The Longest Day : douche john wayne

douche john wayne

trivia section:
"Darryl F. Zanuck was quoted in an interview as saying that he didn't think much of actors forming their own production companies, citing The Alamo, produced by John Wayne, as a failure of such ventures. Wayne found out about this interview before being approached by Zanuck, and refused to appear in the film unless he was paid $250,000 for his role (when the other famous actors were being paid $25,000). Wayne got his requested salary. "

wow.what a nice guy john was there ..

Re: douche john wayne

And as a healthy, strapping, physical fit man he saw no service in WWII . . . he must've been extremely charmed!

Re: douche john wayne

The busted up ex stunt man? Why are you skulking around here? You got a beef with the Duke, take it to HIS discussion board...

married and…

father of four at that time (its a classic rejection from Army).

Re: married and…

not to mention he had some severe injuries (knees, back...) from his days as a stuntman with "Yakima" Canutt.

Re: married and…

Nevertheless, John Ford gave him quite a hard time about it, particularly on the set of They Were Expendable. He kept holding Robert Montgomery's war service over him. By the way, Montgomery was three years old than Wayne and had two kids (Elizabeth Montgomery and Robert Montgomery Jr.).

Re: married and…

As stated---he was charmed . . . and got away with it . . . a good screen player, he fit the character . . . the reality of his real life is totally something different . . .

Re: married and…

AND Montgomery smacked Ford down for doing it; clearly RM didn't care for JF's bullying tactic

Re: married and…

Few people did. I hear Ward Bond got it worst from Ford, although Ford and Fonda got into it on Mister Roberts.

Didn't Wayne do a tour of the South Pacific during the war?

Re: married and…

He tried to get Ford get him into the OSS or the Newsreel division that he (Ford) was in as well...

Re: married and…

Regardless . . . Mr. Wayne didn't do his duty . . . except on film . . .

Re: married and…

Looks like Ford got an easy berth too. Typical bully.

Re: married and…

Wayne wasn't rejected at all, but applied for a deferment. Classic avoidance of enlisting when most likely he would have never had to see combat. Although a number of men enlisted who were married with children. And a number of film stars who were either married and/or had children or were older than Wayne or around his age did enlist and many saw combat like James Stewart, Eddie Albert, Henry Fonda and Clark Gable to name a few.

Re: married and…

John Wayne did NOT ask for a deferment: RKO pictures put in for it without Wayne's knowledge. They also threatened to sue Wayne for every penny he had, as he was their cash cow at the time.

Wayne was given a medical deferment because of the knee he tore up at college. It was so bad, he lost his football scholarship at USC, which is what led him to being a property man at RKO. That's how he got his start.

Silly to post lies when the facts are so easy to check.

..Joe

Re: married and…

The lies are all yours chump!

You are totally confused and way off. And based on your moronic take on what a liar is, then YOU ARE THE LIAR, because Wayne did not get a medical deferment, he applied for and received one as the sole means of support for his family.

Wayne was classified 3-A which you have to apply for. That means deferred for family dependency and doesn't have a damned thing to do with any football injury! That was just one of a number of excuses Wayne had for not enlisting.

Wayne could have opted out of that 3-A deferment at any time and served his country. He chose to say in Hollywood and be a faux-soldier making lots of money and getting laid. There were many men who came from actual poor families who left wives, mothers and children to serve their nation. But this hollywood actor who made much more than the average person had to stay home and make movies for his family, lol. His excuses and efforts to stay out of the most meaningful war of the last century is an insult to millions of men who gave their lives, many of whom were truly poor and were needed at home. And only a moron like you could accept such nonsense.

In 1944, Wayne was actually re-classified as 1-A. And it was then that he was later classified as 2-A (deferred in national interest, etc), possibly by the studio. But for you or Wayne to pretend that the man had no say in it is utter *beep* (that is if that was even true that the studio did it w/o his knowledge). And if Yates ever actually threatened to sue or blackball Wayne, the Duke could have gone to the press and every paper and person in the nation would have skewered Yates to the wall and Wayne would have been lauded as a real patriot. That is if Wayne actually had even a little bit of the character like the heroes he played in films had, which he didn't. What made it worse was that he was so eager to get other men to sign up and fight for all the wars we fought then and since. He was, God bless him, a faux-warrior and a faux patriot in other words, a Chicken Hawk.

So go choke on your own words boy. You are the liar who needs to check those oh so easy facts, lol!!

Re: married and…


Wayne was classified 3-A which you have to apply for. That means deferred for family dependency and doesn't have a damned thing to do with any football injury! That was just one of a number of excuses Wayne had for not enlisting.

So he got a legitimate deferment, something millions of others did and something that was intended by those who made up the conscription regulations. That's actually an excellent excuse - or are you going to claim that he did not have a family?

There were many men who came from actual poor families who left wives, mothers and children to serve their nation

But there were millions more who applied for and took their deferment gratefully.

Re: married and…

"So he got a legitimate deferment, something millions of others did and something that was intended by those who made up the conscription regulations. That's actually an excellent excuse - or are you going to claim that he did not have a family?"

Look this is the whole point. It has nothing, as far as I'm concerned, to do with that he sought a deferment. It's that he chose to make a career of his supposed macho war heroics that he played on screen and took on this image in real life and attacked anyone like him who sought to avoid combat and in many cases these choices were based on real principals, not the desire to become a greater movie star and make more money.

There were actual movie stars who were decorated war heroes and you never heard of their heroics unless you try to research them, They didn't try to capitalize on their careers with their real efforts as Wayne did with his fictitious roles in films. He then went ahead and became a critic of those who also sought to avoid combat or didn't believe in the wars that followed. He supported wars he never would have fought in and that made him a chicken hawk and imho a hypocrite.

Now there were also back in the day vets, who had no respect for Wayne and his war films. Which in a sense is another story, For instance read a book called "Guadalcanal - Island of Death" by John S. Bohne who was a marine in WW2 and read what he says the Marines thought of his faux heroics during the war.

Again, I personally have no problem with whatever reason, even in WW2, that a person has for not wanting to fight. That is their right and their own business, that is what is supposed to be one of the great things about this country. But I do have a big problem with a man who refused to fight and was not only happy for others to fight for him, but went out of his way to attack those who also didn't want to fight in war or thought that the a given war was wrong. He was because of these actions imho, a convenient patriot plain and simple.

Duke was no doubt a great movie star, and imho, an underrated actor. You can see his talent emerge in a film like "The Searchers", Ford's Calvery Trilogy. Red River and other fine films. He was no doubt a good father and in many ways a decent man. But he imho, was a hypocrite when it came to fighting for your country vs, the right to dissent and differ as he did when it came to serving his nation in war.

The whole issue ironically was inadvertently summed up by someone on this thread who was trying to say that no one who didn't serve had the right to attack Wayne. The quote was "If you didn't serve, you don't have the right".
Well that's exactly my point and the point of many people who dislike Wayne's judgmental chicken hawk behavior.
Wayne didn't serve and therefor he had no right to criticize others for wanting to get out of combat.

Re: married and…


a Chicken Hawk.

I'm sure it's just coincidence, but I note that quite a few actors in war films have passed up the opportunity to serve their countries, even though they've been at war or involved in vigorous peacekeeping almost continually since 1963, yet you don't seem to be annoyed at them.

I also note that this term seems only to be used with regards to Republicans when non-veteran Democrats have shown no reluctance in sending and keeping American forces into harm's way in places like former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Again, just coincidence, I'm sure, and not at all indicative of some partisan agenda.

By the way, what military service do you have?

Re: married and…

They are all chicken hawks. It is not mutually exclusive to a party.

Re: married and…

Well let me further clarify.

"but I note that quite a few actors in war films have passed up the opportunity to serve their countries, even though they've been at war or involved in vigorous peacekeeping almost continually since 1963, yet you don't seem to be annoyed at them."

There are two important issues here.

First, the subject of this thread as far as I've replied to is about John Wayne. So, you don't know who I might or might not be "annoyed" with.

Second, I'm not sure you know what the term, Chicken hawk means in this instance (as today it has a number of connotations).

A chicken hawk, is a term, that has nothing to do with politics, or party. If it may seem to you that the term is applied to one party more than another, than it is either because it is indeed the case or someone is misusing the term.

So, lets look at one of the definitions as written in the dictionary: A Chicken Hawk is "a person who speaks out in support of war, yet has avoided active military service." Thats pretty plain and simple and has nothing imho to do with partisanship, at least not on my part. Although in Wayne's case, he more or less takes the definition beyond it's limits and added to it a layer of hypocrisy that went beyond the pale.

Based on this for example imho, Cheney is a chicken hawk. George H. W. Bush was not.

As far as I am concerned, I believe that a person has the right to decide for themselves if they want to fight in a war or not.
It's their business, until, that is, the time comes when they start shaming others who also choose not to fight and demands of others to do what he never would; fight and possibly get wounded or die for your country.
He imho, attempted to shame men who didn't want to fight or disagreed with a particular war and rammed his views of patriotism and fighting for your country as if he more than others had the right to do so.

The other issue is that he imho, conducted himself as if he was actually a war hero, when so many millions of men were and didn't choose to laud it all over the place. This was one of the things that actually pissed off many veterans who knew that Wayne was not in the service, althought millions of people then and now think the Duke was in combat, let alone a soldier. If you read for example, John S. Bohne's book about Guadalcanal, he talks about how the marines felt about the Duke and some others who dodged the war, but acted like they were part of it. William Manchester had either written about seeing Wayne during the war or was interviewed, but if you look it up, it's quite telling about how some combat vets felt about him during WW2. These men took it all very seriously. This war as you know was such a massive undertaking that the whole country for the most part sacrificed itself for. The vets hated in some large part, the fake hollywood war propaganda films as it made war look like something it was not at all like. But even worse were those they felt acted like they were there and/or rarely if ever appeared on the front lines as Marlene Dietrich and Joe E. Brown did, to name a few. The first I heard of this was from my high school friend Steve's Dad who was a marine and remembered Wayne showing up and getting booed so loudly that he couldn't talk to them. I can see how they felt. considering the time.

Most vets I've known who came back were very private about what happened. And the same was true for some of the stars who did leave their careers behind and risked their lives to serve their country. A good example is Eddie Albert. To quote from an article about his life -
"He fought in the first wave of combat( Battle of Tarawa) that lasted for three days. After most of the shooting was over, he was sent back to the site of the battle to salvage any equipment he could find. Because of coral reefs in the area, Marines weren't able to land directly on the beach and had to get off their boats 500 yards from shore. Enemy combatants started picking them off, and soon the waters were filled with over 100 wounded and many more dead. Albert disregarded his mission to grab equipment and began pulling marines to safety. He took 47 in total, and oversaw the rescue of 30 more.
Albert did win the bronze star, but prior to that, there were those in command who wanted to court martial Albert for disobeying orders and trying to save soldiers instead of the equipment. Who ever knew that Eddie was a war hero? He never bragged about it.

Henry Fonda is another decorated veteran was quoted as saying, “I didn’t want to fight a fake war in a studio,” How many people ever knew that he fought. Maybe some might have known about Jimmy Stewart who was 4-F and could have gotten out of it altogether, but he gained the weight he needed and was a highly decorated veteran and if memory serves ended up as a General. And yes, he was a very conservative Republican.

Had Wayne just sought the deferment and even if he had, like others acted in the war films. his non-combat status would have been probably forgotten by the vets who held it against him. But Wayne shoved it in the country's face for most of the rest of his life and imho, pretended to be something he was not. Hence the problem that many people have with him.

His wife Pilar talked about it in a book she wrote. She said that the Duke always felt guilty about his choice not to serve and compensated by becoming an even more zealous war hawk and uber patriot. He, even while holding to his political beliefs which was his right of course, could have instead shown some compassion to the young men in far lesser wars, who like him chose to find a way out of combat, regardless whether it was due to the fear of dying or just a man's right to decide not to serve.

Re: married and…

The US has had men in combat off and on for the last twenty years. Have you volunteered? If not, then your position lacks moral authority. I note people who knew Wayne well who served, like Jimmy Stewart, remained friends. If his lack of service didn't bother them,

You know, so many men declined to volunteer that the US, like most of the other combatants, was forced to resort to conscription to get the number of men it wanted. Many,volunteers only did so to get a choice of service that they would not have got if they waited to be drafted.

Even if we assume Wayne gamed the system somehow to stay out, he didn't do anything that millions of other men didn't do.

As for playing heroic characters when he himself might not have been so heroic - that's why it's called acting.

Re: married and…

"Have you volunteered? If not, then your position lacks moral authority."

Clearly you either don't understand the thread or are being intentionally obtuse. This has nothing to do with a man's, or now woman's choice to enlist or serve their country. And if it was just a matter of Wayne seeking deferments, I certainly would not have a problem with that at all. As another person said, many people did seek deferments

However, imho, in Wayne's case it has everything to do with choosing to avoid combat and yet not only promoting war, but imho, trying to enhance his career an status by chastising men who like him for various reasons chose not to fight in the wars/conflicts that followed in Wayne's lifetime. It is extremely hypocritical to defame others for doing just what he did. That's it, plain and simple.
Otherwise to me he was a great movie star and no doubt in many ways a fine man.

As far as what Jimmy Stewart thought, I have no idea. Do you? How do you know how close they were and what Jimmy thought about Wayne's lack of service. I know John Ford ribbed him quite a bit about it. I know that many soldiers did not respect him for his lack of service. One case in point, was John S. Bohne, a WW2 marine combat vet who wrote a well known book about his experiences at Guadalcanal. Wayne's wife Pilar wrote about in a book she wrote. Although because of the movies many people thought the man actually served, many knew about it then and hated him for it. Now, I'm no authority and have not made a life's quest about Wayne and his life and as I stated more than once, my contentions are not just based on a man who decided to seek a deferment. Not at all.

Wayne had the right to choose what he wanted to do, as anyone does. Your take on what you believe I think has little to do with what I've actually stated, so let me try and clarify further. Your right, if he gamed the system, all the better for him. But he did much more than that. And again that to me is the problem.

And yes, my friend, I know what acting is. Wayne's problem according to his wife Pilar, was that he was so insecure as his wife Pilar noted that it he went over the top on becoming even more zealous about his politics and that ain't acting, it's an emotional problem that affected others who deserved the same fairness he wanted. Not to mention most of those who didn't want to fight or didn't believe in a war say like the Vietnam Conflict, were not hollywood actors seeking to improve their star status and earnings, but these were regular guys like the rest of us, either just not wanting to die, or people of a committed and deep believe in the war being a wrong one. That right to choose and that right to dissent are among the important things that are supposed to make this country great. In this sense, Wayne, imho, was the one lacking in moral authority.

Re: douche john wayne

Wayne wrecked his back and knee playing football at USC,thats why he went into acting, as he was originally on an athletic scholarship. It's also where his signature 'strut' cane from, as he walked that way from his injuries.

Re: douche john wayne

Don't start. He was 35 years old, NOT physically fit after a football injury, and had 3 kids. He was exempt.

Re: douche john wayne

Wake up, That's total B.S. if Wayne was not physically fit, then he would have been given a 4-F, like plenty of other men did. Wayne would not have had a to seek a deferment as sole mans of support if he actually had a debilitating injury like that. The severity of that so-called injury was imho, one more Wayne myth that was created to explain his deep shame for not having served, in WW2, which his wife Pilar wrote in detail about.

Wayne was also famous for wanting to perform stunts in his films throughout his career, which certainly wasn't bothered by what you call his "football injury".

And plenty of struggling families had their fathers and sons go off to war in far more dire straits than Wayne was in making a great living in hollywood, pretending to be hero and then castigating others for not fighting in later wars. The man was hypocrite plain and simple in that while he DID have the right to seek a deferment, he used his celebrity, which was largely established as a fighting war hero in movies during WW2, to attack others later who sought a way out of the fighting as he did. He also used that status imho on many an occasion to question the politics of others who did fight and serve.

Wayne was a great movie star who was imho, underrated for his acting skills. He was no doubt in many ways a fine man as well. He had the right to do as he did. I just believe he was wrong to go against those who wanted the same thing he did as a young man. He could have just let well enough alone. Did he do anything wrong there? No, not legally. I just feel imho, that he was a moral hypocrite in that one important regard.

Re: douche john wayne

So true. He made sure to avoid fighting for his country while he was fine with others doing so.

My uncle was a marine in WW2 and was on a troop ship headed out to the pacific and at one point Wayne showed up to entertain the troops and they booed him relentlessly so that he couldn't even talk to them.

One of Wayne's wives Pilar wrote a book and stated that Wayne in part turned into the uber patriot out of guilt for seeking a deferment and avoiding joining the armed services. The irony is that a number of the actors and extras in the film actually did fight. Eddie Albert for one was a decorated combat veteran as well as Henry Fonda.

Re: douche john wayne

Except you're wrong. It was Republic Pictures that made the defermenta for Wayne. They also threatened to sue him for every penny he had if he enlisted.

He did do some work for Wild Bill Donovan's OSS during the war, and it did trouble him the rest of his life that he didn't get to serve.

As for being booed, I call bullsh!t: those troops were so starved for any sort of entertainment, they would take whatever they could get.

..Joe

Re: douche john wayne


As for being booed, I call bullsh!t:


So I have heard as well...the author of that comment (William Manchester, a great author but too many times allowed his political beliefs --IE: Psychotic hatred of Richard Nixon-- to color his work--read his comments on Linebacker II/The Christmas bombings; they border on the hysterical even after the facts of the op came out) was once questioned about his 'seeing this'--he demurred that it was 'another guy who told him'.




Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

Re: douche john wayne

OMG!! I have addressed this so many times on this thread. Why not try reading and comprehending before jumping off the cliff with your unproven rants.

Here's some portion of what I've stated earlier.
Wayne was classified 3-A which you have to apply for. That means deferred for family dependency and doesn't have a damned thing to do with any football injury which others have cited. If that was the case he'd have been classified as 4-F. That was just one of a number of excuses Wayne had for not enlisting.

Wayne could have opted out of that 3-A deferment at any time and served his country. He chose to stay in Hollywood and be a faux-soldier making lots movies and lots of money. There were many men who came from actual poor families who left wives, mothers and children to serve their nation, one of them was my cousin whom I'm named after who died in the Battle of the Bulge. Many vets were not happy with Wayne because of this as noted by writers and vets John S. Bohne and William Manchester.

In 1944, Wayne was actually re-classified as 1-A. And it was then that he was later classified as 2-A (deferred in national interest, etc), this one or even the first could have possibly been by the studio. But for you or Wayne to pretend that the man had no say in it is utter B.S. (that is if that was even true that the studio did it w/o his knowledge).

The truth is that if Yates ever actually threatened to sue or blackball Wayne, the Duke who was already famous by the start of the war and super star by 1944, could have gone to the press and every paper and person in the nation would have skewered Yates to the wall and Wayne would have been lauded as a real patriot. That is if Wayne actually had even a little bit of the character like the heroes he played in films had, which he didn't. What made it worse was that he was so eager to get other men to sign up and fight for all the wars we fought then and since. He was, God bless him, a faux-warrior and a faux patriot in other words, a Chicken Hawk.

Also, Republic pictures was not anywhere near a top studio, its utterly laughable that you're so naive or desperate to think that he could have blackballed a top star who had already worked on loan to a number of the more prestigious studios. Had Yates tried that the other studios would have jumped on it and got Wayne for themselves. I can't believe you're actually trying to pull this nonsense as anything other than another myth along with football injuries and the like to minimize Wayne's fears about being thought of as a draft dodger, which his own wife wrote about extensively BTW.

As per the OSS, nothing definitive has ever been made public, so it might be possible that he did something on behalf of his country, but who knows what or if it was even true, due to the OSS/CIA secrecy. However, Wayne himself said that he just received an honorary certificate from Donovan, that John Ford tried to get for him.

For me, none of this is about an actor who chose to seek deferments and stay home, which was his right to do so. But it is about someone who did this, became a great star because of his actions and then used that status to defame those in later wars who merely were seeking the same thing that the Duke did in WW2, the right to stay home and not fight.

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Re: douche john wayne

I think that little bit of trivia is great

Zanuck ran his mouth about a lot of things concerning John Wayne, but the the thing that galled Duke the most was when Z put down actors that start their own production companies, an obvious dig at Duke for the less than successful The Alamo

Now when Z started getting all these great actors for TLD HIS money men said the HAD to have JOHN Wayne in the cast, because he was and had been THE MOST POPULAR ACTOR ON THE SCREEN

So Duke held Z up for ten times the scale, and took the role Charelton Heston (an academy award winner) wanted and probably could have done better.

I think it's great when little *beep* like Zanuck are put in their place















You don't have to stand tall, but you have to stand up!





Re: douche john wayne

The Duke was still a douche. He always portrayed the he-man super patriot warrior and in real life actively avoided active service because he felt it would negatively affect his precious career. Active service didn't hurt Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Robert Montgomery, et al career-wise. So the OP was correct.

"check the imdb cast list before asking who portrayed who in movies"

Re: douche john wayne

It's obvious you ain't got a clue on the facts so I'n not gonna belabor the point again with another make believe patriot

You don't have to stand tall, but you have to stand up!






Re: douche john wayne

He was a professional actor, he fit the part, so Zanuck had him in the movie . . . true, he never served, and the image he created was a farce, a phony . . . but he could carry a part . . .

Re: douche john wayne

Yes, I agree that the man could act well in parts like that. He was made for them, like he wasn't acting at all, just being himself. That still doesn't mean the OP was wrong. The Duke was a douche. Sad but true. And nobody knew it better than he did deep down inside.

"check the imdb cast list before asking who portrayed who in movies"

Re: douche john wayne

Let's see...modern day actors of draft age during Vietnam that would be douches would be Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford (he gets a pass because he didn't think Vietnam was worthwhile in the first place. He let it be known that had he been of draft age for WWII, he'dve served for that one), Mel Gibson. Even had Wayne volunteered successfully, he was 34 when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and probably would have had the same kind of military service Ronald Reagan had, doing propaganda films for the government.

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Re: douche john wayne

Mel Gibson was too young for service during the Vietnam War. He turned 18 in 1974, and by then all US combat forces had been pulled out and the draft had ended.

Ronald Reagan's eyesight was very poor, as he was near-sighted. He was allowed to serve on active duty, but in a non-deployable status.

John Wayne was of draft age, and had no physical handicaps to preclude active service. If he did volunteer, he wouldn't have been assigned to a combat unit unless he demanded it, as Jimmy Stewart and others did.

"check the imdb cast list before asking who portrayed who in movies please"

Re: douche john wayne

Thanks for the reminder on Mel Gibson!:)

Re: douche john wayne

You do know that even though he is American, Mel Gibson was still living as an Australian when he turned 18 and didn't return to the US until the early 80's?

Re: douche john wayne


You do know that even though he is American, Mel Gibson was still living as an Australian when he turned 18

Then he could have joined the Australian forces. Australia was one of the combatant powers during the Vietnam War.

(Though as has been noted, the war was virtually over by the time Gibson was old enough to serve.)

Re: douche john wayne

Sounds like Harrison Ford is getting a pass here. I didn't realise you could ignore the draft if you didn't think the war was worthwhile, and of course he would make that comment about WWII. I guess that one was worthwhile, or else it was safely over.

Re: douche john wayne

With all due respect, you miss the point. Stallone and Gibson did not set themselves up as a mouthpiece for war and their brand of patriotism. Duke however did, and according to his wife, Pilar did so because he felt guilty for not serving.

It's all about the fact that Wayne chose to not serve, but railed against others who chose not to serve in later conflicts or opposed wars that they didn't believe in. That is what a chicken hawk is and sadly, as much as I admire him as a movie actor, that is what Wayne was.

As per WW2, the government accepted many Wayne's age and older who had dependents and those who did not, even movie actors who were his age or older like Henry Fonda, Eddie Albert, Gable, etc. And yes Wayne like some others might not have had to face combat although Albert and Fonda did and other stars his age or there about. Both Albert and Fonda and James Stewart among many other movie stars were decorated vets who were in combat. They never tried to boost their appeal by promoting their so-called patriotism or pretended to be a hero. This was the hypocrisy that some vets during the war had against Wayne and in a sad way was something Wayne strengthened by throwing it in the faces of future generations of men who like him, did not choose or want to serve in the military.

As for Reagan had poor eyesight by the tome the war started so that was why he had a non-combat job. But he had been a part of the reserves since the mid-1930's and was a second lieutenant.

As an aside as well, Gibson, and Stallone, the Vietnam conflict was all but over by the time he would have been eligible to be drafted or serve and he was living in Australia. I don't know if he was still an American citizen then or if he carried duel citizenship. And Stallone it seemed applied for his draft card and was never called. Still as I said, it is not the point.

I do have to ad that Duke was one of my favorite movie stars to watch. He also was imho, underrated having given some great performances in "The Searchers", "Red River", Ford's Calvary Trilogy and other films. No doubt from what I heard he was also a fine family man as well and no doubt also a good person in other respects. I am not a hater or Wayne's, I do however believe that he was a hypocrite when it came to enforcing on others what he himself would not do.

Re: douche john wayne

Well said.

Re: douche john wayne

At least Zanuck went and enlisted and when he was given a cushy job stateside he went straight to Chief of Staff George Marshall and demanded a tougher assignment in London during the Blitz and included filming combat on a secret mission in occupied France and during the invasion of North Africa as well. Zanuck was older than Wayne and had a family and could have stayed stateside. He risked his life and did a lot more than Wayne ever did. That in itself may have been in part why Zanuck didn't like the Duke. He was not alone in that feeling.

Re: douche john wayne


He was not alone in that feeling.


Sure, man sure...like who else?

Y'know Wayne has his own discussion board...




Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

Re: douche john wayne

"Y'know Wayne has his own discussion board... "

Yeah... so! I didn't see that stop you from commenting here quite often, lol! Do you have a point or are you just into writing whatever comes into your head?

Well, man sure, uh who else had a problem with Duke not enlisting. Well for one Duke did according to his wife Pilar who said her husband's avoidance of the military plagued him his whole life and had a great deal to do with the his zealous efforts to be what he felt a patriot was. Read her book.

John Wayne, during the war was quoted as saying, “I better go do some touring. I can feel the draft board breathing down my neck.”

There was also John Ford who taunted Wayne about it for years. Ford once embarrassed Wayne during the filming of a scene in "They Were Expendable" when he said, "Duke, can't you at least manage a salute that at least looks like you've been in the service?"

Although Ford did later apologize to Duke this issue was a serious rift in their relationship for the rest of their lives. And Duke as he said many times, owed everything to Ford.

I know for a fact from the father of my best friend growing up and later my father in law, both of whom were Marines that Wayne was one of the people that many marines had no use for. In one incident my friend's Dad told us of Wayne showing up to greet the marines during one of their brief respites and he was booed off the stage by one and all, they wouldn't even let him speak.

Try reading a book written by a World War 2 marine veteran, John S. Bohne, author of "Guadalcanal - Island of Death". If you read the epilogue of that book, he verifies how Wayne the Marines made a joke out of Wayne, Mickey Rooney and others.

There are a number of biographies, articles, etc, that you can search for and you'll find all this info and more. The problem was that so many stars actually did fight in WW2 and Wayne did so many movies during the war, that many non-serviceman did think he fought. And Wayne was great pr for the military so they never called him out on this, especially as later on he was such a great spokesman for anything that involved sending men overseas to fight.

Now go do some of your own lifting, man and find out for yourself.

Re: douche john wayne

Poor John Wayne . . . though he did have a highly successful film career . . . they liked him . . . and he does his job in The Longest Day . . . he adds to the movie and helps carry the production . . . does his job well . . . without him in it the film might not have been so successful . . .

Re: douche john wayne

Zanuck obviously wanted him in there. But that's all a mute point to the topic. I'd agree with him being called "Poor John Wayne" as he obviously was missing some significant aspects of character to have tried so hard and for so long to pass himself off as a war veteran when he never was and far better men and women then him have died doing what he only wanted to pretend at. Yeah, he was a poor soul alright.

Re: douche john wayne

No one has the right to criticize Wayne for his lack of service except those who served. Robert Montgomery stood up for him when John Ford mocked him, Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart were his friends. They all had the right to criticize him.

If you didn't serve, you don't have the right.
















The aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and clamorous to be led to safety.
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