50 Fun Facts About John Wayne

What was John Wayne's name at birth?

He kept the surname off screen for the rest of his life. The stage name was chosen for him by a studio.

In which state was he born, in 1907?

The house on South Second Street in Winterset is now a museum. The family moved west while he was still a boy.

Where did the nickname 'Duke' come from?

A fireman on his route to school called him Little Duke because the Airedale terrier was always with him. The nickname outlasted the dog by seventy years.

Which sport did he play at university before an injury ended it?

He was on a scholarship at the University of Southern California. A broken collarbone cost him the scholarship and pushed him into film work.

Which injury ended his college sporting career?

He lost his scholarship as a result. Prop work at the studios followed.

How tall was John Wayne?

That height is a large part of the screen presence. Directors often framed him from below to add even more.

Which 1939 John Ford western made him a mainstream star?

John Ford directed it. It was a huge critical and financial success.

What character does he play in it?

Claire Trevor took top billing above him. He was 32 and had spent a decade in low-budget westerns.

Which location did that 1939 western introduce to the western?

It straddles the Arizona-Utah border. The director returned to it again and again for the next twenty-five years.

Which filmmaker claimed to have watched that 1939 western over 40 times before his own debut?

He called it a perfect textbook of filmmaking. The debut in question was Citizen Kane.

Which actor won an Academy Award for playing the drunken Doc Boone in that 1939 film?

He also appeared in Gone with the Wind and It's a Wonderful Life. The award was for Best Supporting Actor.

Which 1948 film has him driving a cattle herd along the Chisholm Trail?

Howard Hawks directed it and Montgomery Clift co-starred. Ford is said to have remarked that he never knew the big lug could act.

What is the name of his character in The Searchers?

The performance is widely regarded as his finest and most complex. It is also the film in which he first calls someone 'Pilgrim'.

Which line from The Searchers inspired a Buddy Holly song?

Holly saw the film in Lubbock, Texas. The song became his first hit.

The Searchers is set in the flat Llano Estacado of Texas, but where was it shot?

The mesas are unmistakable and geologically nothing like west Texas. Ford used the same location for a dozen films.

How did the American Film Institute rank The Searchers in 2008?

It also placed 12th on the institute's 2007 list of the greatest American films of any kind. Its reputation grew steadily for fifty years.

For which 1969 western did John Wayne win his only acting Oscar?

He played a cantankerous one-eyed marshal. He was 62 when he won.

What was the eyepatch in it actually made of?

Henry Hathaway talked him into wearing it at all. Wayne joked at the Oscars that he should have put it on 35 years earlier.

Which country singer co-starred in it as the Texas Ranger La Boeuf?

Kim Darby played Mattie Ross. It was one of very few acting roles the singer took.

Who starred opposite Wayne in the 1975 sequel Rooster Cogburn?

She played an elderly spinster. It was one of very few times the two legends worked together.

What did Wayne do on the 1960 epic The Alamo, besides starring?

He played Davy Crockett in it as well. The film nearly ruined him financially.

Where was the set for The Alamo built?

It stood on a ranch and later became a tourist attraction called Alamo Village. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards.

How many Academy Award nominations did The Alamo receive?

It won a single award, for Best Sound. Wayne had mortgaged property to finance it.

Which 1968 Vietnam War film did Wayne co-direct with Ray Kellogg?

It was the only major American film to support the war while it was still being fought. Critics savaged it; audiences turned up anyway.

Which 1976 film was his final screen role?

He played an ageing gunfighter dying of cancer, three years before dying of it himself. Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard and James Stewart co-starred.

Which honour was he awarded posthumously in 1980?

He had died the previous summer. The award followed a Congressional Gold Medal campaign.

In how many film and television productions did John Wayne appear?

That is across nearly fifty years of work. Many of the earliest were cheap westerns shot in under a week.

What did John Wayne die of in 1979?

He had survived lung cancer in the 1960s. His last film had him play a gunfighter with the same diagnosis.

In which country were the outdoor scenes of The Quiet Man shot?

It is often considered his finest and most complex performance. The nickname became the most imitated thing he ever said.

What is the name of the fictional village in The Quiet Man?

The name is borrowed from a Yeats poem. The film won two Academy Awards.

Which award did John Ford win for The Quiet Man, his fourth?

Winton Hoch took the cinematography award for the same film. No director has won the category more times.

Which actress starred opposite Wayne in The Quiet Man?

They made five films together over twenty years. Their fights on screen were as famous as their romances.

How was Wayne selected by the American Film Institute in 1999?

The list covered the classic Hollywood era. He is the only person on it known primarily for westerns.

Which director made Wayne's final film?

He also made Dirty Harry. The film was released in 1976.

Which future director appeared alongside Wayne in that 1976 film?

He was still best known as an actor at the time. He went on to direct Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind.

Which director gave Wayne both his breakthrough and his most acclaimed role?

The partnership lasted from 1939 into the 1960s. It also produced The Quiet Man and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

In which year did the eyepatch western reach cinemas?

Henry Hathaway directed it. Wayne collected his Academy Award the following spring.

What did Wayne say when he accepted his Academy Award?

The line got the biggest laugh of the night. He had been making films for forty years by then.

How does the long fight in The Quiet Man end up being conducted?

The two men agree to the rules insincerely and then ignore them. The brawl travels across half the countryside.

Wayne's production company Batjac took its name from a fictional shipping firm in which 1948 film?

The film's company was spelled Batjak; a secretary's spelling error was allowed to stand.

What breed was Duke, the dog that gave young Marion Morrison his lifelong nickname?

A Glendale fireman on his route to school started calling the boy 'Little Duke' because he never went anywhere without the huge dog. He preferred it to Marion, and it stuck.

Raoul Walsh's first suggestion for his screen name honoured which Revolutionary War general?

Fox chief Winfield Sheehan rejected 'Anthony Wayne' as sounding too Italian, so Walsh offered 'John Wayne' instead. The actor was not even present for the discussion.

What did he hide from USC coach Howard Jones as the real cause of his career-ending injury?

He said he was too terrified of Jones's reaction to admit the truth. Losing the athletic scholarship left him without funds and forced him out of university.

Which 1930 Raoul Walsh epic gave him his first starring role, and flopped at the box office?

It cost a then-staggering $1.25 million and was shot in both 35 mm and the new 70 mm Grandeur widescreen process, which only a handful of theaters could actually project.

Which historical conqueror did he notoriously portray in a critically panned 1956 film?

The Conqueror is regularly cited among the worst casting decisions in Hollywood history. It was produced by Howard Hughes for RKO.

After his 1964 cancer diagnosis, what did surgeons remove?

He went public against the advice of business associates and urged people to get examined. Howard Hawks thought the lost lung made him a better actor, because he paused in unexpected places.

Which 1952 western did he turn down, later calling it 'the most un-American thing I've ever seen'?

He read the story as an allegory against blacklisting, which he supported. Gary Cooper took the role and won the Best Actor Oscar, which Wayne himself accepted on Cooper's behalf at the ceremony.

Which NFL team selected the 64-year-old actor in the last round of the 1972 draft?

The pick was a nod to his USC football days and was promptly disallowed by league officials. The same year he starred in The Cowboys opposite a gang of boy ranch hands.

In the early 1960s he bought the island of Taborcillo off which country's Pacific coast?

His first wife Josephine was a native of the country and he was close to its leader Omar Torrijos, which helps explain why he broke with fellow conservatives to back the Canal treaty. The island was sold by his estate.

Visiting the US in 1959, which Soviet leader made just two requests: see Disneyland and meet Wayne?

Emperor Hirohito of Japan made a similar request on his 1975 visit, wanting to meet the man who symbolised his country's former enemy.