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Excerpts from TruthDigg article: Memorializing the Deadly Myth of John Wayne.  Click on link to read entire article.
Posted on May 26, 2007                                         

Ed Rampell and Luis I. Reyes

This Memorial Day is the centennial of John Wayne, born May 26, 1907, in Winterset, Iowa. The 2007 Harris poll of America’s favorite movie stars places the Duke at No. 3. A remarkable ranking, considering Wayne’s last picture was 1976’s “The Shootist” and he died 28 years ago.

Wayne, who didn’t win an Oscar until late in a six-decades-long career, is Hollywood’s most underrated actor. He was arguably a better actor than the fellow Midwesterner and two-time Oscar winner to whom he is often compared, Marlon Brando, the Method actor who played antisocial misfits in films ranging from the 1954 biker flick “The Wild One” to 1973’s sexually charged “Last Tango in Paris,” which critic Pauline Kael called “the movie breakthrough” that “altered the face of an art form.” If Wayne portrayed the strong, silent type in films such as 1952’s “A Quiet Man,” Brando was known for bellowing “Stella!” in 1951’s “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

... Wayne was full of contradictions. Although the star of countless Westerns such as John Ford’s 1939 “Stagecoach” and 1953’s “Hondo” owned a ranch, the Duke “didn’t particularly like horses and preferred suits and tuxedos to chaps, jeans and boots,” according to his son, Michael Wayne. The prototypical cowpoke also favored the sea over the prairie.

... Wayne was not only missing in action during the 1940s’ liberation of the Philippines and Europe, he wasn’t a cavalry officer, a Vietnam commando or a Leatherneck—flying or otherwise—for he was never in the military.  

According to Gary Wills’ book “John Wayne’s America,” the man who portrayed the archetypal, battle-hardened Marine, Sgt. Stryker, in 1949’s “The Sands of Iwo Jima,” actually avoided the draft during WWII. Wills contends that the Duke did not reply to letters from the Selective Service system, and applied for deferments. Apparently, Wayne—who had sought stardom during years of B-pictures following Raoul Walsh’s 1930 frontier drama “The Big Trail”—got his big break during the struggle against fascism when many Hollywood action heroes like Tyrone Power enlisted and shipped out overseas.

... Wayne was a vocal conservative, and his critics contend that the onscreen “Injun killer” was racist off-screen. In an infamous 1971 Playboy magazine interview, the Duke made insensitive comments about blacks and said this about America’s indigenous people: “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”

...  A virulent anti-communist, Wayne was president of the right-wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and cheered the Hollywood blacklist during the House Un-American Activities Committee’s purge of entertainment industry leftists. He starred in Red Menace movies such as 1955’s China-set “Blood Alley” and 1952’s “Big Jim McLain,” based on the case of the Hawaii 7, wherein suspected communists, including longshoreman union leader Jack Hall, were charged with advocating the overthrow of the American government. Wayne plays two-fisted federal agent Jim McLain (his name bears the same initials as Sen. Joe McCarthy’s) who busts Honolulu’s commies.

... In the crowning irony of the conservative’s career, Wayne finally struck Oscar gold for playing Rooster Cogburn in 1969’s “True Grit”—written for the screen by ex-communist Marguerite Roberts, blacklisted in 1952 for refusing to inform on leftists.

... An outspoken hawk during the Vietnam War, Wayne co-directed and starred in the Pentagon-subsidized propaganda picture “The Green Berets.” Duke denounced antiwar protesters, reportedly saying: “As far as I’m concerned, it wouldn’t bother me a bit to pull the trigger on one of  ’em.”

Wayne was, in reality, a draft dodger. America’s archetypal soldier was in fact a chicken hawk. He was a cheerleader and champion of militaristic patriotism and combat he had never experienced. Wayne had “other priorities” during WWII—achieving superstardom (and saving his neck) was more important than defeating fascism. Much like Vice President Dick Cheney, who sought numerous deferments during the Vietnam War, Wayne was the quintessential war wimp. 

According to Pilar Wayne, her husband “would become a ‘superpatriot’ for the rest of his life trying to atone for staying home” during WWII. Like Wayne, the current crop of GOP chicken hawks are great actors, overcompensating for their previous patriotic failings (draft dodging, etc.) by sounding the jingoistic battle cry for a new generation of working-class sons and daughters to go to war.  Or, as George W. Bush did in a priceless moment of Hollywood flourish, dressing up in a flight suit to declare a failing and deadly war in Iraq a “mission accomplished.”

Wayne convinced us through make-believe that he was Davy Crockett, the Ringo Kid, a Flying Tiger or D-day parachutist Lt. Col. Benjamin Vandervoort in 1962’s “The Longest Day.” Pretending is the essence of acting, and that’s why Wayne was a better actor than Brando, who usually played versions of himself. Wayne, on the other hand, created imaginary characters fabricated out of whole cloth.

Unfortunately, in an America manipulated by the military-industrial-entertainment complex, as Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” put it: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” But these lies and fantasies have consequences in real life for those mistakenly buying into them. Veteran Ron Kovic, who was portrayed by Tom Cruise in Oliver Stone’s 1989 “Born on the Fourth of July,” declared after he was paralyzed from the waist down in Vietnam: “I gave my dead dick for John Wayne.” It’s interesting that Wayne’s last public appearance was when he presented the best picture Oscar in 1979 to Michael Cimino’s “The Deer Hunter,” a Vietnam film that raised questions about honor and patriotism.

... On the 100th anniversary of the Duke’s birth, Americans need to distinguish between myth and deadly realities. We must re-examine America’s love affair with settling disputes through gunplay, and question people and institutions that demand that the young sacrifice their minds and bodies in tribute to these actors (of the stage and political theater) and the violence they celebrate.

                                       

 Excerpts from TruthDigg article: Memorializing the Deadly Myth of John Wayne.  Click on link to read entire article.

So John Wayne the real live human being has become vulnerable over the years to broadcast and print journalism's willful snoopiness into his personal life as well as a willingness to seek truth rather than glossing over warts and foulness that belie the reputation of a national icon.

However, be that as it may, just as Christians remain in need of the real or mythological example and inspiration of Jesus of Nazareth, many Americans remain in need of the real or mythological example and inspiration of John of Hollywood.