Wayne also appeared with his USC teammates playing football in Brown of Harvard (1926), The Dropkick (1927), and Salute (1929) and Columbia’s Maker of Men (filmed in 1930, released in 1931). Early in this period he had a minor, uncredited role as a guard in the 1926 film Bardelys the Magnificent. Wayne soon moved to bit parts, establishing a longtime friendship with the director who provided most of those roles, John Ford. Wayne later credited his walk, talk, and persona to his acquaintance with Wyatt Earp, who was good friends with Tom Mix. He lost his athletic scholarship, and without funds, had to leave the university.Īs a favor to coach Jones, who had given silent western film star Tom Mix tickets to USC games, director John Ford and Mix hired Wayne as a prop boy and extra.
A broken collarbone injury curtailed his athletic career Wayne later noted that he was too terrified of Jones’ reaction to reveal the actual cause of his injury, a bodysurfing accident. He was a member of the Trojan Knights and Sigma Chi fraternities.: 30 Wayne also played on the USC football team under coach Howard Jones. Instead, he attended the University of Southern California (USC), majoring in pre-law. He played football for the 1924 league champion Glendale High School team. He was also active as a member of the Order of DeMolay. As a teen, he worked in an ice cream shop for a man who shod horses for Hollywood studios. Wayne attended Wilson Middle School in Glendale. He preferred “Duke” to “Marion”, and the nickname stuck. He was also the President of the Latin Society and contributed to the school’s newspaper sports column.Ī local fireman at the station on his route to school in Glendale started calling him “Little Duke” because he never went anywhere without his huge Airedale Terrier, Duke. Wayne was part of his high school’s football team and its debating team.
He attended Glendale Union High School where he performed well in both sports and academics. Wayne’s family moved to Palmdale, California, and then in 1916 to Glendale at 404 Isabel Street, where his father worked as a pharmacist. The Morrisons were originally from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. 1782) left County Antrim, Ireland with his mother arriving in New York in 1799 eventually settling in Adams County, Ohio. His great-great grandfather Robert Morrison (b. Wayne had Scottish, English and Irish ancestry. Wayne’s mother, the former Mary “Molly” Alberta Brown (1885–1970), was from Lancaster County, Nebraska. Wayne’s father, Clyde Leonard Morrison (1884–1937), was the son of American Civil War veteran Marion Mitchell Morrison (1845–1915). Wayne’s legal name remained Marion Robert Morrison his entire life. Wayne claimed his middle name was soon changed from Robert to Michael when his parents decided to name their next son Robert, but extensive research has found no such legal change. The local paper, Winterset Madisonian, reported on page 4 of the edition of May 30, 1907, that Wayne weighed 13 lbs. Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison on May 26, 1907, at 224 South Second Street in Winterset, Iowa. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor of the United States. He made his last public appearance at the Academy Awards ceremony on Apbefore succumbing to stomach cancer two months later. In his final screen performance, he starred as an aging gunfighter battling cancer in The Shootist (1976). He is also remembered for his roles in The Quiet Man (1952), Rio Bravo (1959) with Dean Martin, and The Longest Day (1962). Wayne’s other roles in Westerns include a cattleman driving his herd on the Chisholm Trail in Red River (1948), a Civil War veteran whose niece is abducted by a tribe of Comanches in The Searchers (1956), a troubled rancher competing with a lawyer (James Stewart) for a woman’s hand in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and a cantankerous one-eyed marshal in True Grit (1969), for which he received the Academy Award for Best Actor. According to one biographer, “John Wayne personified for millions the nation’s frontier heritage.” It was John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) that made Wayne a mainstream star, and he starred in 142 motion pictures altogether. He played leading roles in numerous B movies during the 1930s, most of them also Westerns, without becoming a major name. He appeared mostly in small parts, but his first leading role came in Raoul Walsh’s Western The Big Trail (1930), an early widescreen film epic which was a box-office failure. He lost a football scholarship to the University of Southern California as a result of a bodysurfing accident, and began working for the Fox Film Corporation.
Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa, but grew up in Southern California.