Where the cottonwoods grow

Tomorrow, John Wayne's son will mark the centenary of his father's birth by getting on a bulldozer and demolishing a petrol station in Iowa. The aim is to clear space for a new museum next to the white clapboard house where Wayne was born in 1907 but it also sounds like the kind of uncompromising gesture the big man would have appreciated.

From a glance at the American press, it seems that the 100th birthday of Wayne, born Marion Robert Morrison, is a ready-made moment of reflection, a milestone on the way to somewhere else. Where does the strong and silent type fit in now? What do heroes look like? Has the Bush Administration, unafraid to make moral judgments and war, made America more or less keen on the whole cowboy thing?

Despite his academy award, his relentless dominance of the box office charts, Wayne always played down his acting talent — "I knew I was no actor, and I went to work on this Wayne thing," he once said — and the fixation, even when he was alive, was how Wayne crossed through the silver screen to touch on something else. Even his later-life battles with cancer — "I licked the big C" — had the ring of a unbowed old Sheriff, boots muddied, guns loaded, trooping into a hospital ward.

People saw right in him. Joan Didion, in her brilliant essay "John Wayne: A Love Song" about meeting Wayne during the filming of his 165th movie, said he was kind of man who would build a woman a house "at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow". While General Douglas MacArthur, the American Second World War icon and not a million miles from a real-life Wayne, once said that the man who wore a toupee and heels and never served in the US military “represented the American serviceman better than the American serviceman himself”.

During the 1960s, Wayne was an outspoken supporter of the Vietnam War, making Green Berets in 1968 to bolster the war effort and becoming a totem for conservative values. After he won an Oscar for True Grit in 1970, Peter Waymark wrote in The Times: "In an America moving steadily to the right under Nixon, this appalling and appealing man is the silent majority's bastion against the permissive society, the hippies and the yippies, the campus protests and other things which make Wayne ashamed to be an American."

So what to think now, nearly three decades after his death, with another generation, other traumas? This AP story quotes Jim Olson, a history professor and the author of John Wayne: American, saying: "He lived in a world where, in his mind, right was right and wrong was wrong. And evil was real and evil had to be crushed with violence if necessary."

“There’s a generation of Americans that kind of grew up with Wayne, matured with Wayne and grew old with Wayne, through all the trials and traumas of modern American history — and in doing so, found in him a voice they understood." Hmm. We're not completely sure what that means, although we like this quote from his daughter-in-law, Gretchen Wayne: "If you want to be an actor, study Brando. But if you want to be a movie star, study Wayne." Study Wayne. Study this: an extended trailer for Stagecoach, the film that made him a star. Also, this list of events being held this weekend by the admirably named John Wayne Birthplace Society.

Comments

[Linda Johnson]

There are no "stars" today , just overpaid egocentics who believe their own publicity machines. Todays media has made the John Wayne approach to life into an almost criminal attitude, while it extoles the virtues of living an atheist, drug fueled, sociopathic lifestyle where you can blame all your problems on somebody else. The ethic of working your way towards a goal has now been replaced by the quick fix of reality TV shows, where desperate wannabees throw away their last vestiges of dignity and self respect for the chance to spend a week or two on any number of gutter-dredging "live" programmes in the hope of becoming famous. If ever there was a time when we needed a John Wayne figure to aspire to, it is now.

[Tom Clark]

What makes John Wayne great is that at his best moments he transcended the narrow-minded arch-conservative Marion Morrison to reveal the deep ambiguities of the American Myth, warts and all. The Searchers is perhaps the best example of this

[Eugene Cappuccio]

John Wayne knew what the price of freedom was. What that means to an America that today has forgotten what the word even means and merrily, merrily does trade with totalitarian regimes such as China and Venezuela, not to mention upholding gay marriages (John would have shot that one up without wincing) makes for an interesting topic of discussion.

[lila shrader]

My ten-year old son and I met John Wayne at Bracketville, Tx while he was filming The Alamo. He could not have been more gracious and he was just as we knew him from the screen...a tall awe-inspiring man of the west.

[James Baird]

Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.

[Miles]

I wish he and Reagan were still with us.

[el Watcho]

Well, the media keep telling Americans that "the world" would prefer Johnny Depp's prancing and lacy handkerchiefs to The Duke's knuckle busters. "The world" can have little Johnny. Americans will keep our "Duke," thank you very much.

[Myron C. Wheeler]

From what I see on TV these days I think we'll be looking for a "Joan" Wayne.