Duke as a nazi?????
This I have to see, and its on tv soon in the uk.
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I was disappointed in the movie. Boring and completely forgettable. Duke made a few terrible movies around that period, that one with Huston was almost as bad as The Sea Chase.
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Hey dude, duke was born in 1907. You do the math!
sharePlenty of 35yr olds joined up when America entered the World War.
Maybe he had flat feet, or something :)
This comes back to my theory that the Duke was actually 4F, due to the knee injury that ended his college football career and put him on the path to acting.
Why do I think this? Because the one thing I have never seen him do in a single movie is RUN. In every Duke movie I have ever seen, when his character runs it is always clearly a stand-in, usually filmed in long-shot, heavily back-lit or shot from behind.
It is often quite awkardly done. The worst is 'The Longest Day', when his character learns that the invasion is on that night. We suddenly cut to a view of his back; he throws his cup of coffee away and runs out of the office with the most girly action I have ever seen in a guy that size. Then he breaks his leg on landing and spends the rest of the movie being wheeled around in a trailer.
Of course, that did actually happen to the character he was playing (in fact, to a number of the older officers in the 82nd and 101st - they jumped on D-Day with much heavier loads than they used in training, and found that their bones weren't quite up to it), but I suspect that Wayne was one of the first cast members signed up, and probably could have chosen any role up to and including Eisenhower. Robert Mitchum's role (infantry commander of the 29th at Omaha) surely had 'John Wayne' written all over it, but the Duke somehow ended up taking a part that mostly involved sitting down.
I have expressed this theory before on the John Wayne board - it got quite a reaction. This included several posters naming scenes in which they claimed to have seen him running, most of which I had already seen, and fitted exactly with the 'can't see his face' scenario. My favourite was 'Rio Bravo' - the poster was quite emphatic, but as it happened RB was playing on TV at the time I read the post; the scene came up just ten minutes later (no, really), and he was wrong.
Obvious question - if the Duke actually had no choice about joining up, why keep it a secret? It didn't help his image that he stayed in Hollywood (or that of a number of other actors who did likewise), but he may have felt it would be worse for his image to acknowledge that he couldn't actually do any of the things he did on screen.
Surprisingly, this theory doesn't go down too well with the Duke's legion of fans. Just remember, it is only a theory. I have much crazier ones.
Dave, please share that observation, also, at the John Wayne boards where the anti-Duke threads also abound! It reduces the nay-sayers' bogus "draft dodger" allegations against Wayne to the crap they really are.
Okay folks, show's over, nothing to see here!
Actually, Duke had a 3A deferment- family hardship.
He could have taken the 4F for his knee, but wouldn't. In fact, he was reclassified as 1A (fit for duty) and was going to go, but Republic Pictures threatened to sue him for breach of contract if he did. (By this time, with most of the actors overseas, he was their bread-and-butter moneymaker.)
It was their intervention with the Selective Service that got him reclassified as 3A.
For all the naysayers that scream of his cowardice, they should remember that he would have been assigned to John Ford's Photographic Unit, which by that time was not seeing any action. There was no cowardice involved.
..Joe
The allegation that Wayne had a knee problem that could have kept him out of service is nothing but a face-saving myth.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063035/board/thread/209163537?d=211131278 #211131278
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063035/board/thread/209163537?d=211158051 #211158051
As I wrote before, you're full of crap. He did indeed have a knee injury. It's what lost him his USC scholarship. Without that money he had to leave school.
He never sought a 4F deferment: he had a 3A deferment.
..Joe
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By the Time John Wayne was classfied as 1-A he wanted very badly to go to annapolis.
However it was feared that John Wayne being seen as the model of the American fighting man.
Duke was Hollywood's greatest star. If not the greatet atthe time certainly the most influential.
It was feared and with great reason. That if Duke was to see combat and got captured. The Properganda would be devastating.
And FDR felt the work Duke was doing kept the soldiers morale up. While also didn't see combat he did as many USO shows as possible.
He HATED It.
Duringthe makig of they were Expendable John Ford rode Duke hard very hard. And he accused him of being a coward. and instead he kept flattering Robert Montgomery as a Real Hero. Montgomery served in the PT Boats and won a few medals.
To Ford Montgomery was a Real Hero and should be praised endlessly.
Wayne couldn't take the abuse and decided to leave production until Montgomery stepped in and told Ford off telling him that Duke was No coward and that he had in effect still served his country by keeping the soldiers morale UP !
Wayne had become the face of thefighting man. He ket up the spirits of every fighting man who served.
Not to mention Wayne's USO shows. There was concern of snipers trying to kill Duke.
In the End Duke didn't serve but he often wished he had. He felt it was a blight on his image as a Patriot.
He needed not worry John Wayne served in other ways. And will be remembered for them.
It's not about the money. It's sending a message. Everything Burns -The Joker
Moderately more believable than Wayne as Gengis Khan! :)
shareFor the guy who is saying JW was too old to go to war---there is a long list of people who where 35+ with kids who went to war--there is some debate as to why JW didn't--time, propaganda, poltics and people love or hate of Wayne have blinded them to being open for a serious debate on the subject
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The actors and directors (etc.) that made Hollywood propaganda movies for the war, although not being on the battles front lines, were still serving the war effort at home.
shareWayne made only four B war movies during the war. It was hardly the herculean contribution to the war effort that he would have liked you to believe.
shareWayne did make a tour of the area that MacArthur commanded, partly to give information to the OSS. But it was such a minor contribution to the war effort that Wayne never bothered to pick up the certificate giving him the credit Even if he did join, his war record, considering his age, old football injury, and amount of children depending on him, wouldn't have been much different from Ronald Reagan's.
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