John Wayne is my all time favorite actor. He was real and just a good man. He loved his children and he had a great respect for our country. I love his movies and have most recorded on CD's. My favorite is Big Jake but many are right with it. Rio Lobo Green Berets Stagecoach and many more. He is missed for sure.
I knew John Wayne from the Santa Monica Yacht Club. I was a child and I remember him standing there talking with people during a holiday party. I was just running out to go play in my little sailing dinghy.
The first movie I saw with John Wayne was sands of IWO JIMA I was 14 and that movie made me want to be a United States marines and when I turned 18 I joined the corps and while I was at boot camp the night before gualifying on the rifle range the drill instructors took the platoon to see a movie it happen to be sands of IWO JIMA...OoHARH ...John Wayne...may he RIP...
when I was younger I liked John Wayne just fine, but he was an actor that played characters. Wayne was a 'chicken hawk' who didn't actually serve, unlike Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda (both ends of the political spectrum). Wayne then became an active McCarthyist, who helped originate and perpetuate the 'blacklist' depriving many of their jobs, while never finding an actual subversive. He was a heavy smoker, and excessive drinker, a gambler and womanizer. But if that's what you like, go for it. I don't think the deeply flawed deserve canonization.
In grade school in Topeka kansas i sat next to a girl named Susan one day in class she was called over the speaker to go to the principles office, when she came back she told me her uncle had died she said he was john wayne. I was dumbfounded. I had a crush on her...lol just out of curiosity if any of the family members read this does anyone recall her in your family?
