John Wayne: “The sky is blue, the grass is green, get off your butt and join the Marines!”
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Oh, Wayne was a Marine?
Wayne applied to the U.S. Naval Academy, but was not accepted.
The poem was a skit on Laugh-In, as a take-off on Henry Gibson:
(from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Gibson
"Gibson's 'break-out' performance came with the three years he spent as part of the Laugh-In cast. A key character he played was "The Poet," often reciting poems with "sharp satirical or political themes".
[2] He would emerge from behind a stage flat, wearing a then-trendy Nehru jacket and a string of 'hippie' beads and holding an outlandishly large artificial flower, and say, "[Title of poem] -- by Henry Gibson." He would bow stiffly from the waist, recite his poem, and return behind the flat.
Gibson's simple-looking poem routine was a memorable enough part of Laugh-In that John Wayne actually performed it on the show once, flower in hand—although in his own inimitable style: "The Sky -- by John Wayne. The Sky is blue/The Grass is green/Get off your butt/And join the Marines!" At which point, Wayne left the scene by smashing through the flat."