John Wayne in the Movies

John Wayne reportedly loathed horses. Nor did he ever serve one day in the military. Yet the Iowa pharmacist's son born Marion Michael Morrison came to embody two of the most enduring archetypes in American popular culture: the cowboy and the gung-ho war hero. Even today, 30 years after his death from cancer, Wayne still casts a towering shadow, not just in film, but in American life and politics. He is often invoked as a symbol of patriotic might and conservative values. Such a...
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John Wayne reportedly loathed horses. Nor did he ever serve one day in the military. Yet the Iowa pharmacist's son born Marion Michael Morrison came to embody two of the most enduring archetypes in American popular culture: the cowboy and the gung-ho war hero. Even today, 30 years after his death from cancer, Wayne still casts a towering shadow, not just in film, but in American life and politics. He is often invoked as a symbol of patriotic might and conservative values. Such a narrow perception of Wayne, however, diminishes both the man and his extraordinary film career, which spanned 50 years and more than 150 feature films. Under the exacting, sometimes borderline abusive direction of his mentor John Ford, Wayne gave some of the screen's most indelible performances in such landmark films as Stagecoach (1939), The Quiet Man (1952) and The Searchers (1956).