A Book About John Wayne's "Political Odyssey" (Oddity?)...

Yesterday on the Tempe public library's new book shelf I saw the intriguingly titled "The Duke, The Longhorns and Chairman Mao: John Wayne's Political Odyssey" and naturally picked it up expecting an equally intriguing examination of Wayne's well known right wing politics and whatever insights the author, one Steven Travers, a writer of mainly sports books but some screenplays too, might have -- especially as pertains to a 1966 football game between Wayne's alma mater the University of Southern California "Trojans" and the University of Texas-Austin "Longhorns" (and where "Chairman Mao" comes in I've yet to discover).

A Wayne conversation the night before "the big game" is the ostensible focus of the book as some sort of "revelation" re the Duke's political ideas. ("Duke" of course was Wayne's nickname going back to his childhood as he hardly cared for his two given names, "Marion" and "Mitchell" to go with the family name of Morrison.)

Well my views are more liberal now yet I have immense regard for Wayne as a great motion picture actor and I've even enjoyed some of his uh "lesser" pics as well as his finer ones. His politics I've always regarded as "his business" although I might wince at some of his expression of them at times.

I only started the book this morning and got through the acknowledgements, the introduction and the first chapter on his early life but I was struck by one acknowledgement by the author to "my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" wondering just what Christ had contributed to the writing?!

I also found that Travers writes a somewhat "subtle" style of rendering Wayne's supposedly "traditional American" views without being overtly dismissive of more liberal ones, e. g., when Travers speaks of the "liberal media" he uses quotes as though he were referring to say a Fox-ish attitude not necessarily his own. But then he has a rather truncated historical march through the politics of Wayne's lifetime up to WWII (wherein Wayne, ironically, did not serve in the military) that seemed to me to eliminate the progressive and liberal movements of the first half of the 20th century as major political "isms" that literally MILLIONS of Americans supported and sometimes voted for overwhelmingly.

So I learned the old adage "Don't judge a book by its cover" but I'm going to continue it as an exercise in reading a different view and also because I still want to find out about "the longhorns and Chairman Mao" eh.

It's not a long book -- none are after Bugliosi's! only 240 pages -- so by the time I return here next week I'll let you know how it "turns out" huh...

Well I read the book -- it was a uh "quick" read and I admit that initially, when I picked it up, I envisioned something oh rather quirky and wry -- not condescending to Wayne and his politics but not whooping it up for "the good old days" when "everybody" (but the commies! and that included many Democrats apparently) believed as the Duke believed.

Oh the book wasn't THAT bad but it presented the sort of simplistic rendition of 20th century history that irritates and bores me. Sure the whole "bolshevik revolution" and communism-socialism bit went indubitably "sour" as well as mass murderous but then there were such things as "the Great War" which appeared to many who participated as "mass murder" on a grand scale too and then "the GREAT depression" which proved that capitalism uh "unrestrained" was NOT the best idea an economist might have.

I was forewarned by the acknowledgement (see above) to "my Lord and Savior" I realize that and it wasn't as bad as reading say an Ann Coulter "book" (I TRIED once; I couldn't get beyond a few paragraphs) and I did find a quote that I think is quite revealing, to wit, page 95:

"In 1962 Wayne saw Dmytryk after he spent year in jail for contempt of congress. 'Jesus Christ Eddy why did you do it?' Wayne asked him. 'Weren't you making a good living? Weren't you happy with your life? What's the bitch about America?!'"

"Eddy" Dmytryk of course was one of the Hollywood Ten, all screenwriters but he, Edward Dmytryk, a director and of a VERY fine film "Crossfire" which broached the issue of antisemitism (a bit before the more prestigious "Gentleman's Agreement" directed by Elia Kazan) in a "noir" style.

During WWII Dmytryk directed Wayne (and Anthony Quinn) in a soldier behind the lines fighting with the Filipino resistance movie titled "Back to Bataan" and "Eddy" happened to mention "the masses" to Wayne and say some disparaging things about "officers" in the military etc. Wayne apparently queried whether Dmytryk was "a commie" and he denied it although he had been or was in the party at the time.

Dmytryk like all the "Ten" went to jail in the late forties -- the "1962" above must be a typo or a mistake because Dmytryk came out of the minimum security prison in '51 I believe so it must have been 1952 that Wayne spoke to him.

Like Kazan (above) Dmytryk recanted his party stuff and "named names" although I guess you could note that at least Dmytryk HAD gone to jail while others talked in order to keep out but Dmytryk desperately wanted to make movies and --.

I don't blame the guy for that and like Kazan he realized that "the party" was a mess and the Soviet Union a dictatorship run by a paranoid homicidal maniac but then as per above I think Eddy's "bitch about America" wasn't that HE wasn't getting a "good life" and a good deal but it was only a decade or so ago that MILLIONS and MILLIONS of people were more or less stranded on "the American dream," malnourished or even starving, their kids sick and hungry, no jobs and nowhere to go but from one freight yard to another, one hobo camp ("Hooverville") to another.

Maybe Duke, EDDY was thinking about all that, including nazis marching about Europe upending furniture and people's lives and blaming "it" all on Jews like Eddy who would just as soon mind their own business and live along with everyone else -- they weren't ALL "bankers" after all.

I also can't help but feel that Wayne's lack of military service in WWII had something to do with his later hyper "patriotic" bit. After all Wayne's mentor, director John Ford, was a naval officer in his forties who was wounded at the battle of Midway; both Clark Gable and Henry Fonda, several years older than Wayne, served in combat situations as well as Jimmy Stewart who was one year younger.

It wasn't that it was "impossible" for Wayne to pull the requisite strings to "get in" -- I mean if a movie actor can't pull "strings" then he ought to know someone who can.

Wayne of course had spent most the 1930s working in the "cheap" studios, Monogram and Republic, making Saturday afternoon "quickie" westerns that young boys loved (I loved them on tv two decades later), but in 1939 he finally got his "big break" with Ford, playing the lead in Ford's great western "Stagecoach" and his career -- so long in the back lots -- was at last emerging into the "sunlight" of the "A" picture actor.

Besides Wayne had three kids, an ex wife, a mother and a stepfather to support as well as he had a "bad shoulder" from surfboarding as a college kid. (Yeah yeah my dad had a "bad knee" from football; he was as old as Wayne, both born in 1907, and HE enlisted.)

And then as one who believes ardently and almost "religiously" (I've been "saved" you realize) that the movies are "important" I know that Wayne dead or wounded on some crummy south Pacific beachhead was not going to do "America" a lot of good either while Wayne in the movies boosted the war effort, boosted "morale" and well made MILLIONS of folks feel better, happier, like they just spent a couple of worthwhile hours in the dark and "life" seems more "worth it."

So just like Republican navy vet Robert Montgomery who told Ford to "quit riding Duke" about his lack of service while they were making "They Were Expendable" (one of the best WWII movies), I don't begrudge anyone who got out of Vietnam (although I enlisted) either.

But I don't believe in a hyper "patriotism" which declares FDR or Truman or Eisenhower or Obama for that matter, some kind of "pinko" or "commie" because they are for "guv'mint" actually helping people get a job or live a decent life after they can't work or if they can't find work. The author, Travers, even supposes Obama wouldn't like John Wayne movies -- well I don't know about Obama's "tastes" in movies but it's a STUPID thing to suppose; maybe the guy LIKES "John Wayne movies" -- many of them are hard NOT to like and they're not nearly as "simple" as some imagine, i. e., Duke just punching nasties and/or weinies around.

Okay I wrote this mainly to get it off my chest and I'd invite comments as I always do and I'd be glad to "explore" topics of what is "patriotic" and what is "good" and "bad" about the USA, a place I admire but understand is not "utopia" either...

It would be refreshing for someone who could go but didn't have to to, when asked why, respond 'Are you nuts! I might've been killed!'

Of course as the war continued the standards for conscription got uh "lower." In the infamous case of Private Eddie Slovik, the only soldier executed for desertion (although not the ONLY one to "desert"; there were actually quite a few desertions), he was able to legally avoid being drafted for several years but was finally inducted I believe at the beginning of 1944.

Slovik's execution in '45 had to do with his getting separated from his combat unit in France and then being "picked up" by a Canadian unit that made him a cook's helper in the mess, a job he was happy to perform.

Slovik of course never attempted to rejoin his front line outfit and when he was finally recognized and "claimed" by US forces he had technically "deserted," was subsequently court martialed and sentenced to death by firing squad.

Usually these sentences were suspended, mitigated to "hard labor" for a period, but as there'd been quite a few desertions by that time the chain of command (all the way up to Eisenhower by the way) decided to let the sentence stand and the hapless Slovik was executed.

There was a book by William Bradford Huie that made it to paperback in the fifties -- I used to look through it sometimes at a paperback turnrack at a grocery store or in a paperback book store at Christown mall in Phoenix but I never had the guts to buy it. That or say ANY Jim Thompson paper eh.

Around 1959-60 of all people Frank Sinatra (that's not fair -- for all his "sins" Sinatra had a social conscience) decided to option the book and produce and maybe direct as well as "star" in it. Frank was hanging around with Jack Kennedy however, via his rat pack pal Peter Lawford, Kennedy's brother in law, and getting active in K's campaign for prez huh.

Well when the old man (Joe Sr) found out Sinatra was preparing a movie on Slovik he went ballistic and told FS that either he quit with Jack or quit the movie. Well you know what happened.

The irony was that when president Kennedy gave Frank "the brush" over his associations with gangsters, seeing that Bobby as AG was seriously after "the mob" so it didn't look good. The double irony was that Jack was boffing Judith Campbell Exner, one of Chicago boss Sam Giancana's "squeezes" (not his "main squeeze" -- that was singer Phyllis McGuire) so Jack was uh "one degree of separation" from a mobster himself, so to speak.

Pissed off Frank became sullen and violent -- usually toward lackeys who couldn't fight back -- and in time a Republican although maybe Mia Farrow had something to do with it too. In some article (in Esquire probably which was pretty "hip" at the time) or book I recall a "scene" at a Hollywood party in '68 in which Frank was supposed to be sitting alone in a corner with his Humphrey for prez button. Then too Mia had these "hippie" friends who used to hand FS a flower hmm which made him feel he was "no longer young," i. e., the hippest guy in town.

Wayne and Sinatra didn't get along -- they had some altercation over Wayne's support of the blacklist or something and I guess Frank pushed Duke which wasn't the smartest thing he ever did but Wayne let it pass and people got Frank "out." Later of course they became buddies re Reagan for gov in '70.

Frank also reputedly called up Dean Martin sometime in 1970 and said "Hey we're gonna do a benefit!" "Yeah? For who?" "For Reagan." "Yeah okay." Dean never asked "why"; if Frank was for it he was for it. And who could forget eh when Sammy Davis Jr hugged Nixon from behind at the Miami convention in '72 -- and then did the same thing to "Archie Bunker" on "All in the Family" with Carroll O'Connor looking almost as shocked as Nixon did...