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...