’s Ark (1928), he is an uncredited stuntman that dies during the flood sequence. In the movie Hangman’s House (1928), he plays two characters, one of which is possibly seen being executed by hanging. In The Deceiver (1931), John Wayne plays the dead body of a character that was played by a different actor while he was alive. In Sea Chase (1955), his character’s fate is left ambiguous. Finally, The Man Who Shot Liberty Vance (1962) begins at his character’s funeral and then launches into a flashback, but his death is never shown.

Central Airport centers around pilot Jim Blaine, who, after crashing a commercial plane during a flight, becomes a stuntman and falls in love. After his love interest marries his brother, he leaves and becomes a mercenary pilot for communist rebels in China and Chile before eventually returning to save his brother from a plane wreck in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an uncredited role, John Wayne plays a pilot who drowns while trying to save a drunk passenger from drowning during one of the play crash scenes.

In West of the Divide, Ted Hayden is in search of his missing brother and trying to learn the truth about who murdered his father. When Ted Hayden discovers that he bears a striking resemblance to attempted deceased murder Gat Ganns, he seizes the opportunity to assume his identity in an to get the answers he seeks.

In this film, John Wayne plays the roles of both Ted Hayden and Gat Ganns to make their resemble uncanny. As Gat Ganns, John Wayne dies by drinking from a poisoned waterhole.

Directed by the legendary Cecil B. DeMille, Reap the Wild Wind is set in 1840 and follows ship salvagers who take in the captain of a wrecked ship, played by John Wayne, which leads to a complex series of shifting allegiances, love triangles, betrayals , and ultimately tragedy.

Towards the end of the film, John Wayne’s character, Jack, and another lead character named Steve, go diving in the wreckage of a ship to see if there was a stowaway on board when the ship sank. However, they are attacked by a giant squid, and Jack dies in the struggle against the beast.Released during World War II, The Fighting Seabees tells the fictionalized account of the Navy’s decision to form Construction Battalions or CBs, which were then nicknamed Seabees, so that US forces could advance the war effort in the Pacific even during the threat of attack from Japan.

John Wayne

John Wayne lays out his personal rules for accepting Hollywood roles.

John Wayne once revealed his personal rule for accepting Hollywood film roles. It was in a recent Talking Pictures episode on the BBC that viewers got an inside look into the long and successful career of Wayne, in addition to his personal rule when it came down to accepting film roles.In some archived footage, Wayne explains how he decide which roles to accept and which appealed most to him.

John Wayne on his personal rule for accepting Hollywood acting roles . In the footage, he says, “Personal story is a rule. Sometimes you’re stuck, and it is getting time for an assignment to come up, and you accept stories that are not completed… But as a rule, whenever that happens, you run into a mess, but I haven’t learned my lesson completely yet, I still do it on occasion.”

As for the roles he would flat-out refuse? He said, “Anything mean and petty. I think I have established a character on the screen that may be rough, cruel, may have a different code than the average person, but it has never been mean, petty or small.”

Wayne al so had seven children — four daughters and three sons — who would often appear with him in films that he produced and directed. It’s undoubtedly so that Wayne is one of the most celebrated and profound actors in history, so legendary that 20 years after his death in 1979, he was selected as one of the greatest stars of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute. But even though he’s such a legendary part of cinematic history, he didn’t always want to be an actor.

Wayne originally attended college to pursue a career as a lawyer before his career path clearly changed. “I think I would have enjoyed the occupation, but while I was going to school, I was offered a job in the summertime working at the studio…. I met [director] John Ford, and I enjoyed working with him and watching all the people through the scene, and then I go back to school and say, ‘Well, this kid’s father is a lawyer.’”

He continues, “This kid’s uncle is an established lawyer, and they’re going into those offices, and one of them will take me in, and I’ll be writing in the backroom.’ So it didn’t look as appealing or exciting as the pictures, so when I was offered the acting job, I accepted it without realizing it would end up a career.”