"Courage is being
scared to death but saddling up anyway."
"Nobody's
coming around with plums on a silver platter." Marion Morrison often heard
his father Clyde say. In their Winterset, Iowa, home, the family got more than
its share of raisins, not plums.
Easygoing
Clyde failed as a druggist. He had to declare bankruptcy. A friend recalled:
"If he only had four bits in his pocket, he'd give a quarter to a friend,
buy a beer for himself, and sit down and talk."
The family
had to move in with his wife's relatives. Clyde's father bought 80 acres of
land near the Mohave Desert and set up his son as a homesteader. Their new
house was a "glorified shack." It had no running water, no
electricity, no gas.
After two
years, Clyde failed at farming, too, possibly because he had tuberculosis or
maybe because the land was no good. He was put in a veteran's hospital, and the
family moved near Los Angeles.
His Feminine Name
Farm life did
one thing for young Marion—It taught him to be a good shot with a rifle. Always
hunting plums, in his new hometown, he got up every day at four to deliver
newspapers. After school ended, he made deliveries for a druggist on his
bicycle. He was, of course, a Boy Scout. And, of course, his feminine name
caused the usual playground miseries.
When high
school rolled around, he was a natural for the football team. "He could
have been a great football player," recalled a teammate. "But he
never wanted to hurt anybody." He must have knocked a few heads on the
field because he won a football scholarship to the nearby University of
Southern California.
By now he
had grown to be six-foot three-and-three-and-a-quarters-of-an-inch tall. He had
massive shoulders, giant hands, a barrel chest, and an unusually slender waist.
His character was gracious and gentle. Girls on campus swooned at the sight of
him. No wonder—he had a kind look in his eyes and an easy grin.
He Lost His Plums
Even with
the scholarship, money was a problem. He traded working as a bus boy for free
meals. It embarrassed him that he had to stuff cardboard in his shoes to cover
holes in their soles. One day he and some teammates went to the nearby Fox studio
where silent films were made. They got jobs moving props, sets, and equipment.
But during
his junior year what plums he had fell from his grasp. He broke his collarbone
bodysurfing, and he lost his scholarship. Forced to drop out, he hoped to earn
enough money hauling movie gear full-time to finish school.
Soon directors
like the young John Ford started noticing the good-looking young man with the
big yet graceful way about him. "The son of a bitch looked like a
man," said director Raoul Walsh. The studio arranged a screen test. He
passed, and he got a new name, one a bit more masculine—John Wayne.
By 1931, he
had made 20 films, forgotten flicks like Cheer
Up and Smile, The Drop Kick, Hangman's House. His growing 'star'
appeal won him the top role in an epic western The Big Trail, one of the first movies shot on location. Filmed in
a new widescreen 70mm process, it was even going to be shown onto panoramic
screens.
Hopes were
high. Wayne knew he was on the brink of being a major star. The problem was few
theatres had wide-screens. The movie bombed. It didn't look right on the small
screens of the day. Its failure was assigned to Wayne, who, truth be told,
still had room to grow as an actor.
“Girls Demand Excitement”
For the
next eight years, plums turned not to raisins but to ashes. During the 1930s he
appeared in 61 shoddy films like Girls
Demand Excitement, Two-Fisted Law,
The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, and Pals of the Saddle. It was the only work
he could get, and what work it was. One day a director shot 114 scenes.
Wayne
earned little in the way of money, but what he earned in experience was
priceless. "Doing those B Westerns, he learned how to be resilient,"
a co-star said. "Doing those quickie Westerns, he learned how to be John Wayne."
In 1938,
John Ford took a chance and offered him the role of the Ringo Kid, an outlaw in
his new western Stagecoach. The industry
thought the genre was kaput. Ford had a hard time getting funding, especially
since he wanted to shoot at extra cost on location in the now mythic Monument
Valley. Plus, he was taking a risk casting Wayne who, of course, was washed up.
The movie
did only modestly at the box office, but it gave Wayne a new start. It was his 54th movie. "John
Wayne is so good in the role of the outlaw that one wonders why he has had to
wait all this time since The Big Trail
for another such opportunity," raved the New York Daily News.
This time
Wayne was ready. "Tomorrow
is the most important thing in life," he told an interviewer in 1972.
"Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives, and
it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday."
MORAL: Act naturally.
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