History for Kids: An Interactive Biography of John Wayne for Children

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He also supported himself with a variety of odd jobs, including stints as a delivery boy and as a trucker's helper.

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At first he aspired to attend the Naval Academy and become a naval officer but things did not work out as planned. Fortunately, he was a star football player on the Glendale High School team, and he was accepted at the University of Southern California on a football scholarship. But an accident soon ended his playing career and scholarship. Without funds to support himself, he left the university in after two years there.

In college Duke worked at the Fox studio lots in Los Angeles, California, as a laborer, prop boy, and extra. While doing so he met director John Ford — , who took an interest in him and would over the years have a major impact on his career. In , after working at various odd jobs for some months, he was again employed at the Fox studios, mostly as a laborer but also as an extra and bit player.

History for Kids: An Interactive Biography of John Wayne for Children

His efforts generally went unbilled, but he did receive his first screen credit as Duke Morrison. Wayne's first real break came in , when through the intervention of Ford he was cast as the lead in a major Fox production, the Western movie The Big Trail. According to some biographers, Fox executives found his name inappropriate and changed it to John Wayne, the last name being taken from the American Revolutionary general "Mad Anthony" Wayne.

The Big Trail was not a success and Fox soon dropped Wayne. During the s he worked at various studios, mostly those on what was known as "Poverty Row.

He even appeared in some films as "Singing Sandy. However, thanks to Ford, with whom Wayne had remained friends, he was cast as the lead in the director's film Stagecoach, a Western that became a hit and a classic. This film was a turning point in Wayne's career. And although it took time for him to develop the mythic-hero image which propelled him to the top of the box office chart, he was voted by movie exhibitors as one of the Top Ten box office attractions of the year—a position he maintained for twenty-three of the next twenty-four years. Wayne appeared in over seventy-five films between and when The Shootist, his last film, a Western, was released.

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In the vast majority of these films he was a man of action, be it in the American West or in U. As an actor he had a marvelous sense of timing and of his own persona, but comedy was not his specialty. Action was the essence of his films. Indeed, critics have repeatedly emphasized the manner in which he represented a particular kind of "American Spirit.

John Wayne Biography

As a box-office superstar Wayne had his choice of roles and vehicles, but he chose to remain with the types of films he knew best. As the years passed his only admission to age was from the roles he played. Wayne's politics were not always right-of-center, but in the latter part of his life he became known for his anticommunism a political theory where goods and services are owned and distributed by a strong central government activities. His conservatism began in the mids.

He served as head of the anticommunist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals; supported various conservative Republican politicians, including Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon — ; and spoke out forcefully on behalf of various causes such as American participation in the Vietnam War —75; when American forces aided South Vietnam with their struggle against North Vietnam. Wayne's politics also influenced his activities as a producer and director.

Wayne's production companies made all kinds of films, but among them were Big Jim McClain , in which he starred as a process server for the House Un-American Activities Committee fighting communists in Hawaii, and Blood Alley , in which he played an American who helps a village to escape from the Communist Chinese mainland to Formosa.

The two films that Wayne directed also are representative of his politics: Marion Morrison was born in a quintessentially quaint Midwestern town, but he eventually grew up to become John Wayne, the legend of the silver screen who embodied the Western frontier. Wayne starred in so many movies nearly in all that when asked to name his worst, he joked that 50 of them were tied, but the excessive number allowed Wayne to portray heroes of all stripes, from cowboys to soldiers, and he was invariably charming, courageous, and full of rugged, masculine swagger.

Even as Westerns have certainly waned in popularity, Wayne himself has remained immensely popular, in part because he set the prototype for the heroic character, regardless of genre. Wayne will always be associated with Westerns, John Wayne transcended the Western genre.

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Through the portrayal of rugged, masculine characters, Wayne came to epitomize the American spirit and the way Americans view themselves. In that sense, he is truly America's actor, and he continues to live on in both the reels of Hollywood's archives and the living rooms of middle America. At the same time, the central role of John Wayne in defining a big piece of American culture is not without controversy. His later interviews prove that point.

Many Americans today realize that John Wayne's America, though beloved by many, is not the America that everyone calls their own. Western movies that pay homage to Confederate soldiers and Indian-killing frontiersman and cowboys are not everyone's cup of tea. An Illustrated Biography of John Wayne for Children looks at the iconic actor's life on and off the silver screen, from his out-sized influence to Hollywood to his outspoken views on politics.

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