I had a cousin who was your typical '60s hippie. As a teenager
he hated almost everything. He was disrespectful of his family, his
religious heritage and especially his country. In a turbulent time,
he embodied everything that modern liberalism now holds dear. But
of all the things he viscerally detested, number one on his list
was John Wayne.
Dropping his favorite word, “bourgeois” into every sneering
declaration, he decried — with the weary worldliness one can only
acquire after having been raised for 18 years in middle-class
Connecticut — those for whom the Duke embodied patriotic America.
He scorned his every appearance or utterance in public, be it in
movie theaters or on TV.
And why not? John Wayne was born Marion Morrison 100 years ago
last
month in the dreaded Midwest, before his family moved to a
California that had yet to see the “golden days” of left-wing
infiltration. He played football at USC before a surfing injury
caused him to lose his scholarship and he soon found work as a
Hollywood stuntman before stardom found him.
He was incredibly handsome in youth and despite his large and
rangy frame, had a lithesome quality to his bearing, even late in
life. It is a cliche used in reference to many actors that women
wanted him and men wanted to be like him, but this is in no way
truer of anyone more than the Duke. Think of the greatest fistfight
in film history — Wayne and Victor McLaglen in The Quiet
Man — and one of the greatest love scenes from the same
movie, between the Duke and Maureen O’Hara in the stormy Irish
graveyard.
John Wayne reigned as one of Hollywood’s kings for nearly 40
years, and his support of his country’s war efforts — from
American settlement of the West to stopping Communism both here and
abroad — got him into trouble as the nation’s ideas about
patriotism took a sharp turn to the left. One wonders what Wayne
would think about the current notion that it is patriotic to
restrain our armed forces from doing the job they volunteered to
do: defend their country.
But we don’t have to wonder what the left thought and still
thinks of the Duke; indeed, their current methods of attack were
originated and honed on the likes of John Wayne and his fellow
actor, Ronald Reagan. Wayne was a lifelong Christian, a
Presbyterian who had a deathbed conversion to Catholicism. And, since he was
divorced (three times) this naturally made him a hypocrite;
Christian notions that Christ came to call sinners never enter into
this reckoning.
Additionally, he was what liberals blissfully refer to as a
“chicken-hawk,” in that although he was never drafted, he did not
volunteer for service in World War II. No one is exactly sure why he decided to remain at home and make
patriotic movies instead of joining up, but it is said that he
greatly regretted that decision later on in life.
It is odd, however, that liberals do not apply the same
appellation to Bill Clinton who actually did dodge the draft yet
sent American servicemen into harm’s way. Or cry hypocrisy at so
many of today’s actors who routinely dress up in soldier suits,
earning millions of dollars in the process, while spitting on the
flag for which so many gave their lives.
Yet whatever contributions John Wayne did or did not make to our
national defense — it has been reported that Joseph Stalin wanted him
assassinated because of his anti-Communist efforts — he made only
a handful of war movies in comparison to his westerns, and it was
primarily for these that he is so loved, or so hated.
Salon writer Jonathan Leithem, in a piece that mostly lauds Wayne as a film presence, also
jabs, “Thank heaven he’s also a laughable political ignoramus, a
warmongering hypocrite who never served in the armed forces. Thank
heaven he’s associated with the western, an easily dismissible film
genre.” Leithem’s piece pre-dates Brokeback Mountain of
course.
His critics say that there was no John Wayne, just Marion
Michael Morrison reading from scripts written for him by his
betters. If this is true, why then is there no John Wayne today?
Anyone who surveys the current scene and is old enough to remember
the days of the Duke surely knows the answer. The sublime Katharine
Hepburn summed it up more eloquently than anyone:
John Wayne is the hero of the '30s and '40s and most of
the '50s. Before the creeps came creeping in. Before — in the '60s
— the hero slid right down into the valley of the weak and the
misunderstood. Before the women began dropping any pretense to
virginity into the gutter. With a disregard for truth which is
indeed pathetic. And unisex was born. The hair grew long and the
pride grew short. And we were off to the anti-hero. John Wayne
survived all this.
Lisa Fabrizio is a columnist who hails from
Connecticut. You may write her at mailbox@lisafab.com.
