Who was John Wayne?

Actor. Cowboy. American icon. Who was John Wanye? John Wayne was born May 26, 1907, in Winterset, Iowa. Originally called Marion Morrison, the actor used “John Wayne” as a stage name. Offscreen, he went by a nickname: Duke. Wayne’s first leading role was in the 1930 western The Big Trail, playing a fur trapper guiding travelers on the Oregon Trail. It was also his first acting credit under the name “John Wayne.” Over the next several decades, John Wayne would make well over 150 feature films, about 75 of which were westerns. Some of his most famous roles included a tortured Civil War veteran in The Searchers, a dying gunfighter in The Shootist, and a drunken U.S. marshall in True Grit—the last of which earned him an Academy Award. Despite his commercial success, Wayne was sometimes criticized for his outspoken right-wing politics as well as for the idealized version of the American West portrayed in many of his films—a version that exhibited unflagging patriotism and deemphasized the often brutal history of westward expansion. John Wayne died on June 11, 1979, in Los Angeles, California. In recognition of his undeniable stardom, Wayne was posthumously awarded both the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.