John Wayne’s simple character trick that transformed Hollywood cliché
The western star was highly regarded for helping change cinema during his illustrious career.
John Wayne, who has a series of films available to watch on BBC iPlayer including Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, is often heralded as the greatest actor Hollywood has ever produced. His status among Tinsel Town’s elite saw him navigate his career through the silent era of the Twenties, and the American New Wave of cinema, earning him a spot as one of the greatest male stars of the film by the American Film Institute. The Iowa-born star, who died aged 72 in 1979, was credited with helping usher in the new age of talking pictures, but he claims to have simply adjusted how hero characters were perceived
Among the innovations Wayne helped employ during his height of fame was having heroes fight evil. So often in cinema, the good character would be polite in the way in which they attempted to derail the villain.
But for Wayne, something had to change. According to a 2019 Lit Hub report, Wayne understood that before he “came along, it was standard practice that the hero must always fight clean”.
He continued: “The heavy was allowed to hit the hero in the head with a chair or throw a kerosene lamp at him or kick him in the stomach, but the hero could only knock the villain down politely and then wait until he rose. I changed all that. I threw chairs and lamps. I fought hard and I fought dirty. I fought to win.”
John Wayne remains one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, renowned for his western films (Image: GETTY)
Wayne’s fiery, often no-nonsense, characters were hugely popular with audiences and remain to this day firm favourites with film buffs the world over.
For a man so linked to epitomising the hero, some saw Wayne, often referred to as The Duke, as the villain when he snubbed going to battle with his country during World War Two.
While many of his contemporaries, such as Jimmy Stewart, Mel Brooks, Kirk Douglas and Clark Gable, all took on Germany and its leader Adolf Hitler, Wayne remained in the US, continuing with his career as an actor.
Though the reason behind his apparent disqualification from duty is debated, reports suggest that he was exempted from duty because of his age. At the time of Pearl Harbour, among the US’ most iconic contributions to the war effort, Wayne was 34.
John Wayne: The western star did not serve in World War Two (Image: GETTY)
He was also ineligible due to a family deferment. Wayne, though, wrote to his long-time collaborator, the film director John Ford, pleading to be allowed time off to serve, but his request was never accepted.
This fueled his ambition to play heroes in the films he starred in, according to Carolyn McGivern’s 2000 book, John Wayne: A Giant Shadow, as he was full of “terrible embarrassment”.
He said: “Mine became the task of holding high and ever visible the value that everyone was fighting for.”
Another suggestion as to why Wayne didn’t serve was put forward by author Marc Eliot, who penned the 2014 book American Titan: Searching for John Wayne.
John Wayne would win an Oscar in 1972. Here he is in 1954 at the Academy Awards (Image: GETTY)
Eliot argued that Wayne did not want to fight Germany because of his relationship with Marlene Dietrich, a German actress he reportedly had an affair with.
Another moment that left Wayne conflicted came in 2014’s, John Wayne: The Life and Legend, written by Scott Eyman. The author claimed Wayne, who won the Best Actor Oscar in 1970 for True Grit, had an encounter that severely affected him.
He wrote: “Duke Morrison [Wayne]’s learning experiences were not always pleasant, but deeply imprinted on his ethical compass. He remembered catching a bee, and tying a thread around the creature so all it could do was fly in circles. A boy who was about three years older and had recently arrived from Poland walked by and said, ‘Don’t do that.’
“Morrison ignored him and kept tormenting the bee, at which point, he remembered, ‘The roof fell in.'”
He added: “[Wayne] found himself lying on the ground with the Polish boy standing over him. With a heavy accent, the boy said, ‘I’ve just come from a war, from Poland. Don’t ever be cruel to animals. Or people.’
“‘It was quite a lesson,’ Duke said. ‘I’ll never forget it.'”
Despite his approval, Wayne was often jeered because of his absence from duty. This included when he was booed by military personnel, as outlined by Garry Wills in his 1998 book John Wayne’s America: The Politics of Celebrity.
On one occasion, when walking out on the USO stages in Australia and the Pacific Islands. In front of a packed house of veterans, Wayne was widely mocked. But Mr Eliot argued it was Dietrich’s influence that was the real reason for his snub.
He said: “When she came into Wayne’s life, she juicily sucked every last drop of resistance, loyalty, morality, and guilt out of him, and gave him a sexual and moral cleansing as efficiently done as if she were draining an infected sore.”
He added: “He had never before had a real whiff of the kind of feral sexuality Dietrich exuded. He was crazy for Dietrich from the first time she led him to her bed. He stayed there, at her beck and call, for the next three years and didn’t appear to care who knew it.
“She was the bad girl he’d never had, the forbidden fruit he’d never tasted. Dietrich made him not just like sex with her but crave it.”
