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

• Wayne's most enduring image is that of the displaced loner uncomfortable with the very civilization he is helping to establish and preserve...At his first appearance, we usually sense a very private person with some wound, loss or grievance from the past. At his very best he is much closer to a tragic vision of life...projecting the kind of mystery associated with great acting.
  • Andrew Sarris, film historian writing for The New Republic (1979), reprinted in American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now (2006)

• It was there, that summer of 1943 while the hot wind blew outside, that I first saw John Wayne. Saw the walk, heard the voice. Heard him tell the girl in a picture called War of the Wildcats that he would build her a house, 'at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow.' As it happened I did not grow up to be kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to that bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where the artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I want to hear... When John Wayne rode through my childhood, and perhaps through yours, he determined forever the shapes of certain of our dreams. It did not seem possible that such a man could fall ill, could carry within him that most inexplicable and ungovernable of diseases.
  • Joan Didion in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)

• 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

• 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)