John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [3]
I decided it was time to put the record straight about a number of aspects of his life in response to attempts to blight his reputation since his death, which he cannot answer himself. The main questions have been: why didn’t he enlist during the Second World War, and what drove him to fight Communism so aggressively?
Those questions have answers, and they are not the ones his critics always aim for. Along the way, I’ll also straighten out some of the exaggerations about his early life and career. For some, it may seem to dilute the legend, but I think his life and career are remarkable enough without the embellishments, most of which came from early studio publicity notes—and also from the likes of John Ford. I don’t happen to believe in John Ford’s credo, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Wayne wasn’t perfect. But as Maureen O’Hara said, “He was a beautiful human being.” There were some great flaws in that beauty, and despite the admiration and, yes, the awe I held him in, he was, after all, just a human being (although when I met him, I made him laugh by saying “I’ve never met a living legend before”). But what came across—from my brief friendship with him and from hearing what most of the people I spoke to had to say—was that he was a man who tried, though not always succeeded, to do what was right.
When, as Davy Crockett in The Alamo, he says, “There’s right and there’s wrong. You gotta do one or the other,” he was speaking of his own philosophy. Good and bad were black-and-white. There were no gray areas. And maybe that philosophy was his biggest virtue and also his greatest flaw.
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FOREWORD
No one can deny Wayne had courage, something he displayed not merely on screen but in real life as he fought cancer twice. But he also faced death from forces just as deadly. Attempts were made on his life, which was a secret he kept—except from those who helped to protect him—for one reason: he did not want his family to know because he did not want any of them to worry about him or live in fear. In fact, against advice from the FBI, he refused to change his lifestyle and thereby give in to acts of terror. And that is an aspect of his life that is reflected in the courage and determination of the American people after 11 September.
Although the Wayne family home became something of a safe haven from the usual dangers celebrities feared—such as kidnappers and burglars—Wayne never took any extraordinary precautions to keep himself safe from any would-be assassins.
He continued to live his life his way. “America is the land of freedom,” he said, “and that’s the way I enjoy living.”
Yes, John Wayne had real courage.
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A Communist Conspiracy
Revealed
As famed stuntman Yakima Canutt told me the story over a drink in the bar of a London hotel in 1976, it wasn’t too difficult to imagine it as a scene straight out of a movie.
Two men were on their knees on the firm wet sand of the secluded beach. Their hands were cuffed behind them, their heads hung low, and their long shadows were thrown by headlights from a car, its engine still running, parked on a side road that ran down to the beach.
Beside the car stood two FBI agents.
Big John Wayne stood a meter or two behind the kneeling men, a gun in his hand. Next to him stood his partner, a broad, short man with a crew cut, also with a gun in his hand. The weapons were aimed at the back of the heads of the two kneeling men who muttered pathetically in Russian. Wayne assumed that they were saying their last prayers to whichever god Soviet Communists revered.
But this was no movie scene. This was for real. The man with the crew cut standing next to Wayne was screenwriter James Edward Grant who could never have written a scene like this for Duke to play. Wayne had a policy of never shooting a man in the back in his films. Bad for the image.
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JOHN WAYNE
“On the