John “Duke” Wayne in the Golden Age of Hollywood

The most famous cowboy of all, John “Duke” Wayne, was best described in comments that were made after his passing, as being someone that embodied what the masses wished that cowboy history was all about. A great actor with humble beginnings, Wayne’s journey was full circle, from humble beginnings and growing up in a small town in Iowa to becoming a big screen icon to living out his older days in somewhat of a late-life crisis, unable to adapt with the changing times. It is a story of how the flow of Wayne’s fluid identity, flowed from his real attitude and pooled into his reel attitude, and it goes something like this.

Wayne’s high school days.

As a highschooler, Wayne was beloved by all his teachers and classmates, especially the girls. If Wayne had continued with his high school dreams for the future, he would have become a journalist, as he was known for enthusiastic writing and flamboyant vocabulary. His writing skills allowed him to win a contest for best essay after he wrote about World War 1. However, Wayne also was quite the chess player and he even participated in school plays including Dulcy and The First Lady of the Land.

Despite that Wayne was great academically, many described him as having a confidence and maturity beyond his years, and how he also had a knack for the public arena. In addition to this, there was a rambunctious exuberance that was becoming apparent, and it was why he almost got kicked out of high school after his pranks started to get out of hand.

On one occasion, Wayne had got his hands on some gum resin that was used as an antispasmodic, and after applying it across the hall, he left the bottle behind. When the next day arrived, anyone who smelled the scent became instantly nauseous, but a chemistry professor who found the bottle was able to trace it back to Wayne’s father. When Wayne’s father confronted his son and asked him to spell the bottle’s name, which had been misspelled, Wayne spelled it the same way. As a result, Wayne ended up having to apologize in front of the whole school.

On other occasions, on Saturday nights, Wayne and some friends would gather rotten eggs and old tomatoes. They would then carry out drive-by “attacks” by throwing them at the old street cars which had open sections on the backside where people would stand. Additionally, they would also grease the tracks of the Eagle Rockglendale streetcar so that they could watch it slide backwards downhill and laugh hysterically.

What also stuck out about Wayne was that he was gifted athletically, and his high school football career was enough to help him earn a university scholarship. However, the football field might be where his then-identity defining moment was made, after a teammate called another teammate a “Jap”. After this, the kid who used the derogatory term toward the Japanese-American kid would get beaten up. Wayne described it as all of the teammates being bound by the same conditions, poverty, despite their lines of difference, and standing up for what was right and supporting each other regardless of race or background.

By the end of his high school journey, the parents of girls at Glendale High School did not want their daughters to date him because they thought he ran with the fast crowd. In his yearbook, he was predicted to become the president of an ice cream company, and that he would one day author a book titled, “The Most Famous Men Have Humble Beginnings”.

Wayne’s university days.

Transitioning from high school to university never proved to be a challenge for Wayne, but his first choice was to join the Navy rather than following through on his football scholarship at University of Southern California (USC). At USC, Wayne was a decent student, but he experienced a few football injuries that limited his ability to play. As a result, Wayne would go on to find some part-time work on film sets where he worked as a prop boy and sometimes served as an extra on set.

On one occasion, Wayne was tasked with throwing leaves in front of a fan and some custodial work for a film called Four Sons (1928), and where he would become the butt of all the jokes. Margaret Mann was one of the leading actresses in the film and during one of the scenes, everyone caught Wayne checking out Mann. Everyone laughed, including the actress, and they would all do so whenever they saw Wayne, for the rest of the film’s production.

Some of Wayne’s other extracurricular activities during his time at USC included joining a frat, where he escaped getting hazed by putting ketchup in his mouth and pretending to bleed, so kids left him alone. He was also described as lacking the “frat” aggression, always being in control of himself, and never looking for trouble.

There may have been some challenging times during Wayne’s university days, but he managed to make the most of the experience before transitioning onto the big screen.

Wayne’s big screen days.

The time that Wayne spent working on film sets while in school is what helped him get his foot in the door into Hollywood. As a Western cinema enthusiast, Wayne had quite the take on the Western stars of the 1920s and 1930s, which might have been what helped him to modernize the Western hero into somewhat of an anti-villain. “I felt many of the Western stars of the twenties and thirties were too goddamn perfect. They never drank nor smoked. They never wanted to go to bed with a beautiful girl. They never had a fight. A heavy might throw a chair at them, and they just looked surprised and didn’t fight back in this spirit. They were too goddamn sweet and pure to be dirty fighters.”

The cinema portrayal of anti-villain heroes was still far from who Wayne was as a person and how he thought about others. When Wayne had found out that one of his co-stars, Gail Russel, was sexually abused by a director, via the “casting couch”, his subsequent words were the “f” word followed by SOB, directed at the studio for taking advantage of her. Wayne was reported to have been one of the few actors, and later director, who never participated in exploiting young talent by the way of the “casting couch”. Wayne would later recount how he would go on to secure Russel parts on the basis of her merit and never shouted at her because he understood that she was insecure, and that she had anxiety struggles which Wayne could relate with from his time as a kid.

At some point during his big screen days, something about Wayne seemed to change. It may have stemmed from the purge of communists from Hollywood, where he went from being a quiet conservative to leader of the pack and was involved in helping blacklist and exile people from Hollywood. Politics would become the biggest determining factor when it came to applying judgement on potential projects, and where Wayne decided he only wanted to play characters that mirrored his beliefs and values.

On one occasion, Wayne was quoted as criticizing Kirk Douglas by asking him how he could play some of the parts that he did considering there was only a few of “us” left and that they had to play strong and tough characters and not weak queers. In his response back to Wayne, Douglas explained that he enjoyed playing interesting roles and that it was all make-believe and not real.

Wayne’s later-life crisis.

Arguably the biggest disappoint among Wayne enthusiast stems from his later-life views on civil rights and the manner in which he spoke about minorities, which was well away from how he once viewed all people.

During his infamous interview with Playboy Magazine in 1971, Wayne used shocking language related to the civil rights fight of African Americans.  Wayne would go on to mention how he believed in white supremacy until blacks were educated to a point of responsibility and that he did not believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgement to irresponsible people.

When discussing American history, Wayne stated how there were only a few thousand Indians over millions of miles of land at the time of the arrival of European explorers, and that he did not think there was anything wrong with taking this great country away from those people. He described the process as being progressive and something that was good for everyone.

Regarding the matter of sexual orientation, it was not uncommon for Wayne to use derogatory language like “faggot”, and he did on one occasion during the filming of The War Wagon (1967). On another occasion, he commented about another actor, Rock Hudson, complaining how a handsome face had been wasted on a queer. But to others in private he would say that it never bothered him that he was queer.

How could someone like Wayne who would concurrently say things like, “Never lose the common touch, never think anyone is better than you but never think you are superior to anyone else. Try to be decent to everyone until they give you reason not to” make the kind of statements that he did?

One possible explanation is that in 1964, Wayne had been diagnosed with lung cancer and eventually had his left lung removed. After overcoming cancer, Wayne’s status grew to that of the unkillable American ideal. However, that experience was described as being something of a near-death experience that left Wayne having suicidal ideations at times, and Wayne’s subsequent behavior from that point on would go on to be described as being more erratic, which is when he began being expressing some of his more bigoted statements.

John “Duke” Wayne explained.

John “Duke” Wayne, was born Marion Robert Morrison. His early life years and growing up in poverty contributed to a philosophy centered around being self-sufficient, but it also included being kind to everyone. Throughout much of his life, he was described as being cultured, charming, polite, and elegant. But to those that knew him best, he felt insecure, awkward, and plagued by terror dreams, but forever a slave to his “big screen” image.

The Hollywood purge of “communists” may have driven him to further embrace the “cowboy ideals” that people wished American history had been all about – including Wayne.  And some experts in the field of psychology have chimed in to explain that it was likely that Wayne was unfamiliar with method acting, and that he had developed a new person out of a Jungian process stemming from trauma with a new name and identity.  To what extent that assessment of Wayne is accurate is will forever remain unknown, but he definitely was someone who was not always comfortable with being true to himself when in the presence of others. One example of that discomfort is how he hid a sneaking affection for John F. Kennedy and how he recognized an Irish rogue when he saw one, because he was a Democrat and Wayne was a Republican.

No explanation is justification for what was said by Wayne in his later-life, but it does help provide a better understanding on who John Wayne was and why may have lived the life he had.


This article about John Wayne appeared in the April 26 edition of the Voice Magazine.  Four years after the furor resulting from University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts students demanding his exhibit be removed for racist remarks, Alek returns with another look at the actor through the lens of political expectations.  It’s an interesting take, and one I found worthy of being included as part of the Best of The Voice for 2024.