John Wayne's biography

Marion Robert Morrison is 72 years old actor born at Winterset. John was born on Sunday 26th of May 1907. John is often nicknamed as `Duke`, 'jw', Marion Mitchell Morrison, Marion Robert Morrison, John Wayne, The Duke. According to year of birth 1907 John belongs to Greatest Generation. Birthday on 26th of May means he is Gemini. Gemini is a dual sign of Zodiac Belt. One born with this rising sign is very dual and creative in nature with lots of verbosity. They are the most expressive people as they love talking.John was married 3 times.

John is native english speaker. He is white american. John is citizen of United States of America. John is roman catholic. His primary profession is to be actor. You can know John also as film actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter, American football player. John is recently known as television actor.

John Wayne's dad

John Wayne's father's name is Clyde L. Morrison.

John Wayne's mom

John Wayne's mother's name is Mary Brown.

John Wayne's family

John Wayne's ex wifes

Pilar Wayne

John Wayne and Pilar Wayne have been together since 1954 for 25 years. She is known as actor. His ex wife was born on Monday 3rd of September 1928.

Esperanza Baur

John Wayne and Esperanza Baur have been together since 1946 for 8 years. She is known as actor. John´s ex wife was born on Saturday 17th of July 1920 in Mexico City. John´s ex wife died on Friday 10th of March 1961 in Mexico City. Esperanza Baur was 54 years old, when this happened.

Josephine Wayne

John Wayne and Josephine Wayne have been together since 1933 for 12 years.

John has 3 sons.

John Wayne's son: Michael Wayne

John Wayne's son's name is Michael Wayne. He is known as film producer. His son was born on Friday 23rd of November 1934 in Los Angeles. His son died on Wednesday 2nd of April 2003 in Burbank. Michael Wayne was 96 years old, when this happened.

John Wayne's son: Patrick Wayne

John Wayne's son's name is Patrick Wayne. Patrick is known as actor. John´s son was born on Saturday 15th of July 1939.

John Wayne's son: Ethan Wayne

John Wayne's son's name is Ethan Wayne. He is known as actor. His son was born on Thursday 22nd of February 1962 in Encino.

John Wayne's schools

We found 2 schools John attended. Complete list of schools: University of Southern California, Glendale High School.

Detailed informations about John´s schools

John studied high school - Glendale High School, Glendale, California, United States.

John studied university - University Of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States (1925-1927).

John Wayne's career

John´s main focus is to be actor. John is famous thanks to The Duke. You could see John also in True Grit.

Is John Wayne gay ?

John is known to be straight.

John Wayne's girlfriend

Marlene Dietrich

John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich have been together. Marlene is known as film actor. His girlfriend was born on Friday 27th of December 1901. His girlfriend died on Wednesday 6th of May 1992. Marlene Dietrich was 85 years old, when this happened.

How did John Wayne die

He died on on Monday 11th of June 1979 when he was 72 years old at Westwood. John Waynes death was caused by stomach cancer. It happend like natural causes.

Awards and competitions

John Wayne's Awards

In 1973 he was awarded the Gold Medal from the National Football Foundation for his days playing football for Glendale High School and USC.
Posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, by President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Maureen O'Hara presented him with the People's Choice Award for most popular motion picture actor in 1976.
After meeting the late Superman (1978) star Christopher Reeve at the 1979 Academy Awards, Wayne turned to Cary Grant and said, "This is our new man. He's taking over".
The inscription on the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to him in 1979 reads, simply, "John Wayne, American."
Allegedly thrust his Best Actor Oscar for True Grit (1969) to Richard Burton at the The 42nd Annual Academy Awards (1970), telling the Welsh actor, "You should have this, not me."
In 1973 he was honored with the Veterans of Foreign Wars highest award--The National Americanism Gold Medal.

John Wayne's Rankings

Ranked #16 in "Empire" (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list in October 1997.
His performance as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956) is ranked #87 on "Premiere" Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time in 2006.
His performance as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956) is ranked #23 on "Premiere" Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
Ranked #11 in the 100 Most Influential People in the History of the Movies, according to the authors of the Film 100 Web site.

John Wayne's Nominations

John was nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor for work Sands of Iwo Jima in 1949
John was nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor for work True Grit in 1969
John was nominated for Academy Award for Best Picture for work The Alamo in 1960

What else you don't know about John Wayne ?

His middle name is Michael.

What John Wayne has done for a first time

Pictured on a 37Â¢ US commemorative stamp in the Legends of Hollywood series, issued on 9/9/04. The first-day ceremonies were held at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
Was a member of the first class to be inducted into the DeMolay Hall of Fame on 11/13/86.
"The Greatest Cowboy Star of All Time" was the caption to a series of comic books dedicated to him. The "John Wayne Adventure Comics" were first published in 1949.
In 1975, for the first time since his arrival in Hollywood 47 years earlier, he did not act in any movies. Production began in January of the following year for his last, The Shootist (1976).
Lauren Bacall once recalled that while Wayne hardly knew her husband Humphrey Bogart at all, he was the first to send flowers and good wishes after Bogart was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in January 1956.
Often stated how he wished his first Oscar nomination had been for She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) instead of Sands of Iwo Jima (1949).
His first wife Josephine Alicia Saenz died of cancer in 2003, at the age of 94.
Gave Sammy Davis Jr. the first cowboy hat he ever wore in a film.

John Wayne's quotes

I never trust a man that doesn't drink.
[at Harvard in 1974, on being asked whether then-President Richard Nixon ever advised him on the making of his films] No, they've all been successful.
[on presenting the Best Picture Oscar in 1979] Oscar and I have something in common. Oscar first came to the Hollywood scene in 1928. So did I. We're both a little weatherbeaten, but we're still here and plan to be around for a whole lot longer.
When people say a John Wayne picture got bad reviews, I always wonder if they know it's a redundant sentence, but hell, I don't care. People like my pictures and that's all that counts.
[When asked if he believed in God] There must be some higher power or how else does all this stuff work?
[Time Magazine interview, 1969] I would like to be remembered, well . . . the Mexicans have a phrase, "Feo fuerte y formal". Which means he was ugly, strong and had dignity.
[poem, "The Sky", he read on his 1969 Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967) appearance] The sky is blue, the grass is green. Get off your ass and join the Marines.
[upon accepting his Oscar for True Grit (1969)] If I'd known this was all it would take, I'd have put that eyepatch on 40 years ago.
I'm an American actor. I work with my clothes on. I have to. Riding a horse can be pretty tough on your legs and elsewheres.
Communism is quite obviously still a threat. Yes, they are human beings, with a right to their point of view . . .
[on being asked about his "phony hair" at Harvard in 1974] It's not phony. It's real hair. Of course, it's not mine, but it's real.
I never had a goddamn artistic problem in my life, never, and I've worked with the best of them. John Ford isn't exactly a bum, is he? Yet he never gave me any manure about art. He just made movies and that's what I do.
God-damn, I'm the stuff men are made of!
I was overwhelmed by the feeling of friendship, comradeship, and brotherhood . . . DeMolay will always hold a deep spot in my heart.
[on the Oscars] You can't eat awards -- nor, more to the point, drink 'em.
[on America] I can tell you why I love her. I have a lust for her dignity. I look at her wonderfully classic face, and I see hidden in it a sense of humor that I love. I think of wonderful, exciting, decent things when I look at her . . .
Courage is being scared to death - and saddling up anyway.
I stick to simple themes. Love. Hate. No nuances. I stay away from psychoanalyst's couch scenes. Couches are good for one thing.
I am a demonstrative man, a baby picker-upper, a hugger and a kisser - that's my nature.
I don't act . . . I react.
Westerns are closer to art than anything else in the motion picture business.
I do not want the government to take away my human dignity and insure me anything more than a normal security. I don't want handouts.
I want to play a real man in all my films, and I define manhood simply: men should be tough, fair, and courageous, never petty, never looking for a fight, but never backing down from one either.
I don't want ever to appear in a film that would embarrass a viewer. A man can take his wife, mother, and his daughter to one of my movies and never be ashamed or embarrassed for going.
I am an old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness, flag-waving patriot.
You can't whine and bellyache because somebody else got a good break and you didn't.
I think that the loud roar of irresponsible liberalism . . . is being quieted down by a reasoning public. I think the pendulum is swinging back. We're remembering that the past can't be so bad. We built a nation on it. We have to look to tomorrow.
Very few of the so-called liberals are open-minded . . . they shout you down and won't let you speak if you disagree with them.
Some people tell me everything isn't black and white. But I say why the hell not?
God, how I hate solemn funerals. When I die, take me into a room and burn me. Then my family and a few good friends should get together, have a few good belts, and talk about the crazy old time we all had together.
I have tried to live my life so that my family would love me and my friends respect me. The others can do whatever the hell they please.
[on The Green Berets (1968)] When I saw what our boys are going through - hell - and how the morale was holding up, and the job they were doing, I just knew they had to make this picture.
I'm quite sure that the concept of a government-run reservation would have an ill effect on anyone. But that seems to be what the socialists are working for now - to have everyone cared for from cradle to grave.
Look, I'm sure there have been inequalities. If those inequalities are presently affecting any of the Indians now alive, they have a right to a court hearing. But what happened 100 years ago in our country can't be blamed on us today.
[on Superman (1978) star Christopher Reeve after meeting him at the 1979 Academy Awards] This is our new man. He's taking over.
I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to the point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.
If it hadn't been for football and the fact I got my leg broke and had to go into the movies to eat, why, who knows, I might have turned out to be a liberal Democrat.
[on why he never wrote an autobiography] Those who like me already know me, and those who don't like me wouldn't want to read about me anyway.
I play John Wayne in every picture regardless of the character, and I've been doing all right, haven't I?
Talk low, talk slow and don't talk too much.
That little clique back there in the East has taken great personal satisfaction reviewing my politics instead of my pictures. But one day those doctrinaire liberals will wake up to find the pendulum has swung the other way.
[on Frank Capra] I'd like to take that little Dago son of a bitch and tear him into a million pieces and throw him into the ocean and watch him float back to Sicily where he belongs.
Television has a tendency to reach a little. In their westerns, they are getting away from the simplicity and the fact that those men were fighting the elements and the rawness of nature and didn't have time for this couch-work.
Mine is a rebellion against the monotony of life. The rebellion in these kids, particularly the S.D.S.-ers and those groups, seems to be a kind of dissension by rote.
[on The Conqueror (1956)] The way the screenplay reads, this is a cowboy picture, and that's how I am going to play Genghis Khan. I see him as a gunfighter.
[1979] I've known Jane Fonda since she was a little girl. I've never agreed with a word she's said, but would give my life defending her right to say it.
I read someplace that I used to make B-pictures. Hell, they were a lot farther down the alphabet than that . . . but not as far down as R and X. I think any man who makes an X-rated picture ought to be made to take his own daughter to see it.
Screw ambiguity. Perversion and corruption masquerade as ambiguity. I don't trust ambiguity.
It's kind of a sad thing when a normal love of country makes you a super patriot. I do think we have a pretty wonderful country, and I thank God that He chose me to live here.
[on his separation from third wife Pilar Wayne in 1973] We have separated, and it's a sad incident in my life. It is family and personal. I'd rather keep it that way.
[1973] I've been allowed a few more years - I hope. My lung capacity is naturally limited now, but I had a pretty good set before the disease hit me, so it isn't too noticeable in my everyday life.
[on The Alamo (1960)] This picture is America. I hope that seeing the battle of the Alamo will remind Americans that liberty and freedom don't come cheap. This picture, well, I guess making it has made me feel useful to my country.
[1960] I suddenly found out after 25 years I was starting out all over again. I would just about break even if I sold everything right now.
[1966] I drink for comradeship, and when I drink for comradeship, I don't bother to keep count.
[1962] I'm a progressive thinker, even though I'm not in the liberal strain.
[1971] Get a checkup. Talk someone you like into getting a checkup. Nag someone you love into getting a checkup. And while you're at it, send a check to the American Cancer Society. It's great to be alive.
[1971] Well, you like . . . each picture for . . . a different reason. But I think my favorite will always be the next one.
[on television] I don't know if I love it or hate it, but there sure has never been any form of entertainment so . . . so . . . available to the human race with so little effort since they invented marital sex.
[1976] And to all you folks out there, I want to thank you for the last fifty years of my career. And I hope I can keep at it another fifty years - or at least until I can get it right.
[6/78] I'm a greedy old man. Life's been good to me, and I want some more of it.
When you come slam bang up against trouble, it never looks half as bad if you face up to it.
A man's got to have a code, a creed to live by, no matter his job.
When the road looks rough ahead, remember the Man Upstairs and the word "Hope". Hang onto both and tough it out.
We've made mistakes along the way, but that's no reason to start tearing up the best flag God ever gave to any country.
[on his third wife Pilar Wayne] I can tell you why I love her. I have a lust for her dignity. I look at her wonderfully classic face, and I see hidden in it a sense of humor that I love. I think of wonderful, exciting, decent things when I look at her.
The West - the very words go straight to that place of the heart where Americans feel the spirit of pride in their western heritage - the triumph of personal courage over any obstacle, whether nature or man.
My main object in making a motion picture is entertainment. If at the same time I can strike a blow for liberty, then I'll stick one in.
I think those blacklisted people should have been sent over to Russia. They'd have been taken care of over there, and if the Commies ever won over here, why hell, those guys would be the first ones they'd take care of - after me.
I said there was a tall, lanky kid that led 150 airplanes across Berlin. He was an actor, but that day, I said, he was a colonel. Colonel Jimmy Stewart [James Stewart]. So I said, "What is all this crap about Reagan [Ronald Reagan] being an actor?"
In spite of the fact that Rooster Cogburn would shoot a fella between the eyes, he'd judge that fella before he did it. He was merely trying to make the area in which he was marshal livable for the most number of people.
I wrote to the head man at General Motors and said, "I'm gonna have to desert you if you don't stop making cars for women.'"
Paul Newman would have been a much more important star if he hadn't always tried to be an anti-hero, to show the human feet of clay.
Contrary to what people think, I'm no politician, and when I have something to say I say it through my movies.
[on Donovan's Reef (1963)] The script really called for a younger guy. I felt awkward romancing a young girl at my age.
[on Jet Pilot (1957)] It is undoubtedly one of my worst movies ever.
[on Cahill (1973)] It just wasn't a well done picture. It needed better writing, it needed a little better care in making.
[on High Plains Drifter (1973)] That isn't what the West was all about. That isn't the American people who settled this country.
[on Raoul Walsh] I've been very lucky in the men I've worked with. Raoul Walsh -- the heartiness and lustiness he gave to pictures I thought was tremendous.
I know what the critics think--that I can't act. What is a great actor anyway? Of course, you could say a great actor is one who can play many different parts, like [Laurence Olivier] can. But all the parts I play are tailor-made for me.
[on reactions to The Green Berets (1968)] The left-wingers are shredding my flesh, but like Liberace, we're bawling all the way to the bank.
But don't get me wrong. As far as a man and a woman is concerned, I'm awfully happy there's a thing called sex. It's an extra something God gave us. I see no reason why it shouldn't be in pictures. Healthy, lusty sex is wonderful.
Rooster Cogburn's attitude toward life was maybe a little different, but he was basically the same character I've always played.
Let's say I hope that I appeal to the more carefree times in a person's life rather than to his reasoning adulthood. I'd just like to be an image that reminds someone of joy rather than of the problems of the world.
I don't have to assert my virility. I think my career has shown that I'm not exactly a pantywaist. But I do take pride in my work, even to the point of being the first one on the set in the morning. I'm a professional.
If a guy wants to wear his hair down to his ass, I'm not revolted by it. But I don't look at him and say, "Now there's a fella I'd like to spend next winter with."
If I had it to do over again, I'd probably do everything I did. But that's not necessarily the right thing to do.
You're going to think I'm being corny, but this is how I really feel: I hope my family and my friends will be able to say that I was an honest, kind and fairly decent man.
In B-pictures all we ever did is tell a story. He's gone to Red Gap! Where's Red Gap? There's Red Gap! Let's git after him to Red Gap. Here's Red Gap! But in A-pictures you reacted more to the situations.
You may think all my parts are the same. That's just what I want you to think. You get lost on the screen if your personality doesn't show through.
Couches are for one thing only.
Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. It comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.
[in 1971] I licked the Big C. I know the man upstairs will pull the plug when he wants to, but I don't want to end my life being sick. I want to go out on two feet--in action.
[At his divorce trial in 1953] I deeply regret I'm going to have to sling mud.
(On Howard Hawks) "Oh, yeah, Hawks and I had a few fights along the way," Wayne said, "but he accepted me as an expert, which I was, and we did not have any more trouble, and I was always happy to work for Hawks."
The guy you see on the screen really isn't me. I'm Duke Morrison and I never was and never will be a film personality like John Wayne. I know him well. I'm one of his closest students. I have to be. I make a living out of him.
[on the Vietnam War] What kind of a war is this that we're not supposed to win?
I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. (speaking about Native American Indians in 1971)
[on turning down "Blazing Saddles"] I could never be in a movie that used the N-word.
Jesus Christ! Jesus, I wrecked that shoulder. Down in Baton Rouge, when I was making 'The Undefeated,' I twisted around in the saddle and the damn stirrup was completely loose. I fell right under that goddamned horse; I'm lucky I didn't kill myself.
It's sure as hell my first decent role in 20 years, and my first chance to play a character role instead of John Wayne. Ordinarily they just stand me there and run everybody up against me.
You get something of that in the character of Rooster. Well, they say he's not like what I've done before, and I even say that, but he does have facets of the John Wayne character, huh? I think he does.
[on the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals] We were just good Americans and we demanded the right to speak our minds. After all, the Communists in Hollywood were speaking theirs.
[on "True Grit"] My first decent role in 20 years - and my first chance to play a character role instead of John Wayne.
[on being diagnosed with lung cancer] I sat there trying to be John Wayne.
I'm quite happy with it. Maybe I wish I could've saved a little money, but outside of that? I don't know, it doesn't matter. I'd probably spend it the same way.

John Wayne's height, body shape, eye color

Lets describe how John Wayne looks. We will focus on John´s height, body shape, eye color and hair color. He is tall as 6' 4" (193 cm). Body build is average. John´s eyes are tinted blue. His hair is shade of brown - light.

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