More than six decades later I still vividly remember a wide eyed kid bedazzled in a movie theater by John Wayne's performance in,
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon . His trilogy under John Ford of the American West remains a classic of the American cinema.
True Grit Remains a wonderful movie and Wayne's acting rightly deserved an Oscar.
The Quiet Man is a timeless treasure which nearly 70 years later remains a nearly perfect movie that was almost never made. John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in that movie were superb, John Ford pulled it off again in directing this nostalgic look at old Ireland.
In a conservative forum, I cannot concede that John Wayne's acting career in any way qualifies him to instruct the world about politics. If that were so I would have to accept that Robert DeNiro should be able to instruct me about his politics, after all, DeNiro is a technically more proficient actor than John Wayne.
John Wayne's greatest moment as a political figure rather than as an actor occurred when he had the good grace to laugh at himself by arriving at Harvard mounted on a military half track. There are actors in Hollywood, such as Jimmy Stewart, who were actual heroes in war and who therefore deserve to be honored for their actual service. There are actors such as Gary Sinise who is currently being honored for his service to veterans in a non-acting capacity who deserve our respect as conservatives.
But we must be careful about confusing the roles an actor plays when he dresses up and pretends before the cameras with real life conservative values. If we attach conservatism to the career of an actor and identify conservatism with that person because he is an actor, we fall when he falls.
Do we really want to admit that Barbra Streisand is a legitimate source of political values? Jane Fonda?
Let us admire real life heroes.
PS I am not sure that John Wayne was a great horseman if you watch his form you'll see that his feet were planted on the dashboard. That might be why Ben Johnson, who was a real cowboy and a real horseman, did the real difficult riding in those Westerns.
As a producer in The Alamo and, I believe, in The Green Berets he flubbed despite noble patriotic intentions which miscarried when the world, especially the critics of Hollywood, was turning upside down against conservatism.
I get it. John Wayne wasn’t a “real” ANYTHING. Not a real soldier, not a real horseman not a real gun handler and, perhaps, by your vaunted standards, therfore not much of a Man or an American.
But he portrayed what Men should be and what he thought America was and stood for in the world. He resisterd the impulse to make his charecters perfect. Many times his two fisted hard-charging charecters were forced to show humility or contrition.
He WAS an actor and in being one he did all he could to transmit to posterity the American Man and truth as he saw it. He did it so well that even in his time people who hate America HATED HIM with a passion Jimmy Stewert and Clark Gable, et al, never had directed at them. I was in grade school in the 60s when I became aware of the particularly snarling slitty-eyed HATE that he provoked in certain people and it amazed me... So, ok, yeah, he wasn’t a real anything...except Actor but he did THAT really really well.
I love the guy for what he put on film and the foaming, crazy, intractable enemies it made him. They hate me and my America as much as they hated him and it’s nice to know who they are. And it’s nice knowing, should we all meet out there someday, how I should conduct myself and why...