The Young Duke

This is a great book about everything that made John Wayne a star. It covers his ups and downs. This will be a favorite of anyone who loves Westerns.

John Wayne was an iconic American actor. I never knew why. Actually, I’d never watched more than fragments of a John Wayne movie. He seemed to talk with a mouthful of marbles. When I had the opportunity to read a new book on the actor, I did. The Young Duke: The Early Life of John Wayne was an eye-opener into the life of this larger-than-life man.
Marion Morrison’s mother Molly was a shrew who complained incessantly about her husband Clyde’s lack of ambition. After the family moved from Iowa to California for Clyde’s health, Marion had a dog he called Duke, which became his nickname.
Duke attended USC on a football scholarship. Movie celebrities liked to watch the winning Trojans, and cowboy star Tom Mix exchanged summer jobs for players at Fox Films Corporation for box seats. Duke Morrison got one of the jobs, and Mix suggested Duke work as an extra in his next Western.
Director John Ford got him to appear in Salute. In Ford’s next film, Men Without Women, Duke appeared again and did stuntwork. He didn’t actively seek out roles, but didn’t turn them down.
Raoul Walsh cast him in The Big Trail. Studio executives objected to his name; Duke Morrison didn’t sound American enough. He became John Wayne in 1930.
The foibles of film executives made amusing reading. Ford got mad at Duke for starring in The Big Trail, even though he had suggested him, and refused to speak to him for seven years. Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn got mad at him because he thought Wayne had an affair with his co-star, Lara La Plante, whom Cohn liked, and retaliated by casting him in demeaning roles for three years. Cecil B. DeMille asked him to his office in 1937 to discuss Duke possibly appeared in a Western DeMille was producing. DeMille kept him waiting over an hour, and then spent their time together critiquing Wayne’s work and explaining why he would not cast him in the lead.
Ford got over his pique and cast Wayne in Stagecoach, the film that took him out of B Westerns and made him an A star.
Wayne’s marriages don’t cast him in a good light. He didn’t approach marriage wisely and wasn’t a faithful husband.
I had a chance to watch a Wayne film in its entirety, Flying Leathernecks. I still don’t understand what all the fuss is about. He was a patriotic American, yes, and Congress awarded him a Congressional Gold Medal inscribed to John Wayne, American. (Not the Medal of Honor as reported in The Young Duke.) The Young Duke covers his middle age as much as his early life, plus his political beliefs and The Alamo, his pet film project.

A wonderful book that gives the fan a glimpse of his early life and how The Duke became a star. I love the back story that we never knew and the long road he took to be a star. A fantastic new fan favorite !