Few actors embody the heroic spirit like John Wayne, whose career starring in westerns and war movies made him the ultimate American icon. Born in Winterset, Iowa, as Marion Michael Morrison, "Duke" (the nickname was after a pet Airedale) started his career as a bit actor in westerns. Working as a prop boy, he caught the eye of director John Ford who, in 1930, suggested to Raoul Walsh that he get Wayne to star in The Big Trail. The picture didn't succeed, and Wayne continued struggling for most of the decade, until Ford cast him in Stagecoach (1939) and made him a star.Ironically, the man who spent the war years portraying tough soldiers was exempt from service due to inner ear problems, but his imposing physique and strength on the big screen in movies like The Flying Tigers (1942), Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), for which he was nominated for an Oscar®, and Back to Bataan (1945) helped keep America's spirit up during World War II and in the hard days of adjustment afterward. So huge was the myth Wayne created in these roles that when the defeated Japanese Emperor Hirohito visited the U.S. in 1975, he asked to meet Wayne. Though his popularity was unquestioned, it was some time before Wayne was recognized as an accomplished actor. Wayne was famous for saying, "I don't act. I react." Again, it was John Ford who helped Wayne rise to the next level, in Fort Apache (1948) and particularly in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). After finishing the latter film, Wayne told an interviewer that John Ford "sent me a cake...that said, 'You're an actor now.'" Unfortunately, Wayne spent most of the 50's making cliched westerns and forgettable action movies, which brought in audiences solely on Wayne's clout. John Ford rescued Wayne again in 1956, with The Searchers, one of Few actors embody the heroic spirit like John Wayne, whose career starring in westerns and war movies made him the ultimate American icon. Born in Winterset, Iowa, as Marion Michael Morrison, "Duke" (the nickname was after a pet Airedale) started his career as a bit actor in westerns. Working as a prop boy, he caught the eye of director John Ford who, in 1930, suggested to Raoul Walsh that he get Wayne to star in The Big Trail. The picture didn't succeed, and Wayne continued struggling for most of the decade, until Ford cast him in Stagecoach (1939) and made him a star. Ford's all-time best films and one of Wayne's most outstanding performances. Howard Hawks picked Wayne up as well in Rio Bravo (1959), and though Wayne made many, many more films, some quite good, many believe Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962) to have been Wayne's final great film. Wayne finally won the Academy Award® in 1969 for True Grit, though that was seen as more of a lifetime achievement award than an award for that particular role, which was clearly not his best acting or vehicle. Wayne's last role, playing a dying gun slinger just coming to terms with his legend in The Shootist (1976), was an appropriate elegy for the man, the actor, and the icon. Wayne died of cancer on June 11, 1979, a month after President Jimmy Carter and Congress authorized a special medal honoring him.
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