John Wayne

John Wayne in 1940

Marion Mitchell Morrison (born Marion Robert Morrison; May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer.

Quotes

• We had a pretty good time together, when she wasn't trying to kill me!
  • 1954, in an interview with Hedda Hopper regarding his marriage to Esperanza "Chata" Baur.
  • Quoted in An A–Z of Hellraisers: A Comprehensive Compendium of Outrageous Insobriety (2010) by Robert Sellers [1]

• Wow! If I'd have known that I would have put that patch on thirty-five years earlier. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm no stranger to this podium. I've come up here and picked up these beautiful golden men before, but always for friends. One night I picked up two: one for Admiral John Ford, one for our beloved Gary Cooper. I was very clever and witty that night, the envy of even Bob Hope, but tonight I don't feel very clever or very witty. I feel very grateful, very humble, and all thanks to many, many people. I want to thank the members of the Academy. To all you people who are watching on television, thank you for taking such a warm interest in our glorious industry. Good night.
  • 1969 Academy Awards speech for Best Actor in True Grit.

• In fact, I don't even call myself an actor. I'm a reactor. I listen to what to what the other guys says and I react to it. That's the John Wayne method.
  • Speaking in 1958 with Charles Hamblett; as quoted in The Hollywood Cage (1969) by Hamblett, reproduced in "The Hollywood Cage': Wayne Has Method, Goldwyn Has Hope, Welles Has Wasteland" by Hamblett, The Philadelphia Inquirer (May 4, 1969), p. 109

• I eat as much as I ever did, I drink more than I should, and my sex life is none of your goddamned business.
  • Playboy interview, May 1971

• There's a lot of things great about life. But I think tomorrow is the most important thing. Comes in to us at midnight very clean, ya know. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.
  • Playboy interview, May 1971

• With a lot of blacks, there's quite a bit of resentment along with their dissent, and possibly rightfully so. But we can't all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of the blacks. I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.
  • Playboy interview, May 1971

• The picture business has grown up since I got into it 15 years ago, has acquired a dignity that is beyond reproach. Hollywood is, today, a quiet town compared to other places I have been and can, moreover, be pretty proud of itself, having pushed more charities, given more time to selling war bonds and more talent to entertaining servicemen than any other town in any other part of the country.
  • Screenland interview

Quotes about Wayne

• The presence of a man like Nixon in the White House is an unmitigated disaster, not only for black people in America, but for all the white hopes too, because it confirms, and makes official, and it seals an attitude that is essentially a racist attitude, but it is also, on a most sinister level, an attitude which is simply designed to turn the clock back; to hold back the sea. And you know, that can't be done. What people in power never understand is what people out of power are determined to do, and what people out of power are determined to do is, first of all, to survive you; to withstand you; and if they have to, kill you. And they have the advantage, because they have nothing to lose. The will of the American people, they believe, is like the voice of God. Well, the voice of God spoke out a couple of years ago, and put Nixon in the White House, and put Ronald Reagan in the governor's mansion, and it endures Spiro T. Agnew. And the effect on the American people of the presence of such men in high office is that they are justified in their bigotry, they are confirmed in their ignorance, they are all smaller or greater John Waynes.
  • 1970 interview in Conversations with James Baldwin edited by Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (1989)

• John Wayne was such a nice man, but he was always a little shy with women, especially blondes.
  • Anna Lee, Wayne's co-star in Seven Sinners (1940), Flying Tigers (1942) and Fort Apache (1948), speaking with Ron Miller, summer 1983; as quoted in Conversations with Classic Film Stars; Interviews from Hollywood's Golden Era (2016) by Miller and James Bawden, p. 215

• It could be that today's conservative movement remains in thrall to the same narrative that has defined its attitude toward film and the arts for decades. Inspired by feelings of exclusion after Hollywood and the popular culture turned leftward in the '60s and '70s, this narrative has defined the film industry as an irredeemably liberal institution toward which conservatives can only act in opposition—never engagement. Ironically, this narrative ignores the actual history of Hollywood, in which conservatives had a strong presence from the industry's founding in the early 20th century up through the '40s, '50s and into the mid-'60s]. The conservative Hollywood community at that time included such leading directors as Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, and Cecil B. DeMille, and major stars like John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Charlton Heston. These talents often worked side by side with notable Hollywood liberals like directors Billy Wilder, William Wyler, and John Huston, and stars like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Spencer Tracy. The richness of classic Hollywood cinema is widely regarded as a testament to the ability of these two communities to work together, regardless of political differences. As the younger, more left-leaning "New Hollywood" generation swept into the industry in the late '60s and '70s, this older group of Hollywood conservatives faded away, never to be replaced. Except for a brief period in the '80s when the Reagan Presidency led to a conservative reengagement with film—with popular stars like Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger making macho, patriotic action films—conservatives appeared to abandon popular culture altogether. In the wake of this retreat, conservative failure to engage with Hollywood now appears to have been recast by today's East Coast conservative establishment into a generalized opposition toward film and popular culture itself. In the early '90s, conservative film critic Michael Medved codified this oppositional feeling toward Hollywood in his best-selling book Hollywood vs. America.
  • Govindini Murty, “Hey, Conservatives: It's Safe to Go to the Movies Again”, The Atlantic, (Oct. 12, 2011).

• John Wayne once called him a "goddamn liberal pinko faggot" and Barry [Norman] laughed in his face. "But that just made him even crosser" explains Barry. "He got up out of his chair, clearly intent on doing me physical harm, then a PR person from Paramount came over sat him down and said "I think the interview's over now, don't you?'".
  • Barry Norman interviewed in "Talking pictures" The Sunday Telegraph (November 9, 1997), p. 27
  • Television presenter and film critic Barry Norman was for several decades a household name in the UK. In his autobiography he wrote a more extended version of this anecdote (And Why Not: Memoirs of a Film Lover, London: Simon & Schuster, 2002, pp. 150–152)