HGB Ep. 646 - The Life and Afterlife of John Wayne

Moment in Oddity - Pizza Welfare Check (Suggested by: Chelsea Flowers)

Hurricanes can be devastating storms. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew battered the coast of Florida, leaving large areas without power along the coast. A man named Eric Olsen who lived in Omaha, Nebraska, had been on the phone with his grandmother, Claire Olsen, a Palm Coast, Florida resident, when she lost power. She said, "This is a nightmare". After that contact they did not hear from the grandmother for two days following the storm. Eric tried calling the police department and the sheriff's department but nobody was answering. Emergency services were overwhelmed due to the storm and with communication lines down, the concerned grandson had to get creative. Eric Olsen decided to order his grandmother a Papa John's pizza. The plan he hatched was not just to make sure his loved one had something to eat, however. Eric's pizza order had very specific instructions included. He asked that the delivery person have a cellphone with them and to call Eric's phone if they were able to successfully deliver the pizza. When Papa John's driver Lance Tyler called Eric Olsen, the cellphone was then handed to his grandmother. Eric felt relief hearing his grandmother's voice and the confirmation that she was just fine. Eric Olsen joked, "Police and fire couldn't do it, but Papa John's got there in 30 minutes and put the cellphone to her ear!" Heros can come in all shapes and sizes, but a pizza delivery person performing a welfare check, certainly is odd.

The Life and Afterlife of John Wayne

The actor John Wayne oozed tough. He was a man's man who was not only tough in his movies, but he was rugged in private life. Wayne's acting career began in 1939 and lasted for 40 years with the actor appearing in more than 100 movies. He won an Oscar, fathered seven children, loved multiple women, battled cancer twice and left behind an amazing legacy. The actor may have also left behind his spirit. Join us for the history and hauntings of John Wayne.

There is no doubt that John Wayne had an image that was larger-than-life. His life started rather modestly though, in the state of Iowa. He was born as Marion Robert Morrison on May 26, 1907 in Winterset, which is a small town of rolling farmland, south of Des Moines. There is some confusion as to what his middle name was because he claimed his parents wanted to name their next son Robert, so they changed his middle name to Michael. No legal change was ever made. Obviously, the most interesting thing is that he had what today is used 98% of the time as a female first name. (Johnny Cash's song "A Boy Named Sue" comes to mind.) It was a family name, his grandfather's, who was a Civil War veteran. Marion's ancestry was Scottish and Irish and he would eventually get to visit Ireland in his later years. In 1914, his parents pulled up roots and headed west to California, settling first in Palmdale and then moving to Glendale in 1916. Marion had been a big baby, 13 pounds at birth, so it only seemed natural he would get into sports, especially football. He was well rounded though, not just becoming a sportsman in high school, but he also enjoyed the debate team, writing for the school paper and he was president of the Latin society. 

A constant companion for Marion was his Airedale Terrier that he had named Duke. This pup went everywhere with him, including walking him to school, and a local fireman took to calling Marion "Little Duke" since he always saw him with the dog. The nickname of "Duke" would stick for the rest of his life and that is what we will call him from now on.  

While Duke did well in sports in school, his grades were another matter. When he made the decision to go to the US Naval Academy, he was left disappointed because his grades weren't good enough, claiming later it was one of the “greatest disappointments of his life.” So he opted to attend the University of Southern California (USC) instead. He decided to major in pre-law and the football team snapped him right up with his 6 feet 4+1⁄2 inches tall frame. A future in football looked promising until he broke his collarbone. It wasn't from football, but rather bodysurfing. Not only did this mean he was off the team, but he was paying for school with an athletic scholarship. Without that money, he had to quit the university. Howard Jones was the legendary coach of the USC football team and he really liked Duke. He hated to see him leave the university without any prospects, so he hit up silent Western film star Tom Mix and director John Ford to hire Duke. Ford gave him a job as a prop boy and used him as an extra. Tom Mix had a good friend who would come around on occasion, Wyatt Earp. Earp was a consultant in Hollywood on their Westerns, in his later years. When he died, Mix was one of his pallbearers. 

Duke studied Earp and watched everything he did. He modeled the man's walk and talk and presented that persona later when he started staring in Westerns. Director Ford really liked Duke and started giving him bit parts for which he was credited as "Duke Morrison." 

Duke continued to work as a prop boy as well and one day when he was moving studio furniture, the director of the 1930 movie The Big Trail, Raoul Walsh, hired him as the leading man. We guess he liked the look and size of him. Duke wasn't sure what name to use for his screen name, so Walsh suggested "Anthony Wayne", after Revolutionary War General "Mad" Anthony Wayne. The head of Fox Studios at the time, Winfield Sheehan, didn't like Anthony because he felt that was an Italian name, so he suggested the first name of John. And so, Duke became John Wayne on screen. He was given a pay raise to $105 a week. The Big Trail was a stunning film for the time. It was filmed in widescreen and the opening scenes were said to be the greatest filmed in Hollywood to that point. The 70mm wide screen process was experimental. The story is about a caravan of settlers traveling on the Oregon Trail with some action and romance thrown in for good measure. Filming was done in seven states and took four months. Timing was bad for this film as the Great Depression made it so movie theaters wouldn't invest in the widescreen technology to play the movie and the film was a box office failure. Critics today herald the film and Rotten Tomatoes has it at 100% and it's listed among his top 25 films. Duke was relegated to poverty row, Z-grade westerns. For those who don't know, Z-grade movies are lower than B-grade movies - very campy.

In 1933 when Duke was 25-years-old, he would marry his first wife, Josephine. Josephine was the daughter of the Consul General of Panama in the U.S. and met Wayne in 1929. They were together until 1944, when they separated, divorcing in 1945. The couple had four children: Michael, Mary Antonia, Patrick and Melinda. Josephine had called it quits because of multiple affairs on Duke's part, one of which was with Marlene Dietrich. 

John Ford really liked Duke and he was determined to cast him as Ringo Kid in his upcoming 1939 film Stagecoach. Studio executives weren't interested in having Duke cast, they wanted Gary Cooper. Ford insisted and wouldn't back down and Duke's film career would never be the same. "Stagecoach" launched the Western genre out of B-grade entertainment into one of the greatest American genres. It was a critical and financial success. Ringo Kid in the film is a wanted murderer who joins a motley group of passengers in a horse-drawn coach. Duke would be launched into superstardom. And John Ford would be a life-long mentor and friend to Duke. Duke was also mentored by stuntmen who taught him how to ride a horse properly, how to rope and how to fight. Duke worked with stuntman Yakima Canutt to develop fighting techniques for the screen that are still used today. He said, "Before I came along, it was standard practice that the hero must always fight clean. The heavy was allowed to hit the hero in the head with a chair or throw a kerosene lamp at him or kick him in the stomach, but the hero could only knock the villain down politely and then wait until he rose. I changed all that. I threw chairs and lamps. I fought hard and I fought dirty. I fought to win".

Duke appealed to audiences because he was an everyman. When World War II started, Duke wanted to enlist, but the studio he was signed to at the time, Republic Studios, didn't want to lose him because he was their only A-list actor under contract. He was threatened with a lawsuit if he walked away from his contract. So he set about touring with the USO. Duke would always feel guilty that he didn't fight. 

Duke would finally get into the technicolor business in 1941 with his film "The Shepherd of the Hills." The next year he made a film with the great Cecil B. DeMille, "Reap the Wild Wind." Duke would do some radio work in the early 1940s as well, even starring in his own radio adventure series, "Three Sheets to the Wind." In 1946, Duke married his second wife Mexican actress Esperanza Baur, whom he called "Chata." The couple had no children and it was a rocky and volatile relationship. They divorced in 1954. In 1949, Duke would get his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor for the film "Sands of Iwo Jima." In 1952, Duke started made ads for Camel cigarettes. Can you image our superstars today doing cigarette ads? Duke loved cigarettes. He would smoke from 3 to 5 packs a day and he it would eventually come back to bite him. That same year he started his own production company named Batjac. The name came from a fictional shipping company in his 1948 movie "Wake of the Red Witch." 

Although he was mainly known for his Westerns, Duke made a bunch of military movies including "Flying Tigers," "Flying Leathernecks," "Island in the Sky," "The Wings of Eagles," and the aforementioned "Sands of Iwo Jima" among others. Duke made nearly two dozen films with of John Ford over 20 years, three of which he starred in with Maureen O'Hara. The two became lifelong friends. 

I loved 1952's "The Quiet Man" with them. Duke played the rugged Sean Thornton and he rides up to the village square where Maureen O’Hara, playing the spirited Mary Kate Danaher, is standing with her hands on her hips and fire in her eyes. “You think you can just waltz back into my life after all these years?” Mary Kate challenged, her voice sharp. Sean tipped his hat, a mischievous smile on his face. “I didn’t come all this way to argue, Mary Kate...just to prove I’m here to stay.” They had real chemistry in this and hours of long takes and the unpredictable Irish weather didn't dampen their professionalism or the fun they had. (Share story about when he is dying.)

 Right after Duke's second divorce was official in 1954, he married his third wife Pilar Pallette. The couple married in Kona, Hawaii and they had three children together. They would remain married until Duke passed away, but they separated twice and the second time, in 1973, was long term. 

The best film of his career was also with John Ford and that was 1956's "The Searchers." This film was when he called someone "Pilgrim." He also repeatedly said, "That'll be the day," which inspired the Buddy Holly song of the same name. "The Searchers" is said to be the best Western movie of all time. Duke played Ethan Edwards, an angry Civil War veteran who hated Native Americans. Natalie Wood played his niece who was kidnapped by a band of Comanches and he sets out to find her. He doesn't want to rescue her, but rather to kill her because she has become "contaminated" by the Native Americans. A hero's journey with questionable morals. Martin Scorsese said it inspired his movie "Taxi Driver." In the end, Ethan finds his niece and takes her home where the family reunites, leaving Ethan outside. There is a profound isolation in the final shot and Duke played it perfectly. Duke also made an unscripted tribute in that final shot as he grabbed his right elbow with his left hand. This was for one of his acting idols, Harry Carey. It was a move Carey did often.

And then there was "The Conqueror," also in 1956. Duke wasn't great with money and had to continuously work to pay bills and he started taking roles he never should have. In "The Conqueror," Duke plays Genghis Khan. That was pretty ridiculous and critics panned the portrayal and the movie. Outside of that, the location where it was filmed, Snow Canyon, was downwind of a nuclear weapon testing ground and was radioactive. The crew and actors were exposed to fallout and many ended up with cancer, including Duke, Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead. 

Duke made his directorial debut in 1960 with the movie "The Alamo." Duke portrayed Davy Crockett in it. The movie was so expensive to make that even though it did well in theaters, it barely made enough for Duke's production company to make its money back. It did, however, cement his legacy as a producer and director. He was nominated for an Oscar as the producer in the Best Picture category. Another great John Ford movie was 1962's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." Duke co-starred with James Stewart and both men give brilliant performances. All the cigarette smoking would catch up with Duke in 1964 when a hacking cough turned out to be lung cancer. It was decided to perform a massive operation that entailed removing his entire left lung and several ribs. The surgery was successful and he was declared cancer free five years later. He would live another 15 years, pretty amazing considering that lung cancer is usually an automatic death sentence. And he had that radical surgery back in the 1960s! Duke would direct again as a co-director with Ray Kellogg in 1968's "The Green Berets." This film was heavily criticized as it was a film made in support of the Vietnam War. Roger Ebert called it "cruel and dishonest." The depiction of the war was said to be unrealistic. The Degar people of Vietnam's Central Highlands were fierce fighters against communism and they gave Duke a brass bracelet that he wore in the film and pretty much wore the rest of his life. 

The year 1969 would get Duke his Oscar. He starred in the movie "True Grit" playing the character US Marshal Rooster Cogburn. Cogburn is joined by Texas Ranger La Boeuf (lah BUFF), played by Glen Campbell, in an effort to capture the man who killed the father of a young girl who has hired them. 

Cogburn is rough and an alcoholic who wears an eye patch and he and the Ranger get into a gunfight with an outlaw gang and eventually manage to kill the guy they are pursuing. The movie did well in the theaters, making almost $12 million in its first year and has an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. The film won a variety of awards, including Duke's Best Actor Oscar. He said when accepting the Oscar, ""Wow! If I'd known that, I'd have put that patch on 35 years earlier." This was an award he had wanted for a long time. He was a perfectionist in his acting and expected a lot from his directors and fellow actors. Many directors didn't like working with him because of his demands and critiques. Duke wasn't a fan of Method Acting either. He frequently criticizing its introspective and emotional nature and blamed Marlon Brando for inspiring a wave of inferior imitators he called "T-Shirt Actors." The irony is that some would say that the persona of John Wayne was Duke Method acting his public life. Immersing oneself for so long in a character that fact and fiction get blurred, seems to be the definition of John Wayne. 

And now we come to the place of our 6-degrees-of-separation with Duke. Kelly's dad, Larry, had moved from California to Louisiana to do some micro-processing for a company he worked for in California. When he first got there, one of the manager's at the company asked a woman at the company to give Kelly's dad a tour of the city. This woman was Pat Stacy, the woman who would be by Duke's side as he died. The last woman Duke would love. 

Pat had just gotten divorced and the marriage had been volatile. Larry was a single, good-looking man. The two toured the city and hit it off, so Pat suggested they get some drinks and do some dancing at a local bar. Shortly after they arrived, Pat noticed that her ex-husband was there and he was giving the two of them the evil eye from across the bar. Larry suggested the two do some close dancing and so they did. Pat's ex-husband slammed down on his table hard enough to get the notice of the bar and stormed out. Larry and Pat got a good chuckle. They decided to start dating. Larry eventually came back to California and Pat decided to come with him. They had separate apartments, but still spent a lot of time together until Pat decided she would rather date an upper management guy at their work. She left for a trip to Hawaii with that guy and asked Larry to watch her Mustang car because she didn't trust leaving it on the street. And it was in that car that Larry picked up Kelly's mom for their first date. Her name was also Pat. As they say, the rest is history, but had Larry not brought Pat Stacy to California, Duke would not have had his final love. (Pat's Book)  

In 1973, Duke took on the role of a detective in John Sturges's crime drama McQ. Shortly before this, Pat had been hired by Duke's secretary to take over her position that she had held for over 25 years. In the first few months of working together, Pat fell in love with Duke and started sleeping with him while they were in Seattle for the shooting of McQ. Duke was still living with Pilar at the time, but they would eventually separate for good. 

Pat and Duke had an interesting relationship as they were completely professional in public and even behind the scenes, it took some time before they officially declared their love and became a couple, although Pat would live in a trailer on Duke's property to quiet the wagging tongues. They would eventually go public after it was obvious to everyone around them that they had feelings for each other. There was a 34 year age difference between them. Pat shared many things about Duke that people may not have known. He wore a toupee in public, but generally left it off in private, choosing to wear a cap instead. He was a man who loved the sea and while he had a cattle ranch and horses, he rarely rode the horses. He was more boat captain than cowboy, in other words. Duke had to carry oxygen when they traveled because some climates taxed his one lung too much. He was a classical liberal. Many people think he was conservative because he supported Republicans, but he supported things that would be more liberal too. His second wife, Esperanza, was in a drunken rage one night shortly before their divorce and she attempted to shoot him as he walked through the front door. He and Katharine Hepburn adored each other and she would often say he reminded her of Spencer Tracy. Duke loved to play chess and he loved literature. He had a wicked sense of humor. 

In 1976, Phil Donahue interviewed Duke and we about died when Donahue asked him about posing in male nudie magazines and Duke said it wouldn't be a good idea because of "too many callouses." Duke made an appearance on there to promote his final film, The Shootist. The film also starred Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, James Stewart and John Carradine. 

The Shootist was one of his best performances. Duke played something pretty close to life as a cancer-ridden gunfighter hoping to die with dignity. The opening montage comprised a bunch of clips from some of his earlier westerns. The film grossed $13,406,138 domestically and it was named one of the Ten Best Films of 1976 by the National Board of Review. The film was nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA film award, and a Writers Guild of America award. It was Duke's final film. In late 1978,Duke went to the hospital for gallbladder surgery and his stomach was discovered to be riddled with cancer. While he was on the table, the surgeon went to his family and told them that he needed to remove the entire stomach, which the family agreed to. A later pathology test revealed that the cancer had spread to nearby lymph nodes. Radiation was started, but it was no use. Duke was going to die. Duke made his final public appearance at the 51st Academy Awards on April 9, 1979. He presented the Oscar for Best Picture. It was clear that he was very sick and frail, even though he wore a wet suit under his tuxedo to make him look beefier. He had lost a lot of weight. A standing ovation was given to him as everyone knew that the end was probably close. (Wayne Oscars) He would only live for two more months. Duke was angry and frustrated as his life wound down. The pain was so bad, that several times he asked his son Patrick and Pat Stacy to bring one of his guns to the hospital so he could end it all. Duke died on June 11, 1979 at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles from complications of stomach cancer. He was 72-years-old and was laid to rest at Pacific View Memorial Park in Corona Del Mar, California. 

Such a big personality and legend couldn't possibly go to the grave quietly. It isn't surprising that there are stories of Duke's spirit haunting various locations.  

Back on the Halloween Special in 2014, a friend of mine named Colleen joined me to tell a story about a possible sighting of Duke's spirit at a house she lived at. (Colleen John Wayne) Duke did indeed live in several homes in Glendale as that is where he grew up. The possibility of him visiting a childhood home, in spirit, on the day he died seems real.

One of the main locations that Duke is said to haunt is his beloved yacht, The Wild Goose. The actor purchased The Wild Goose, a 136-foot converted minesweeper in 1962 for $116,000, which is over a million dollars today. 

The ship had served as a Navy mind sweeper during World War II. She was originally put into service in 1943 and served in the Aleutian Islands and then was decommissioned in 1946. Harold Jones bought the ship and named her La Beverie in 1948 and held onto it until his death in 1956. A millionaire named Max Wyman bought it at that time and he renamed it the Wild Goose II. When Duke acquired the yacht, he changed the name to just Wild Goose and did major renovations to it. He loved the military heritage of the ship and kept some original elements like the old-fashioned swivel wall fans, the bell, and the brass wheel in the wheelhouse, which the captain wasn't allowed to touch because it smudged easily. The captain had to use the inner spokes. An article described the changes Duke made as, "A master stateroom, which wrapped around the ship’s funnel, was added just aft of the wheelhouse; interior bulkheads were removed to give the yacht a more spacious feel, and overheads were raised to accommodate Duke’s height. A wood-burning fireplace, poker table, and built-in wet bar were added to the saloon to make the boat a comfortable, family-friendly cruiser." Duke took his yacht to Catalina Island most often, but he also cruised the Mexican Riviera in the winter and Alaska in the summer. He loved to fish from the yacht. He would entertain three presidents on it and numerous movie stars. The yacht itself made an appearance in the 1968 movie Skidoo, starring Groucho Marx. 

Duke had the yacht for 16 years and may still be hanging out on it. The next owner of the yacht was attorney Lynn Hutchin and to claimed to have interactions with Duke's ghost several times. The first time, he was walking from his master bathroom back into the bedroom and when he got tot he bedroom, he saw the shadowy figure of a cowboy perched near the wall with his head hung low. Hutchins approached the figure and it disappeared. 

On another occasion, Lynn was sleeping in his bed when he was awoken by a noise. He blinked his eyes several times and realized he was looking at the shadowy cowboy again. He called out to it and it disappeared again. The next day, Lynn mentioned to the Captain that he thought he had seen the ghost of John Wayne a couple times on board the yacht. The Captain nodded his head and told Lynn that he had seen him too. He said that he was on one side of the boat and saw John Wayne walking on the other side of the boat, clear as day. Some time later, Lynn was sitting at the bar and reading a book when he got the feeling that someone was in the room with him. he turned around and saw that no one was there, but then he suddenly felt a gust of wind so strong that it clanked together Duke's old drinking glasses. At that moment, Lynn glanced into the mirror behind the bar and there he saw John Wayne, no doubt about it. He spun around again and nobody was there. Lynn eventually sold the yacht, which gets chartered for special events. People have been locked into bathrooms - this usually happens to women. A captain of another boat reported a light being on in the itself even though no one was supposed to be on it. He called out the deck crew to make sure there wasn't anybody on board who shouldn't be and they found the ship locked and empty. Another time, several lights in the yacht turned themselves on and off repeatedly and the crew again found the ship was empty. The crew claims to hear the distinctive sound of an old ice machine, even though the ice machine was removed years ago. A man who sometimes captained the ship thought he would go ahead and sleep in Duke's room one night. he was awakened in the middle of the night when he was tossed off the bed by something he couldn't see. But by far, the strangest story is that the yacht sailed itself one night to the dock close to Duke's old home.

And finally, a couple who had rented a home near Duke's final home in Newport Beach were taking a walk and as they walked past the tall iron gates, they swore they saw the faint outline of a man standing in the window who was very tall and had broad shoulders. Then they felt a sudden chill and smelled the scent of cigarette smoke. Duke lived at the Newport Beach house for 16 years. We found an Architectural Digest article about it from 1977 with photos of the interior. Here you can see the 1970s decorating by the Duke himself. There's a picture of his awards and Oscar. He called it the "50 Years of Hard Work Wall." The house sat empty from 1980 to 1988 when new owners moved in and remodeled. Duke's beloved waterfront home was demolished in 2002. 

John Wayne found fame, success and love in California. He lived most of his life there and he died there. It took 20 years before there was a headstone on his grave because of privacy concerns. It's a bronze plaque embossed with Duke on a horse with scenes of Monument Valley and The Alamo in the background. It has his stage name of John Wayne and is inscribed with "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." Is the ghost of John Wayne still hanging around? That is for you to decide!