The greatest John Wayne image:
Posted on 06/01/2025 5:05:18 AM PDT by Rummyfan
There are actors and there are movie stars and then there are those rare legends whose image projected on a screen inspires tributes and treatises, polemics and diatribes, encomiums, tracts and paeans. Every movie star who ascends, even briefly, to some rare level of fame becomes the subject of this sort of beetle-browed inquiry by the sorts of writers tasked with finding something in pop culture that explains everything about a moment in social and political time.
But there are few celebrities who can support this kind of scrutiny and carry the burden of this much significance for long decades. In music it might boil down to just Elvis Presley and the Beatles, in art perhaps only Andy Warhol, whose cultural half life has lasted longer than anyone imagined. The post-literate world we've created means no writer has this sort of resonance anymore (though it once might have been Mark Twain, Tolstoy or Dickens.) Among movie stars there are only two names that abide as self-contained archetypes long after their deaths: Marilyn Monroe and John Wayne.
The body (no pun intended) of Marilyn literature is endless, but so is work devoted to Wayne, much of it explicitly political, but he still inspired Joan Didion to write about him representing a romantic ideal in "John Wayne: A Love Song", an essay included in her collection Slouching Toward Bethlehem:
"When John Wayne spoke there was no mistaking his intentions; he had a sexual authority so strong that even a child could perceive it. And in a world we understood early to be characterized by venality and doubt and paralyzing ambiguities, he suggested another world, one which may or may not have existed ever but in any case existed no more; a place where a man could move free, could make his own code...
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
The greatest John Wayne image:
Red River ?
Six seconds of pure cinematic genius.
During the mid-20th Century, the actor John Wayne (1907-1979) was the icon of American movies and American values for more than 30 years. Appearing in 142 films, mainly westerns, he won an Academy Award late in his career (1969) for his performance in True Grit, portraying the aging and cantankerous U.S. Marshal, Rooster Cogburn.
But was Wayne actually as tough as the many tough-guy characters he played on screen in real life? You bet. The following story not only confirms that fact, but is also one of the most bizarre true tales ever to come out of old Hollywood.
It was 1952, and even though the United States and Soviet Union had been allies as recently as World War II (1939-1945), they were now enemies in a Cold War. Surprisingly, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was a big fan of American movies, particularly John Wayne films. He was not pleased, however, with Wayne’s continuing off-screen, outspoken criticism of communism.
It seems Wayne had even gone so far as to join the anti-communist group known as the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. And he was not alone; other Hollywood celebrities in the group included Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, John Ford, Cecil DeMille and Walt Disney. Stalin eventually became so aggravated by the group—and Wayne in particular—that he actually ordered John Wayne’s assassination, dispatching two KGB agents to America to do the deed.
American FBI field agents in Los Angeles were tipped to the plot and immediately notified Wayne, offering him around-the-clock protection. But Wayne was more angered than concerned by the revelation, telling the FBI that he would handle the situation himself, if and when it actually occurred.
He didn’t have long to wait. In August of that same year FBI agents again came to Wayne, explaining that two KGB operatives—disguised as American FBI agents—were at that very moment on their way to Wayne’s office to kill him. In fact, as Wayne and the men were still talking, the phone rang. The guard at the front gate of the movie studio said that two men, claiming to be FBI agents, had arrived and wanted to speak with Wayne.
“Send them right on up to my office,” drawled Wayne. He then had the two real FBI agents hide in an adjoining room.
When the two assassins arrived, Wayne greeted them, offered them each a chair, and asked what they wanted. The pair said they wanted Wayne to accompany them off the studio lot so they could talk privately with him at length, and Wayne agreed. But when the two KGB agents stood up and headed for the door expecting Wayne to follow, he turned the table. Wayne pulled a concealed handgun, pointed it at them, and ordered the would-be assassins onto their knees, facing away from him.
“Now, you SOBs,” Wayne said. “I’m going to kill you both…”
The KGB operatives began begging for their lives, but Wayne had no mercy. He coolly took a step back, aimed at the head of one of the agents, counted out loud to three, then pulled the trigger, doing so a second time with the other agent. The handgun went off twice with a loud bang each time—but nothing more happened. John Wayne had intentionally loaded his handgun with blanks.
It was at that moment a grinning John Wayne called for the real FBI agents hiding in the adjoining room, who burst through the door and arrested the two KGB operatives. The Russians, feeling very fortunate to be alive but having failed in their mission, did not want to return home, knowing Stalin would have them killed. Instead, they chose to defect to the U. S., providing intelligence to the American government. In a stunning end to the story, in 1959 Nikita Khrushchev, who had replaced Stalin as Russia’s leader, met personally with John Wayne and apologized for the attempt on his life.
Following the foiled assassination John Wayne went on to make many more films, not only acting but directing and producing, as well. Two of his best, in my opinion, were The Cowboys (1972), co-starring Roscoe Lee Browne and Bruce Dern; and Wayne’s final movie, The Shootist (1976), co-starring Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, James Stewart, and Harry Morgan.
Summing up his 50-year Hollywood film career, Wayne said humbly, “I’ve played the kind of man I’d like to have been.”
https://www.nrafamily.org/content/throwback-thursday-john-wayne-the-russian-assassins/
Cool story- id read about jimmy stewart where he got invovled in smuggling out ehat he beleived was the remains of a yeti hand-
The Strange Saga of the Stolen Yeti Hand
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/saga-of-the-yeti-hand
“Byrne smuggled the finger and some skin from the hand across the Nepalese border into India, where he made a rendez-vous in Calcutta with American movie star Jimmy Stewart and his wife Gloria. The famous couple agreed to smuggle the finger into the United Kingdom for research by Slick’s friend and primatologist Osman Hill of the Zoological Society of London, which they did by hiding it within Gloria Stewart’s undergarments in her luggage.
Wrote Byrne in his letter: “Then, three days later, the hotel’s concierge called from reception to say that there was a British customs officer in the hotel lobby asking to see them […] and could he send him up. They said yes, of course and a few minutes later a young British customs official appeared at the door [o]f their suite, Gloria’s lingerie case in hand. They gave the man a cup of tea, had a pleasant chat and signed a receipt for the case which, Gloria noticed, was locked and had not been opened. Ushering the young man out the door, she pointed this out to him and asked why it not been opened and examined by Customs. ‘Oh madame,’ said the young man, ‘certainly not. A British customs official would never open a ladies lingerie case’.””
Here is a discussion of Wayne that grabs the appeal of Wayne:
I think Joan Didion might have grasped the appeal of Wayne in her brief essay more than Wills did over the course of a whole book. What audiences saw in Wayne – what was written and filmed and what they projected on the image they were watching – was more crucial than the politics he embodied. What mattered was how "he suggested another world, one which may or may not have existed." That "place where a man could move free, could make his own code and live by it."
The politics were truly anti-Communist, which appeal to the Midwest and not to the Hollywood glitterati.
The Searchers....
Supposedly director George Stevens said to Wayne, after several takes, say it with some awe.
Wayne spoke the line .... Aw, truly this man was the son of Gawd.
That was a very different kind of role for Wayne in "The Searchers". His character was gritty, had racist attitudes, and boy, did he carry it.
The movie itself was great, with great scenes:
Bad News
Finding Massacre Bodies
Ethan Edwards Riding Off: 
Classic Horseback in Snow
Fight Scene at Wedding: 
Love that movie. It is like watching a series of paintings.
The Angel and the Badman was a classic.
I’m going to hang you with a dirty rope.
"Truly, this man was the son of Gawd."
Wow...what a story!
John Wayne can be summed up in one scene in this movie.
When a bag of air dropped supplies lands near the men, the starving men run over and Wayne opens the bag. He pulls out a container of “Spam”, and immediately chucks it as far as he can throw it.
Even starving men don’t eat SPAM!
Like your picks. I have a favorite “Three Godfathers” , I don’t see it much on TV but think it is a classic.
One of my favorites too.
The Searchers, The Quiet Man and Hondo were his best movies IMO.
I love wines that have a story behind them. My favorite is the Mission Wine from Fall Creek Vineyards. The grapes are grown on land once owned by Colonel William B. Travis, commander of the Alamo.
The Riesling I buy from Weingut Eduard Kroth rekindles many fond memories from my 4+ years in Germany. The winery is a ten minute drive from my apartment in Traben-Trarbach. I'd visit about every six weeks, and spend the next few hours sampling wine, and talking about cars. My daily commute to Spangdahlem AB took me through the Urziger Wurzgarten vineyards.
Don’t be messin’ with The DUKE !!! Reagan should have had John as VP.
In a world before TCAS, GPS, radar, ATC, reliable HF radio, current maps, etc., these guys were very courageous.
Flying routes over Northern Quebec and Newfoundland, very wild terrain, and nobody there on the ground.
Plus a zillion lower echelon stars in it you will recognize.
Worth watching, as Steyn's commentary is worth reading.
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