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John Wayne

John Wayne’s words to his daughter before taking his last breath .

John Wayne was in around 170 movies during his long career in the acting world. It’s hard to determine exactly how many because he had starred in so many early on in his career that was considered more obscure.

By the time he was done acting, fans heard him deliver hundreds of thousands of lines to the cameraWhile his acting career was the life he projected, Wayne also had a life outside of the set. He was married three times and divorced twice. In total, John Wayne had seven children during his life. Wayne will always be remembered as the epitome of the Western genre. The tough, macho man behind countless iconic films. He was in movies like “True Grit,” “The Shootist,” “The Cowboys,” and “El Dorado.”

John Wayne’s Last Words : When he was lying in his death bed, however, he wasn’t talking about the Old West or old-fashioned violence. Instead, family was his main concern. According to a Neatorama post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen, Wayne spent his last days in a hospital bed in-and-out of consciousness. He passed away on June 11, 1979, surrounded by many family members.

His daughter, Aissa Wayne (born March 31, 1956) was at his bedside. She held his hand and asked if he knew who she was. He responded with his very last words ever, “Of course I know who you are. You’re my girl. I love you.”

Wayne passed away from stomach cancer. He had been suffering from poor health for several years at this point. Deezen described Wayne on the set of his last movie, “The Shootist” by saying he was often irritable and missed days on set due to poor health. He even had an oxygen tank on set.

Beyond the stomach cancer, John Wayne also had heart issues. He had a long life of smoking, drinking, and a questionable diet. He actually had a pig valve put into his heart. His last appearance would be at the 1979 Academy Awards where he was notably thinner and very sick. He even had a wetsuit on underneath his outfit to make him look bigger.

According to Mental Floss his grave in Corona del Mar, Newport Beach reads, “Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.”

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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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