Marion Robert Morrison, better known by his stage name John Wayne as well as his nickname Duke, had been an American actor and director who rose to fame as a leading man in Hollywood’s Golden Age, particularly in Western as well as war movies. He performed in 179 films and television programmes over his career, which spanned the silent era of such 1920s towards the American New Wave. For three decades, he was indeed a top box office draw, as well as he appeared alongside many other notable Hollywood actors of both the time. Wayne was named including some of the finest male stars of vintage American film by the American Film Institute in 1999.
Wayne grew raised in Southern California after being born in Winterset, Iowa. After a bodysurfing injury cost him a football scholarship to the University of Southern California, he went to work for the Fox Film Corporation.
He generally played in supporting roles, although his breakthrough came in Raoul Walsh’s Western The Big Trail (1930), an early widescreen epic that was a box office flop. During the 1930s, he had main parts in a number of B films, most of which were Westerns, but he never became a household name. Wayne became a popular sensation thanks to John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), as well as he went on to feature in 142 films. “John Wayne symbolised the nation’s frontier legacy for millions,” according to one biographer.
Wayne’s other Western roles include a cattleman driving his herd on the Chisholm Trail in Red River (1948), a Civil War veteran whose niece is kidnapped by a Comanche tribe in The Searchers (1956), and a troubled rancher competing with a lawyer (James Stewart) for a woman’s hand in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1957).
In True Grit (1969), he played a cantankerous one-eyed marshal, about which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor. He’s also known for his parts inside The Quiet Man (1952), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Longest Day (1960). (1962). In The Shootist, he played an old gunfighter battling cancer, which was his final cinematic appearance (1976). On April 9, 1979, he made his final public appearance at the Academy Awards ceremony prior to passing away two months later from stomach cancer. He was posthumously given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honour.
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