Starred review from February 10, 2014
Still larger than life years after his death, John Wayne elevated the western to a new level and created a legendary screen persona defined by honesty, courage, and character. Drawing deeply on interviews with family and friends, acclaimed biographer Eyman (Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford) colorfully chronicles Wayne’s life and work from his birth in Winterset, Iowa—where Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in 1907—and his childhood and youth in Glendale, Calif., to his college days at USC, where he was a football standout until an injury sidelined him, and his slow rise to stardom, his marriages, and his enduring screen presence. According to Eyman, Wayne’s role in Ford’s Stagecoach launched his career, for though he had already appeared in 80 movies, Wayne “leaps off the screen” and Ford is telling us that “this man warrants our attention in a way that transcends the immediate narrative of the movie.” In this compulsively readable biography, Eyman examines closely Wayne’s major films, from The Searchers and The Shootist to Sands of Iwo Jima and True Grit to depict the actor who “came to symbolize the American man throughout the world, whether he was wearing a soldier suit or a cowboy hat.”
March 1, 2014
This is a fine biography of two men: Marion Duke Morrison, the jock who wound up working on a movie lot and eventually stepped hesitantly in front of the camera, and John Wayne, Morrison's alter ego, the movie star who bore only a passing resemblance to Morrison himself. A studio chief gave Morrison, then a young, mostly unknown actor, his new name, and over the next several decades, Morrison built a persona around it; but, as the author points out, he never legally changed his name, never really thought of himself as John Wayne. Eyman tracks Morrison's life and Wayne's career, showing how one impacted the other (Morrison became a better actor as he became comfortable with the Wayne mannerisms and performance style). The book nicely balances the personal and the professional and offers us an opportunity to get to know the man who stood, not in John Wayne's shadow (not that, by any means) but sort of beside him. A fine show-biz biography, delivering what fans want about the star's career but probing with uncommon depth into his personality.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)
May 1, 2014
A comprehensive and compelling examination of The Duke.Hollywood biographer Eyman (Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille, 2010, etc.) goes beyond a mere cataloging of film credits and biographical highlights to illuminate the process that transformed Marion Morrison (1907-1979) into cinema's most enduring symbol of masculinity, John Wayne. The poor son of a diffident man and a difficult mother, Wayne enjoyed social success in his school career due to his good looks, winning manner and athletic prowess. However, after an injury ended his football scholarship at the University of Southern California, he angled his way into a job as a prop boy at various movie studios. His commanding height, strength and graceful bearing were noted by director Raoul Walsh, who cast him in a small role, which led to a mostly undistinguished career cranking out generic, low-budget Westerns for Poverty Row studios such as Monogram and Republic. Eyman vividly evokes the humiliation and difficulty of those years in the trenches, where the canny Wayne devoted himself to learning every aspect of moviemaking and performing effectively for the camera. When John Ford gave Wayne his big break in Stagecoach (1939), the actor was ready. Eyman devotes much attention to the complicated but rewarding relationship between Wayne and Ford-the two would partner on an astonishing number of classic films-which would cement Wayne's image in the public mind as film's pre-eminent avatar of American manhood. Wayne's personal life was as full of incident as his roles, including a tempestuous series of marriages, a long-term affair with screen siren Marlene Dietrich and controversy surrounding his conservative political views. Throughout, Eyman portrays Wayne as a man of hidden dimensions: a regular guy who liked to smoke and drink with his buddies and who was also a formidable chess player; a controlling figure on the set also capable of tremendous kindness and generosity; and an untrained actor who mastered the art of film performance.Insightful, exhaustive and engrossing-a definitive portrait of the man and the legend.
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