The most important attribute of John Wayne’s screen image was his portrayal of genuinely and uniquely American heroes.
Wayne’s entire work can be described as the glorification of the classic American hero and the perpetuation of uniquely American ideals.
With Patricia Neal, Operation Pacific
Hard, Isolate, Stoic, Killer
For many, he symbolized the essence of the American soul, described once by the writer D.H. Lawrence as “hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” Wayne embodied the rugged virtues of America, both its toughness and ruggedness.
The critic Joan Mellen regards Wayne as the symbol of the American frontier– masculine, repressed, celibate, and brutalized. In his best roles, the Duke epitomized the national virtues of rugged individualism and that pioneers’ heritage, which he translated into the notion that good and justice must always triumph over evil.
Only few of Hollywood’s movie stars have been described as great American heroes, most notably Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, and James Stewart. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were also genuinely American figures but in different ways. As comedians or singers, they lacked definite screen personae that were associated with American values.
Interestingly, none of the popular female stars, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, or Doris Day, were regarded as distinctly American heroines on the level that Wayne, Stewart, and Cooper were. It seems that Americanism and patriotism have been linked more intimately with male than female stars, which, if true, provides a revealing commentary on the differing attributes American culture has used in describing men and women.
Small-Town America
The social background of Wayne, like that Cooper, Fonda, and Stewart, was most appropriate to the legends they created. They were all born and reared in small towns: Wayne in Winterest, Iowa; Cooper in Helena, Montana; Fonda in Grand Island, Nebraska; and Stewart in Indiana, Pennsylvania. Small towns have been important in American culture, especially during the Depression, when these actors became popular, because of the strong belief in the virtues of rural life.
At the center of the myth of small-town America, as the critic Kerbel pointed out, was the heroic, self-reliant farmer, the mainstay of America until industrialization-and to a lesser degree afterwards. The farmer embodied the Puritan ethos of honesty, hard work, and decent righteous living.
Will Rogers
During the Depression, there was a short-lived return to the ideals of a simple rural life and the farmer became again a popular folk hero. This is probably the reason why Will Rogers was the most popular star from 1932 to 1935, when he died in an air-crash: Roger symbolized the “homespun philosopher” and “ambassador” of rural Americana and common folk.
Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda became the screen personification of the farmer-pioneer with his screen debut, The Farmer Takes a Wife,” in 1935, a romantic drama set in the 1920s, in which he plays a farmer whose sole wish is to work the land and live peacefully with his wife.
Later, Fonda played a fighting pioneer in the pre-Independence era in Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk,” and a farmer fighting social injustice in the powerful film version of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath,” arguably his strongest screen performance. Fonda continued to symbolized the ordinary American soldier in Mister Roberts, and fought for basic American ideals, such as trial by a fair, democratic jury in Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men.”
Jimmy Stewart: Boy Scout
If Fonda epitomized farmers, Jimmy Stewart was best when cast as a small-town lawyer, establishing himself as another all-American hero in his pictures with Frank Capra, the director of “the American Dream.” He usually played small-town people who found pleasure and fulfillment in unglamorous, ordinary existence.
His Jefferson Smith in Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” is a naive Wisconsin Senator, committed to fighting graft and corruption.
Stewart’s young sheriff in the 1939 Western comedy opposite Marlene Dietrich, “Destry Rides Again,” Thomas Jefferson Destry (note the similarity in his protagonists’ names) looks soft and easy-going, but is actually hard as nails when he has to fight. In Capra’s ultimate American movie, It’s a Wonderful Life,” their first collaboration after a lengthy military service, Stewart is cast as the simple but honest George Bailey who, all his life, has been dreaming of breaking away from his small-town and doing “big things,” only to realize how meaningful that life is to him.
Gary Cooper
Frank Capra also contributed to Gary Cooper’s image as spokesman for ordinary people and ordinary life. In “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” Stewart’s Longfellow Deeds is a tuba-playing country boy who finds himself fighting the “Big City” crooks and swindlers. In the 1941 Capra drama, “Meet John Doe,” Cooper starts as a desperate ex-bush league pitcher, but ends up fighting a Fascist publisher and a corrupt political system.
Biographical pictures, in which Cooper and Stewart played distinctly American, real-life heroes, also featured prominently in their careers. No matter what figure they portrayed, historical or contemporary, they always stood for basic American values: simplicity, humility, honesty, integrity, and courage.
Biopics
Of the many biographical roles Cooper played, two stood out: Alvin York, the First World War hero in “Sergeant York,” for which he won his first Oscar Award, in 1941. He followed the next year with playing Lou Gehrig, the admired baseball player, who died prematurely, for which he received another Oscar nomination.
Stratton, Glenn Miller
Jimmy Stewart excelled in “The Stratton Story,” as the baseball hero who continued to play with an artificial leg, and in “The Glenn Miller Story,” as America’s most popular band leader who died in an air-crash in World War II. In both movies, he was cast against June Allyson, who played his devoted and loyal wife, living in perfectly idyllic marriages.
Compared with these two stars, Wayne played fewer real-life heroes, and bio-pictures, as a genre, featured less prominently in his oeuvre. Furthermore, these movies were made rather late in his career and subsequently did not affect his image in the same way that they had affected Stewart’s or Cooper’s careers.
Wayne as Navy Aviation Commander Frank (“Spig”) Wead
For example, Wayne was cast as Navy Aviation Commander Frank (“Spig”) Wead, who became a successful Hollywood screenwriter, following an injury, in Ford’s Wings of the Eagle.” And his portrayal of Townsend Harris, the first American ambassador to Japan, in John Huston’s “The Barbarian and the Geisha,” was even less successful; for some, it’s one of his worst pictures.
Wayne as Davy Crockett
Wayne took great pride, however, in his characterization of Colonel Benjamin Vandervoort in “The Longest Day,” and, of course, as Davy Crockett, Texas’s heroic fighter in The Alamo.” Nonetheless, all things considered, Wayne had built his reputation as a uniquely American hero by playing mythic fictional Westerners and war soldiers, not real-life figures.
