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 JOHN WAYNE ...led troops on D-Day? NOT! (from "The Longest Day") |
WAR HERO? |
 JOHN WAYNE ...helped the Filipinos fight the Japanese. NOT! |
 JOHN WAYNE ...commanded fighter squadrons. NOT! |
 JOHN WAYNE ...built roads and bridges for U.S. troops. NOT! |
 JOHN WAYNE ...commanded a submarine. NOT! |
 JOHN WAYNE ...led troops up Mt. Suribachi. NOT! |
 JOHN WAYNE ...served as a Naval officer. NOT! |
"The Duke" never went
to war except in movies
of TheColumnists.com
A while back, I
saw a full-page advertisement for a pistol in a Sunday supplement
magazine. It wasn’t a real pistol. The ad was for a model
of a movie prop. That’s right. It wasn’t even a real
movie prop, just a model of one.
The accompanying copy touted the model of the movie prop as an
authentic artifact of World War II. It was authentic, the ad
implied, because it was a model of the prop used by actor John
Wayne in movies he made about heroic fighting men.
John Wayne was not a heroic fighting man.
In fact, he did not serve in the military during World War II,
remaining instead safely ensconced in Hollywood. But the model
of the prop pistol was being touted as a quasi-patriotic, World
War II artifact because it was used by John Wayne.
There’s something wrong here. Since when is a prop used
in war movies--in fact, a mere model of a movie prop--a World
War II collector’s item? Are we getting so we can’t
tell the difference between let’s pretend and reality?
The marketers of the model of the movie prop seem to be convinced
that we cannot, and they may very well be right. I’ll bet
half the country believes John Wayne was a central, heroic figure
in winning World War II. After all, millions saw him in uniform,
with explosions all around him, rallying his men in movie after
movie--“Fighting Seabees,” “Sands of Iwo Jima,”
“In Harm’s Way,” and so on. Besides, John Wayne
had the presence of a hero. He looked like a hero. So he was
a hero, right? What more do you need?
There is little or no evidence that Wayne ducked military service
during World War II. There is similarly little evidence that
he eagerly sought out a spot on the front lines. He did not attempt
to prevent being classified as 1-A and he was, after all, 34
years old at the time of Pearl Harbor. But his studio was acutely
aware that Wayne’s movies made barrels of money. To lose
him to the armed forces would be to lose a fortune. So the studio
fought to keep Wayne at home, grinding out movies. In some of
those movies, and in films made after the war ended, he pretended
to be fighting on the front lines.
Wayne did go overseas. He made a three-month tour of the Pacific
Theater in 1943-44, touring bases and hospitals. He undoubtedly
did his bit in boosting morale. Fighting for real, however, did
not appear to be his forte.
Other major movie stars did serve in World War II. The list includes
James Stewart, Clark Gable, David Niven and Glenn Ford, among
many others. Ronald Reagan was in uniform, making training movies.
Some of them risked their lives. All of them risked their careers.
But none of the leading men who actually served established a
reputation with the American public as a gallant fighting man
to equal that of stay-at-home John Wayne. He became, and still
is, an icon of patriotism, the tough, can-do, bigger-than-life,
real American who builds bridges, fights Indians and wins wars.
Want a little idea of how caught up in Pretend World Hollywood
can be? Well, the wet cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theater,
where Wayne impressed his footprints in the time-honored Hollywood
tradition, contained sand from Iwo Jima. People, John Wayne never
fought at Iwo Jima. Beyond a movie he made in 1949, he had nothing
to do with Iwo Jima.
Wayne died in 1979. Were he alive today, he would probably tell
us: “Get off my goddam back. I’m an actor. A-C-T-O-R.
Those are the roles I played because those roles made money for
me and the studio. I was not morally obligated to join up and
seek a combat assignment because of my movie roles. Now shut
up and sit down.”
John Wayne, war hero, is not the only instance of the myth outweighing
the real human being. Robert Mitchum, to cite just one example,
played a tough man in nearly all his movies. Mitchum may indeed
have been a tough guy in real life. But Mitchum also wrote poetry
and song lyrics. He composed an oratorio that Orson Welles premiered
at the Hollywood Bowl.
The discussion of whether John Wayne deserved, or didn’t
deserve, adulation as a WWII hero is really a minor point. The
real issue is how easily conned and gulled we can be if you give
the conners and the gullers the proper tools to do the job.
Can an actor in war movies become a war hero? Can a sometime
poet be a tough guy? Given the right movie, or series of movies,
sure he can. An oft-repeated image via the media outweighs fact.
That’s show biz. That’s also the weird, worrisome and
vulnerable human psyche.
©2011 by Charles M. McFadden. The McFadden caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted Jan. 9, 2011.
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ON THIS SITE, CLICK HERE: McFADDEN
ARCHIVE
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WORLD WAR TWO HEROES WHO BECAME MOVIE STARS, CLICK HERE: HEROES
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