Posted on 05/27/2007 12:18:54 PM PDT by wagglebee
If the Duke had just taken better care of himself, like maybe not smoking four packs of cigarettes a day for decades, he would turn 100 on Saturday. For what he did both to entertain and to inspire us in his long movie career, he has certainly earned peaceful rest for Eternity. But we could sure use the old cowpoke today.
Marion Robert Morrison, who would later adopt the screen name John Wayne, entered this world at Winterset, Iowa, on May 26, 1907. Who could have guessed that this child of the Midwest would become the nation's most popular actor, and perhaps the greatest explicator of America's best values? Values, which when we lived them, helped us defeat fascism, work our way out of the Great Depression, and build an economy and a way of life for the world to admire while remaining the strongest military power the world has ever seen.
Not too shabby for a country that began as an escape valve and dumping ground for a small band of cranky Puritans from England.
The Duke learned his craft in dozens of B westerns during the thirties. But after the success of Stagecoach in 1939, he was never far from number one in America's movie scorecard for the next three and a half decades. He was ranked in the top 10 box office attractions from 25 straight years. No other actor has come close to that.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
One of a kind, indeed. Right up there with baseball and apple pie, John Wayne.
If the Duke had just taken better care of himself, like maybe not smoking four packs of cigarettes a day for decades, he would turn 100 on Saturday.
What a disgustintg first line. I hope when Princess Di’s 100 comes around they say, “If the slut was not dating a muslim in Paris instead of watching her children, she may have made it to her 100th birthday.” UGH!!! I am usually not too hard on the media but they are bullies and a holes!!!
And it is possible to fly from Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC and land at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, CA — that is as patriotic as you can get!
I agree, that statement had no place in the story.
In 100 years, Americans will still be watching John Wayne movies from sea to shining sea.
"Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I'm not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be."
~~~ John Wayne
Happy Birthday to a great American...
Thank you Duke...
I still love your movies...
You were a REAL American.......
Too bad the Duke isn’t around so he could knock the sh!t out of rosie,clintons,a.baldwin and the like.The good Lord don’t make many actors like him anymore.He lives on forever in memory.R.I.P. Duke.
I read something once that claimed that the cancer that killed John Wayne was not from smoking but from resulting from his being downwind of some above-ground atomic testing (carried out in Nevada while he was in southern Utah filming a movie). I’m not sure if that is true.
I’m not sure, but I thought it was stomach and/or intestinal cancer that killed him.
I know you copied/pasted the above, but I think it's great that your photo comes, I believe, from his greatest Western, "The Searchers"; not mentioned above.
It was a movie he made about Ghengis Khan in the 1950s. It was filmed in Utah or some place like that near where the bomb. I understand quite a few who were involved with making that flick came down with cancer. But since actors in those days smoke liked chimneys (usually, unfiltered Camels or Luckies), and drank hard liquor like water, I don’t know if, statistically, it can be proven.
As a teenager, we had family friends with a weekend home on ritzy and expensive Balboa Island, and they'd point out his "yacht"....huge, and I vaguely recall being told it was a refurbed/converted naval ship (PT boat, maybe?) of some sort.
John Wayne’s yacht was originally built for Al Capone and it is VERY impressive:
http://www.1contemporary.com/americana.html
Good find!
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