Guest Blog: John Wayne and the America I Love

by
Steve Latshaw
Burbank, California

Marion Michael Morrison had a birthday a week or so ago. I can’t begin to tell you how much that means to me. I can’t begin to tell you how much he means to me. You might know him by his screen name. He’s “Duke” to his friends.

To the rest of us, he’s John Wayne.

John Wayne. A name that brings up a lot of complicated emotions in people: smiles of nostalgia; an adrenalin rush; a bittersweet memory; or, even anger among those who consider themselves the enlightened, the intellectual elite, the folks that would just as soon pretend the middle of America--the heartland--didn’t exist.

Wayne as Ringo Kid in Stagecoach.

To me, in his early movies, like Stagecoach, Tall in the Saddle and the Fighting Seabees, Wayne is like the older brother I never had—always there to get me out of trouble. In later films, particularly Sands of Iwo Jima, he’s my Dad.

John Wayne as Sgt. John M. Stryker in The Sands of Iwo Jima.

Dad was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne. He’s always reminded me of Wayne, the way he stands, the way he reacts, the way he sits with his head down, contemplating his shoes when he’s solving a problem. That sudden eye blink when he lets his guard down and shows some emotion or some appreciation for a job well done. The bit of tenderness and humor under the hero mask. Never more so than in Sands of Iwo Jima. All I have to do to revisit the Dad of my youth is to watch that movie.

I learned about being a father and a leader and a man from that movie and from that time. And from my Dad, or course, who sat on the couch next to me and watched it, and lived his life like a hero. (Of course Dad would say all this was bull; but, he was always more of a Robert Mitchum fan.)

In Wayne’s later films, he’s the tough old grandpa that--like the older brother--shows up to get you out of trouble, with a twinkle in his eye and a kick for your ass.

But that’s just what he is to me.

There was a time when John Wayne meant America to the rest of the world: East and West; good and bad. They admired us and liked us and wanted to be like us. Because they felt that way about him. These days, he’s still thought of as the symbol of America. But America has become a bad thing--to some--and so, by default, is John Wayne. The phrase “cowboy diplomacy” is spoken with bitter derision, even though our shores have been kept safe from terrorist attack since 9/11/2001. Our critics have much to say about what is wrong with America. And they’ve said the same thing about John Wayne.

They say our pride of country and heritage is naïve and ignorant of history.

They say our sense of right and wrong is intolerant, at best.

They say everything we all stand for is bankrupt and corrupt and arrogant, stupid, bloodthirsty and vicious.

They say we have no compassion for the world’s problems, only preoccupation with our own.

They say we are the great evil, the source of the world’s woes, the society that consumes the world's goods at the world's expense.

They say we delight in killing the world’s innocent. That we’re attacked by terrorists because we deserve it.

Or they say we did it ourselves. To justify our military actions overseas. Because we just can’t help but do evil in the world. (My response to this is--if we’re so compelled to do evil--why would we need an excuse?)

These are words that, traditionally, have always come from our enemies. These days, in some cases, they come from our friends. Our families. Our fellow countrymen.

Are they wrong? Well, hell, we aren’t without our blemishes. Neither was Duke. We put our foot in it from time to time and so did he. Mr. Wayne and the rest of us have taken that road to hell that’s paved with good intentions more than we’d care to admit. Maybe that’s part of being an American. We’re far from perfect but, by God, we’re trying our best to do what’s right.

In 1968, Duke Wayne directed and starred in a movie called The Green Berets. He got trashed for it back in the day. It was sloppy in places--Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, doubled badly for South Vietnam; there was some bad miniature work when a chopper crashes; and, at the end of the picture, the sun sets in the East! With a supporting cast including David Janssen (star of the TV's The Fugitive,) Patrick Wayne (the Duke's son), Jim Hutton (Timothy's father), Ed Faulkner, Bruce Cabot, Jack Soo (of TV's Barney Miller), Luke Askew, George Takei (prior to his Star Trek fame), and Chuck Roberson, the movie, as co-star Aldo Ray once said: “…smells like Batjac.” (Batjac was the name of Wayne’s production company, and I think Aldo Ray meant something else besides "jac.")

Wayne is Col. Mike Kirby in The Green Berets.

But most of the grief the picture got wasn’t because of the technical aspects, or even the script. Critics raised hell because Wayne; “praised the Vietnam War.”

Like hell. True, he tells the story like it’s a World War II picture and there ain’t a lot of shading in the cast of characters; but what Wayne is glorifying is the American fighting man. Like all good Americans, trying his damndest to do what’s best, to do what’s right.

Like John Wayne always tried to do. Take another look at that movie some forty-one years on. You’ll find some things that look a little hokey, but you'll also find some things that still hold up. Like dialogue that rings true all these years later: “Out here due process is a bullet.”

And unforgettable moments, like the ending. If you ignore that damned eastern sunset and watch the meat of the scene, you’ll cry, like I do, every time I see it. Wayne’s Colonel Mike Kirby kneels next to orphaned Vietnamese refugee Hamchunk and hands him the Green Beret worn by his adoptive American father, who died on the last mission. Here is their exchange--Wayne as Mike Kirby speaks first:

“You always knew it could happen, didn’t you?”
Hamchunk nods.
"But I didn’t want it to.”
“None of us did.”
Hamchunk turns.
“Was… was my Peter-san brave?”
Wayne kneels.
“He was very brave. Are you going to be?”
“I’ll try.”
“I know you will.”
Wayne gently places Lt. Peterson’s Green Beret on Hamchunk’s head.
“And I’m sure that your Peter-san would want you to have this.”
The boy pauses.
“What…. What will happen to me now?”
Wayne stands and puts his arm around the boy as they look off into the ocean.
“You let me worry about that, Green Beret. You’re what this is all about.”
And, as they walk into the sun, the classic theme music rises ...

“… back at home, a young wife waits
Her Green Beret has met his fate
He has died for those oppressed
He returns, his last request
‘Put Silver Wings on my son’s chest.
Make him one of America’s best.
He’ll be a man they’ll test one day.
Have him win the Green Beret."

That’s what Wayne was glorifying. Americans have traditionally fought, lived and died to try to make the world a little better. It’s what we do. It’s who we are. It’s who John Wayne was and what he still represents. We show up. Because we give a damn.

Throughout history, sooner or later, the world remembers that part of us and smiles our way. Maybe even one day our own countrymen will remember a little bit of that pride. If they want. They don’t have to. I respect their right to hold a different opinion. So did John Wayne.

RC Note: John Wayne was born May 26, 1907 and died in 1979. Steve Latshaw is a screenwriter in Hollywood. Check out his credits on the Internet Movie Data Base.

Steve Latshaw Credits at IMDB

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Lost in the West with John Wayne

It was hot outside and hotter inside my so-called ritzy, second-floor flat in the quaint bungalow neighborhood of tony Los Altos. Somebody forgot to install the air conditioning. Far worse, I'd received a call on Sunday morning from my father's doctor. He reported to me that my Dad had a new disease to add to the others that are wearing him down. It wasn't a great day. As the day grew hotter and the wallpaper began to melt, I decided it was time for me to look up the Duke and disappear into John Ford Country.



The movie Rio Grande was playing at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, California. Big of screen, high of ceiling, conditioned of air, the old restored movie palace was showing one of director John Ford's best. It called to me and I answered.


The movie Rio Grande was filmed near Moab, Utah, in Monument Valley and the ranches and environs that surround it. Wayne was 43 when he made this film, young enough to retain the long, lean body of a man who could still wow 'em in that fitted cavalry uniform, but old enough to have the face of a man who had lived. He was beginning to look like the sadder and wiser John Wayne. It was a darn shame the Academy waited until he filmed the hokey True Grit to give him an Oscar.

Everyone in the cast is excellent. The scenery is stupendous. The wranglers, their horses, and the stunts are almost unbelievable. And there are stunts at every scene change, new stunning scenery at every twist of the story. IMDB says two stunt men were killed in one river sequence. John Ford, who was known to chew on a large handkerchief the way Gene Wilder does in the original The Producers, probably stopped chewing for a couple of moments after that and then moved on. The studios made him shoot this film so he could go to Ireland and make The Quiet Man.

Maureen O'Hara plays Wayne's wife, as she often did in Ford films, and the two were estranged, as they almost always were in Ford films. Her beauty was at its peak and the longing Wayne and O'Hara suggest with almost invisible motions of their hands and eyes and bodies is enough to make you weep. Ford seems to understand the strange mysteries of the rituals between men and women and understands as well how these mysteries can just as easily drive men and women apart. Ford was, after all, an Irishman. (Born Sean Aloysius O'Fearna in 1894.)



Claude Jarman, Jr, who four years earlier played Jody in The Yearling, is a man grown in this movie, or almost grown. He's long-legged as a colt and slender and almost as tall as Wayne, though Wayne, even in trim, has quite a few pounds on this talented young man who plays his son.

Families clearly intrigued Ford and that's reflected in the story line. America intrigued him too. The Sons of the Pioneers, playing a cavalry choir, underscore many of the movie's tenderest moments with their renditions of the traditional American pioneer tunes that Ford uses in all his Westerns.

I don't want to give too much away. The plot isn't new. The chases and Indian fights have all been done before. But here, they have been done in a way that they were never done before and never will be again. Every scene is perfection as is the supporting cast of Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr., Chill Wills, Victor McLaglen, and J. Carrol Naish. Corny, predictable, touching and fun, it simply has everything in a great, great, movie.

Like a bridge over troubled waters John Wayne and John Ford gave me two trouble-free hours. They did it with magic even though both have gone to that great round up in the sky. They did it with a movie that is fast and funny, wonderful, thrilling, and sweet and is as new as a shiny new penny ... even though it was released 59 years ago.



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The Origins of a Shirt Made Famous by John Wayne

A friend of mine had an extra role in a movie recently and when he sent me a photo of himself on the movie set, I noticed he was wearing what I identified as a "John Wayne shirt." I didn't know, until my friend responded with surprise, that this is exactly what film costume departments call the cowboy shirt with the placket front and the double row of buttons.

We associate it with Wayne because he liked it and wore it often in his movies. Remember the first time we see him as the Ringo Kid in the classic movie Stagecoach? He's hitching a ride in the desert because his horse has gone lame and when we see him he twirls his shotgun, smiles, and walks right into our hearts. If you looked away from his face for a moment, you might have noticed he was wearing what became his trademark shirt.

John Wayne as the Ringo Kid in the movie Stagecoach.

It is so different from the shirts we wear today, that I wondered about its origins. It turns out that the shirt was worn by men in cowboy movies because cowboys really did wear it in western life. But its origins actually go back to the middle of the 19th century and to firefighters on both sides of the Atlantic.

It is important to understand that until the 19th century, all clothing was made by hand. Then, in 1856, Isaac Singer began mass producing the Singer Sewing Machine and it became possible to produce all kinds of clothing, including men's shirts, in factories. The factory-made shirt came along just in time for its use in the uniforms of the Civil War.

The placket front, double-row-of-buttons shirt had been worn first by firemen. They needed a uniform that looked good, but they also needed one they could work in, a shirt that held together during the strenuous work of driving big teams of horses and when fighting fires. Currier and Ives showed New York firefighters in the shirt--in red flannel--in their 1858 series on the American fireman.

Currier and Ives print, one of a series on the life of the American fireman.

British firefighters in the 19th century also wore the placket front shirt (or blouse as it is called in uniform parlance--and that word can also mean jacket) for their duties.

An 1890 photo of firemen in London.

During the U.S. Civil War, both sides suddenly had a need for millions of mass produced uniforms. Units on both sides wore the placket front shirt. As in the case of firemen, soldiers needed uniforms that looked good to the folks back home and kept morale high in the ranks. The placket front shirt with its double row of buttons looked very spiffy indeed. But it was also very practical for a soldier. It allowed a man to put his tobacco pouch, his girlfriend's picture, a letter from home, or his lunch right inside the front of his shirt, giving him easy access to these items while leaving his hands free for his knapsack and his weapon. The placket with its double row of buttons gave the shirt more strength and the ability to take more "pull" (for climbing, raising one's arms for shooting, and for holding the reins of horses) without tearing or popping a button. What the men of the Civil War called a fireman's shirt was great-looking and practical.

When the war was over, the boys took those shirts home, and their return home coincided with the biggest westward movement in our history. So, a lot of those shirts went West, and since they were made of fine gabardine wool (the Union made everything out of wool, even the soldiers' underwear, hence the name "Union suit") they lasted forever. The men of the West had little need for formal wear, so the shirt was worn more out West than it was in the East and the fireman's shirt gradually became the mark of a cowboy. Once again, the shirt looked good, wore well, was comfortable and had room for the chaw and Ma's letters.

Some units in the U.S. Cavalry also wore the shirt in the decades after the Civil War. George Armstrong Custer wore one into battle the day he died, according to the National Park Service on its Web site about the Little Bighorn Battlefield:

"Custer, as he appeared at the Battle of Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, was described by the last white people to see him alive ... He wore buckskin breeches and had his buckskin coat strapped to his saddle. His shirt was a version of a "fireman's shirt" made of lightweight wool and trimmed on the collar and cuffs with white tape."

General George Armstrong Custer poses with his catch on a successful bear hunt in the West. The fireman's shirt he's wearing appears to be buckskin. The photo is from the National Archives.

Half a century later, when John Wayne starred in his movies about the U.S. Cavalry, he too wore the fireman's shirt.

Wayne in his trademark shirt. Here it is a feature of his cavalry uniform.

Wayne probably saw the shirt first when he was working at Republic Studios doing Westerns in the 1930s. In those days, the wranglers and stuntmen were real cowboys and wore what was in the closet. The Civil War was only seventy years in the past, and their fathers and uncles had worn those shirts. Wayne spent almost a decade making programmers at Republic before he became a star and during that time he perfected his acting, his walk, the kind of kerchiefs he liked (you'll see the same kind in all of his pictures after 1939, often with blue and red in them) and, it appears, he also formed an opinion about the shirt he liked best. He wore the fireman's shirt a lot. It looked good on a man with a broad chest and it certainly looked good on Wayne.

And thus it was transformed from a fireman's shirt into a John Wayne shirt. Anonymous firemen may have worn it first: but John Wayne wore it best.






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