John Wayne … Iconic Images / 1933

3 Responses to “John Wayne … Iconic Images / 1933”

1. 

   Cindy Bruchman March 22, 2016 at 3:43 pm #

   Wow. 1933 was a prolific year! I didn’t know he was called The Duke so early in his career.

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • 

     jcalberta March 22, 2016 at 7:04 pm #

     Hi Cindy !

     They made hundreds (thousands?) of those B Westerns during the 30’s and 40’s. Wayne was just one of many actors in such movies.

     How did he get the name Duke?

     These are supposedly his own words:

     “There’ve been a lot of stories about how I got to be called Duke. One was that I played the part of a duke in a school play, which I never did. Sometimes, they even said I was descended from royalty! It was all a lot of rubbish. Hell, the truth is that I was named after a dog!”

     John Wayne was born Marion Michael Morrison in Winterset, Iowa. When young Marion was six, the family moved to California, eventually settling in Glendale. Marion delivered newspapers in the morning with his trusty Airedale, Duke. The locale firemen called them “Big Duke” and “Little Duke.”

     Marion later accepted a full scholarship to play football at the University of Southern California. In the summer of 1926, head coach Howard Jones fixed Duke up with a job as an assistant prop man on the set of a John Ford movie. The rest is history.

     There you go.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

     Reply
     • 

       Cindy Bruchman March 22, 2016 at 8:41 pm #

       I didn’t know–thank you for teaching me something new today!

       LikeLike