He was also adverse to foul language in films, something my Dad certainly agreed on. I remember watching The Exorcist for the first time with him. Each expletive would be followed by a “tut” and if you’ve seen The Exorcist you’ll know that amounted to an awful lot of tuts. Yet in real life Wayne swore like a trooper, so it’s unlikely my Dad would have liked the real Wayne. It was the screen image that he admired, the big tough man of action. For him the legend was far more important than the man.
I wasn’t the only family member to become enamoured of Wayne; my brothers, Tony and Andrew are fans and my nephew Daniel has just begun to discover Wayne’s films, something you’ll be reading about on here soon.
Many of my most vivid memories of growing up are film- or TV-related and several were shared experiences with my father; watching the BBC science fiction series Survivors, seeing The Towering Inferno for the first time on the big screen, and discovering another favourite genre, horror, are just some of the highlights.
We continued to watch films together until his death in 2004. Even now when I watch a modern western like Open Range I find myself thinking, “Dad would have enjoyed that”.
Over the next week I’ll be taking a decade by decade look at Wayne’s work, starting with the '30s and his first taste of stardom and concluding with the '70s and his final film The Shootist, picking out his best work along with some personal favourites. Among the highlights will be my Dad’s favourite, The Quiet Man.
Article comments
1 - Anita Adams
My father was a great fan of westerns, and the "Duke" was his favorite. We used to go to the "Drive-In" movies when I was a kid ($1 per carload), and it was almost always a western we went to see. Then when "Gunsmoke" came out on TV, we never missed an episode. My Dad worked graveyard, but on the nights Gunsmoke was on he sould get up early and get ready for work so he could watch the show before he left for work. And when they started showing movies on TV, we never missed a John Wayne movie either. He left us in 1973, and I sure miss him and think about him whenever I what John Wayne on TCM, which has been all week this week.
Great article, please let me know when the next ones are out, I would love to read them.
Anita Adams
Tempe AZ
2 - Ian Woolstencroft
Glad you enjoyed it Anita.
The '30s and '40s have been published and the rest should follow soon, although they are taking a little longer than I originaly planned.