John Wayne - Acting career, production company

After two years working as a prop man at the William Fox Studios for $35 a week, his first starring role was in the 1930 movie The Big Trail; the director of that movie, Raoul Walsh, (who "discovered" Wayne) gave him the stage name "John Wayne", after Revolutionary War general "Mad Anthony" Wayne. His pay was raised to $75 a week. He was tutored by the studio's stuntmen in riding and other western skills.^[4]

The Big Trail, the first "western" epic sound motion picture, established his screen credentials, although it was a commercial failure. Nine years later, his performance in the 1939 film Stagecoach made him a star. In between, he made westerns, most notably at Monogram Pictures, and serials for Mascot Studios, including a modernized version of The Three Musketeers (1933). In this same year, Wayne had a small part in Alfred E. Green's succes de scandale Baby Face.^[5]

Beginning in 1928, Wayne appeared in more than twenty of John Ford's films over the next 35 years, including Stagecoach (1939), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), The Searchers (1956), The Wings of Eagles (1957), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

According to the Internet Movie Database, Wayne played the male lead in 142 of his film appearances. One of Wayne's most praised roles was in The High and the Mighty (1954), directed by William Wellman and based on a novel by Ernest K. Gann. His portrayal of a heroic airman won widespread acclaim.

In 1949 Robert Rossen, the director of All the King's Men, offered the starring role to Wayne. Wayne refused, finding the script of the projected film to be un-American in many ways. Broderick Crawford, who eventually took the role, won the 1949 Oscar for best male actor, beating out Wayne, who had been nominated for his role in The Sands of Iwo Jima.

John Wayne won a Best Actor Oscar in True Grit (1969). Wayne was also nominated for Best Actor in Sands of Iwo Jima, and as the producer of Best Picture nominee The Alamo, one of two films he directed. The other was The Green Berets (1968), the only major film made during the Vietnam War to support the conflict.^[6]

The Searchers continues to be widely regarded as perhaps Wayne's finest and most complex performance. In 2006 Premiere Magazine ran an industry poll in which his portrayal of Ethan Edwards was rated the 87th greatest performance in film history. He named his youngest son Ethan after the character.

The poster for The Quiet Man.

Wayne was known for his right-wing, conservative ideals. He took part in creating the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals in 1943, and was elected president of that organization in 1947. He was an ardent anti-communist, and vocal supporter of HUAC and the blacklisting of actors and actresses who were accused of being sympathetic to or being Communists. In 1951 he made the hugely controversial Big Jim McLain to show his support for McCarthyism. That same year he sought to have the anti-McCarthyism western allegory High Noon banned, and was instrumental in having its screenwriter, Carl Foreman, blacklisted from Hollywood. He later made Rio Bravo as a right-wing response.

In an interview with Playboy magazine in 1971, Wayne made numerous racist remarks about black people and Native American Indians. When asked about the subject of black people making strides towards equality in the U.S, he stated that he believed in "white supremacy" until blacks were educated enough to take a more prominent role in American society.^[7]

Batjac, the production company co-founded by Wayne, was named after the fictional shipping company in The Wake of the Red Witch.