John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [8]
And so the Morrisons left Iowa for California where Clyde took over the homestead that had belonged to his father. It was situated in Antelope Valley, an arid basin north of Los Angeles. The nearest town was Lancaster. Molly hated it there and complained about the primitive conditions she found herself having to endure.
Marion, who was just seven when they moved to the valley, also disliked it. Years later the story emerged that young Marion was in awe of the distant mountains that stretched for hundreds of miles, 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 11
FROM MARION TO DUKE
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making him feel like a part of the old West. But I suspect that observation was one created by film publicists because it fitted the image of cowboy star John Wayne.
Henry Hathaway, who directed several of Wayne’s films, including True Grit, told me during a transatlantic phone call,
“That’s the trouble with the studios in those days—when they found a star, they’d embellish biographical details, so you can never trust the ‘official’ versions.” “I hated living in Antelope Valley,” Wayne told me. “There were so many rattlesnakes, I had nightmares about them,” he said. “We were living in little more than a rambling shack with no electricity. It was a hard life for all of us. I had to get up at five every morning to do my chores, while my father fought a losing battle growing crops in the poor soil, and what did grow was eaten by the jackrabbits.”
Michael Wayne, Duke’s oldest son, whom I met on the set of Brannigan, said of his father’s family, “They were really quite poor and lived off tuna fish for about six months because evidently they got a good buy on several cases of tuna fish. After that, my father could never eat tuna.”
So much of Wayne’s childhood was clouded by stories that were tailored to fit the cowboy star that it becomes difficult separating fact from fiction. When he was barely more than seven, he was supposedly taught by his father to fire a rifle. Henry Hathaway said,
“I think it’s extremely questionable whether a pharmacist like Clyde would have even known how to use a rifle.”
Marion apparently learned to swim using a local irrigation ditch, and he certainly had to learn to ride a horse. “I was riding as soon as I could walk,” he said, which wasn’t quite true, but it does fit snugly into the John Wayne legend.
“I had a horse called Jenny,” he said, “and twice every week I rode over desert roads to pick up the mail and groceries from the general store in Lancaster. I also rode Jenny to school, which was in the same town.” Wayne didn’t say if he was particularly fond of Jenny, especially since she was little more than a scrawny nag. But despite making a career out of riding horses, he told me, “I’ve never really liked horses and I daresay not many of them liked me too much.”
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JOHN WAYNE
Poor Jenny’s days ended when she became ill and thin, and had to be shot. Wayne said, “The nosy biddies of the town called the Humane Society and accused me, a seven-year-old, of not feeding my horse and watering him. This was proven to be a lie.” (It didn’t occur to me at the time, but Wayne referred to Jenny as “him” rather than “her.”)
The Morrisons could not afford another horse, so Marion had to walk to school, and occasionally he would hitch a ride in a passing wagon. By now a loner who suffered from anxiety and shyness, he found making friends almost impossible. “I got into a lot of fights at school because my classmates laughed at my Midwestern accent and especially at my goddamn name. On many an occasion I came home from school covered in mud and blood, and got berated by my mother who gave me endless lectures on how I should behave like a gentleman. My father, however, praised me for my courage and taught me that a man must always stand up for himself. Unfortunately, I didn’t usually win when I stood up for myself.”
Clyde’s advice may seem uncharacteristic coming from a man dominated by his wife, but Clyde learned to stand