John Wayne MP3 CD – Unabridged, December 9, 2014

John Wayne died the summer I was 17, & it felt like the Earth stopped for a moment: How could he truly be gone? My first real awareness of John Wayne hit home when I was allowed to accompany my grandparents to watch a new big-screen release, "The Cowboys" (1972), & I loved it. I recalled watching him at what proved to be his last public appearance in March 1979, the Oscars, & it was heartbreaking & poignant to see one of the movie screen's greatest legends thin & ill. There are many books about him & his work, & this one is comprehensive in so many subtle ways that I feel it stands alone. What Eyman accomplishes for me as an avid life-long fan of "the Duke" is to take us behind the scenes from early on: Eyman shows us how "Duke" Morrison became "John Wayne", from the psychological torment of having been born to a stiff, stern, unloving mother who inexplicably was drawn to & doted on her second son, to his gentle, sweet-natured father who failed at business numerous times, but instilled in his eldest son a strong work ethic, a personal sense of responsibility & integrity---& a great love for the United States of America.We follow "the Duke" through the decades of his life, learning in detail & even from a telling photo how he came to be called "the Duke" (if it doesn't remind you of the exchange between Harrison Ford as "Indiana Jones" with his on-screen father, Sean Connery, in "Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade", I will be mildly surprised---it does make one wonder where that on-screen scene originated, after reading this about John Wayne :), & seeing how engrossed he was in making movies---all the time! It was exhausting at times to perceive how little sleep John Wayne actually got during his 72 years: He was constantly in motion, & Eyman does a great job revealing how busy he was, nearly all hours of the day & night. To say he had stamina is an understatement.There are other perceptions, too, which have stayed with me since finishing this book a few weeks ago: Upon finishing reading the sad details of the last few months of his life, it made me realize just how aging & destructive drinking & smoking are upon the body. He suffered terribly, & one wonders if it all wasn't preventable if he'd made different lifestyle choices. And yet, this was part of his on-screen & on-set persona as John Wayne---& it most certainly has something to do with the void that existed between him & his mother. One telling example occurs when he sends his mother & her second husband on an all-expenses-paid trip around the world: Her husband is full of thanks & great stories of their travels, while his mother only opens her mouth to complain. He is crushed, & leaves the room! His long-time secretary asks her why she cannot be nicer to him, & his own mother replies that she cares nothing for him at all. It is perhaps the most stunning moment in the book for me, realizing how cold-hearted his mother is...just devastating. When one cannot win the approval of someone who is valued beyond reason, perhaps that is part of the psychological tapestry of how a little poor boy originally from Iowa grew up to be the epitome of what many perceived during his lifetime---& to this day!---to be a Hell of a great man.His imperfections made him human, and the many stories that Eyman relates about his on-screen portrayals bear out that his screen persona grew over time, with each film---& so many of them are timeless & great! There are two films that didn't make Eyman's top 20 list that I absolutely would include: "The Cowboys" & "Big Jake". The first film because it was the first big-screen Western I saw---& it is still one of my favorite movies of any genre---& the second because after seeing it for the first time a couple years ago, it struck me how imperfect Jake is, & yet, so genuine & real---just like the plot scenario. His mean streak is exactly what makes him the right man to go after his kidnapped grandson: We aren't sure how, but we know he will prevail, regardless of the many setbacks which thwart his mission.When you read excerpts of his college writing, letters to directors & others throughout his long career, you'll realize what a wonderful writer he was, & how well-educated & well-read he was, which is so refreshing to learn. Imagine him with a photographic memory, or something just shy of that; imagine him quoting long passages of Shakespeare, & one begins to see the range & depth of his interests & personality. Just look at the cover of this book---isn't he gorgeous? And Eyman includes many comments from women who knew him when he was in high school, or just a USC football player who was thinking about becoming a lawyer. The other element which leads one to contemplate the emergence of the "John Wayne" persona is that because of his father's business & farming failings, they were always poor, & he hated being poor. It made him feel very uncomfortable, & one of the neat little insights that reoccurs throughout our journey is the why & how of his love for high-end catalog shopping. Even a few comments by fellow actor Earl Holliman shed light on a man who may have been John Wayne on-screen & on-set, but who may have felt insecurities that never quite went away, thus resulting in bluster & antics which could be less than mature, less than perfect...The development of his persona began very early, & it is a great source of fascination to watch him realize without any of our modern marketing terminology that he is a "brand". How he chooses to manage himself as a brand reveals wonderful insight, intelligence, intuition, & street smarts (since he made serial B westerns for ten grueling years as a working actor before he hit it big his second-time around as a "star") as well as repercussions from time to time, perhaps no more so than in the last decade of his life, from missed opportunities; however, Eyman includes numerous, excellent examples where his refusal to accept certain roles proved to be spot-on, & his notes to directors, etc., about rewrites involving his characters, etc., also proved to be incredibly accurate.If you love his work, you'll enjoy learning about how his life was largely about the creation & perpetual motion of that work, making movies which he felt represented what it was to be truly American...John Wayne was born just 4 years before my grandfather, & many of the values are the same. I am glad that a young Scott Eyman interviewed John Wayne in the early 1970s, & I am ever so glad that he decided to get this book together with nary a trace of liberal bias (although in truth it does creep in slightly in a few spots); I don't know why it took until 2014 for it to become a reality (perhaps because Eyman's several other successful projects fell into place & took precedence...), but it is a refreshing, worthwhile read that one feels the Duke himself would be pleased with: When you get to the section that begins with a quote from his last film (another of my absolute favorites), "The Shootist", you'll perhaps think as I did that Duke Morrison & John Wayne would both be pleased at the honesty of the portrayal.

This is the definitive biography on John Wayne. I have read other books on John Wayne and they cover different aspects of his life. This book is way more thorough and provide greater personal detail in understanding the man and why he is a such a legend. The author got his real name correct whereas the other books got his middle name wrong. This is the perfect companion piece to Maureen O'Hara's autobiography. For those who think Wayne can't act because he is just like John Wayne the person on the screen. The truth is Marion Robert (not Michael or Mitchell) Morrison plays John Wayne the public figure as well as John Wayne the actor. The two personas are so intertwined that most people didn't realize he was acting. The book talks a lot about other people in Wayne's life, studio boses, directors, wives, actors/actresses, etc. As a child, Wayne had a dog named Duke that follow him everywhere. After a while the firemen at the local fire station began calling them Little Duke and Big Duke. The name stuck and everyone began calling him Duke. Duke felt the name Marion was too feminent and preferred to be called Duke. Buy or borrow the book, it is fun to read.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys biographies particularly biographies of actors. Scott Eyman has written a number of detailed, intelligent and engaging biographies of famous film figures and this is another one. Eyman wrote the definitive biography of the director John Ford and in the process of writing that book he gained insight and a wealth of knowledge into Ford's leading star -- John Wayne. Ford literally made Wayne a star after Wayne had spent many years laboring as a prop man and then an actor in forgettable low-cost films made by the poverty row studios in the Hollywood of the late 20's and early 30's. Ford was already an established director when he cast Wayne in "Stagecoach" an acknowledged classic today. The film made Wayne a star and paved the way to a series of literally classic films with Wayne as star and Ford as director. The men had a strange relationship -- Ford was the mentor/father figure to Wayne and Wayne was eternally grateful to Ford and was willing to accept along with Ford's "love" the abuse that Ford regularly dealt to him and anyone else who he decided to "put in the barrel" and kick around for awhile. That relationship is just one of the more interesting things about John Wayne or Duke Morrison -- the name he never relinquished despite the fact that "John Wayne" was the name by which his fans knew him.Eyman's greatest achievement with this biography is his ability to treat his subject with objectivity, balance, and fairness. Wayne was a rightwing conservative in all of the ugliness that entails before we arrived at the kind of rightwing ugliness that prevails today. He was a member of the Motion Picture Alliance -- a group of Hollywood people who elected to jump on the McCarthy Era bandwagon led by the booze-addled senator from Wisconsin that proclaimed there were communists in the US government as well as in the motion picture industry. The members of the MPA set themselves up as judge and jury of their fellow actors, directors, writers etc. and a word from that group could end a career. Ford's closest friend and fellow actor Ward Bond was a member of the group. Bond was a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic alcoholic who regularly cost people jobs on films by putting out the word that they were "red" or Communists. The fact that Wayne associated with such a despicable human being and belonged to an organization that specialized in rumor and destruction of other people with little proof of anything and instead just their own mean-spirited gut feeling makes one really look at the character of a guy like Wayne who wanted to be seen by his audience as "the good guy," the hero who would look out for the little man, the brave soldier, cowboy etc. It was just one example of the hypocrisy at the heart of John Wayne. During WWII when practically every man in America including every major Hollywood star who was of age went into the military or worked in the defense industry, Wayne didn't serve in any capacity. It's obvious from the telling that he was averse to being in the military and got numerous deferments for ridiculous things such as "chronic ear infections." The irony of this is the fact that Wayne then made a series of WWII films in which he was a brave fighting man! During Vietnam, he was a hawk on that war and made the "Green Berets" -- another blood and guts film in which he got to wear a uniform and play soldier. Wayne in that instance was like so many rightwing Conservatives who are very willing to start a war and shout "Support Our Troops" but who never intend that they will be one of those troops whose life is on the line. The director William Wyler a WWII veteran saw through Wayne and referred to Wayne as "a great American hero fighting for God and country in all services in all wars. And it was all done before movie cameras in Hollywood and on safe locations. That's damn good acting." Eyman doesn't make Wayne's draft dodging a central part of the book but he gives it enough space so that the contradiction i s highlighted of a guy who always wanted to play the hero on screen was decidedly un-heroic when it came to actually serving his country when the US was in the fight of its life.The fact that Eyman allows the reader to see the worst of Wayne the man but also manages to show other aspects of him that make him likeable, charming, intelligent, kind etc. is a tribute to Eyman's ability to write a balanced view of a complex man. It certainly is a tribute to Wayne's charisma and one-to-one interactions with people that even people who loathed his politics whether they were fellow actors, directors, politicians or ordinary people the majority of the time came away liking the man.I've never been a fan of John Wayne films and decided to read this book because I've enjoyed all of Eyman's other books and this book did not disappoint me. Although I still find Wayne's actions during the blacklist to be reprehensible and his politics in general to be loathsome, by the end of the book, I liked the man John Wayne more than I had when I began reading.Without a doubt, he was a huge film star who made some really fine films -- particularly the westerns he made with Ford, and something about him connected with a vast audience both in the US and abroad and Eyman captures all of that along with Wayne's failings and successes as a human being.I think this is the biography of John Wayne that will stand the test of time because it allows the public to see the man in all of his complexities -- literally, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

If you want to know everything possible about John Wayne’s life, this is the book.I thought the book went into the details of many films, costs, profits, losses etc, that made for laborious reading at times but some readers may be interested in such information.

I loved this book, i am a big Wayne fan so the stories are priceless. It was easy to read and very entertaining

I’m a big fan of John Wayne but this is the first biography about him that I’ve read.Without doubt, the author has carried out a fantastic amount of research on his subject and it appears that there’s no corner of John Wayne’s life, lifestyle and film work that he hasn’t probed; similarly, he’s gone out of his way to interview everyone interview-able who can make a contribution to the life of the man who many believe epitomises everything America stands for.Since the author is American, there’s a number of Americanisms which enter the text; I had to think for a bit when I discovered that James Arness had earned Wayne’s displeasure after he ‘totally powdered’ and I grew quite concerned to discover that in several of his films, Wayne wore suspenders. I breathed a sigh of relief that the suspenders with which that personification of American manhood adorned himself, are what we Brits refer to as ‘braces’ to hold one’s trousers (sorry, pants) up.So, yes it’s a very interesting, lengthy book but the reason why I’m deducting one star, is this. The author falls into the trap that many biographers fall into and that’s in quoted passages. He knows who’s being referred to and who is making the reference but we’re not necessarily privy to that; therefore, the reader has to backtrack to find out who’s referring to whom. It’s irritating and time-consuming and one doesn’t need that in a book that’s 658 pages long.Be that as it may, I cannot believe that any other writer has delved so thoroughly into the life of John Wayne, as this one has. Thoroughly recommended.

First off, the rough cut pages people, is a style, not a quality control issue, so marking the book down because of that is pure ignorance.Telling a tale of a life is always hard, that is why autobiographies don't always work, it is hard to be self objective or critical. So they become anecdotal.Biographies can also fall flat by being either too critical, or too gushing.Here, Scott Eyman has achieved a wonderful balance sorting fact from fiction, present Wayne as a thoroughly decent human being with lots of faults.If you are interested in the western, the period Wayne worked in, and movies generally you will enjoy this immensely well written work.There wasn't a part of this book I didn't enjoy, it really goes into Wayne the man, with all his good points, bad points, and foibles. You even get a different perspective of his political views and why he held them. Eyman does not judge, he lets Wayne tell you himself.It is a terrific book, very, very readable, full of enough new facts and anecdotes to leave feeling that, yes, I would love to have known Wayne.

I ordered this book as a gift it arrived earlier than expected which was good but when I opened it I found that it was in poor condition pages had been torn out there was tears in certain pages,a sticker saying Manchester City Libraries which I couldn’t remove I brought this as a gift for a family member in this condition I was unable to give it,good company shame about the product