John Wayne
The American Story
Christopher Flannery
4.6 • 941 Ratings
🗓️ 31 May 2022
⏱️ 7 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
John Wayne began life as Marion Morrison in Winterset, Iowa. After his family made its way to L.A., and an injury sidelined him from USC football, he began working full-time as a prop man for movie studios. His natural strength, good spirit, good looks, and determination carried him through nearly a decade of B-movies before he became a star. Thirty-five years after his death, he was still listed as one of America’s five favorite movie stars; he became “indivisibly associated with America itself.”
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the American Story. |
| 0:04.0 | Stories about what it is that makes America beautiful. |
| 0:08.0 | Heartbreaking, funny, inspiring, and endlessly interesting. |
| 0:13.0 | This is Chris Flannering with the Claremont Institute. |
| 0:16.0 | I call this one John Wayne. |
| 0:20.0 | 22-year-old Marion Morrison. this one? John Wayne. |
| 0:28.7 | 22-year-old Marion Morrison, known to his friends as Duke, was carrying a table on his head across the sound stage of a John Ford movie. He was working as a prop man at the Fox |
| 0:36.2 | studio in L.A. early in 1930. |
| 0:40.3 | Director Raul Walsh was looking for a leading man for an epic Western film he was developing, |
| 0:45.9 | about a great wagon train, journeying across vast deserts and mountains to California. |
| 0:52.8 | Walsh didn't want a known star to play the lead. |
| 0:56.3 | He was looking for someone who would be a true replica of the pioneer type. |
| 1:01.6 | He didn't want the audience to see a part being acted. |
| 1:05.3 | He wanted them to see the real thing. |
| 1:08.3 | Someone to get out there and act natural, be himself. Then he happened upon the young |
| 1:14.7 | Duke Morrison, lugging a table across a soundstage. He was in his early 20s, Walsh recalled, |
| 1:22.7 | and laughing. The expression on his face was so warm and wholesome that I stopped and watched. |
| 1:30.1 | I noticed the fine physique of the boy, his careless strength, the grace of his movement. |
| 1:36.6 | What I needed was a feeling of honesty, of sincerity, and he had it. |
| 1:43.2 | Within a few weeks after a quick screen test, |
| 1:46.6 | Duke would be signed up for the part of Breck Coleman, |
| 1:49.5 | the fearless young scout in an ambitious film to be called The Big Trail. |
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