American icon ~ John Wayne

  John Wayne                                        (Photo/wiki)

Marion Mitchell Morrison, "John Wayne," born Marion Robert Morrison, was an American film actor, director and producer who has become an enduring American icon, who played the lead in 142 film appearances.

Wayne was famous for his distinctive voice and stride.  And his nickname Duke, began from a local fireman at the station on his route to school.  The fireman started calling him "Little Duke", because he never went anywhere without his huge airedale terrier dog, Duke. He preferred "Duke" to "Marion," and the name stuck.

As a teen, Wayne began working at the local film studios. Prolific silent western film star Tom Mix had gotten him a summer job in the prop department in exchange for football tickets.

Wayne's breakthrough role came with director John Ford's classic Stagecoach (1939).  He later appeared in more than twenty of John Ford's films, including She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), The Searchers (1956), The Wings of Eagles (1957), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)...

John Wayne requested that his tombstone read "Feo, Fuerte y Formal", a Spanish epitaph Wayne described as meaning "ugly, strong and dignified".  However, the grave, unmarked for twenty years, is now marked with a quotation from his controversial 1971 Playboy interview:

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." ~ John Wayne

John Wayne had and remains to have a huge fan following, and Totch Brown was one of them.