John Wayne _ The Man Behind the Myth - Michael Munn [9]
Conflict between them grew worse as Clyde’s health improved (assuming it had been poor to start with). What is sure is that Clyde was no farmer and, in June 1916, he gave up tilling the soil and moved his family to Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, California, where he went to work as a clerk in the Glendale Pharmacy. Clyde’s father had recently died and left a small inheritance, which gave the family a good start in Glendale.
Wayne said, “My father was well liked by the young people of the town and they called him Doc, because as well as dispensing medicine, he also gave what young people considered to be good advice. They’d go to him with their problems rather than to their own folks. He was a caring man, a selfless man. Thinking back after all these years, I don’t think my mother, God rest her soul, deserved him. I only wish I’d learned then to let him know how much I loved him.”
Marion was enrolled at Doran Elementary School and began 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 13
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attending the Presbyterian Church. “I liked Glendale,” he said. “It was a town with a good community spirit. It kind of forced me out of my shell, and I joined the Boy Scouts, the YMCA, and the Masonic youth fraternity. When my father’s inheritance ran out and we found we were short of money, I took odd jobs such as delivering newspapers and delivering prescriptions for the Glendale Pharmacy.”
He also acquired a dog, an Airedale: “We called him Duke. I loved that dog. He went with me everywhere, except to school and church.
I used to go by the town’s fire station where the firefighters began calling me Big Duke and the dog Little Duke. So everyone started calling me Duke, except my mother. I tell ya, I was real glad to be rid of that goddamn name.
“They were great guys, those firefighters. They used to give me milk. They’d say, ‘Take it home for your cat,’ even though they knew we had no cat. The milk was really for me. One day I got into a fight with a local bully and lost and got a black eye. One of the firefighters who was a former professional boxer gave me lessons in self-defense, and, ya know, before long I got to be pretty good with my fists.”
In 1921 Duke Morrison began his freshman year at Glendale High.
In his teens he had begun to grow rapidly upward, and before long he stood more than six feet tall. Although he was skinny, weighing just 140 pounds, he became star guard on the school football team.
An intelligent young man, still a little shy but possessing a modest and unassuming manner, he started to win the admiration of his peers and began to achieve success in various aspects of his school life. He became class vice president in his sophomore and junior years, graduating to president as a senior, and he even wrote a sports column for the school paper.
It was in Glendale that Duke discovered movies. Not surprisingly, perhaps, his favorite pictures were Westerns. “I understand my fans because I had idols. They were Harry Carey and Tom Mix. Glendale was a popular location for picture makers, and I got to see a lot of scenes being filmed. I remember seeing Douglas Fairbanks filming a woodland scene for Robin Hood.
“I guess watching famous movie stars gave me some inspiration to try acting. I was a member of the school’s dramatic society. I even 21184_ch01.qxd 12/18/03 1:42 PM Page 14
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got chosen as the school’s representative in the Southern California Shakespeare Contest in 1925. I delivered Cardinal Wolsey’s speech from Henry VIII.” This is noted in the Glendale High School Yearbook of 1925. Among his plays at school were The First Lady of the Land in which he played a nobleman, and Dulcey as an old man.
It is unlikely that Duke Morrison possessed strong acting skills at this stage. School plays inevitably win praise more for the enthusiasm displayed by the cast than for any notable acting ability.
The only evidence we have of his acting skills