John Wayne, Mr. Kayfabe

John Wayne loved America. Later, it killed him. Kinda maybe.

There has been a lot of talk lately about “kayfabe.” For those unfamiliar, kayfabe is a term that comes out of professional wrestling. It originates from carnival slang meaning, “to fake,” to give the illusion of doing something without anything really happening. All professional wrestling is kayfabe. If I appear to drop kick you in the chest, but in reality I just jump at you at the same instant you propel yourself backwards against the ropes while simultaneously slapping your own thigh to create the sound of an impact that never happened, that’s great kayfabe.

Kayfabe has been in the air lately as it’s often employed by the current administration, no stranger to the WWE or its methods. Loudly announced tariffs that quietly never go into effect is great kayfabe. Televised raids of mass deportations hosted by Dr. Phil that, in actuality, maintain the same deportation levels as the Biden administration are great kayfabe. But let’s be honest, America has been kayfabe crazy from the jump. The whole, “All men are created equal (but we also have slaves),” thing comes to mind.

And so it is fitting that John Wayne was Mr. Kayfabe. To many, he was Old Glory in human form. The walking, talking embodiment of the frontier spirit. As American as an eagle, or apple pie, or an apple pie stuffed with eagle meat. But what we saw was a far cry from reality.

John Wayne of the American West was born Marion Morrison and grew up in the safe and sound suburb of Glendale, CA. His daily route to school took him past the local fire station, and every day he would walk to school accompanied by his Airedale Terrier, Duke. A local fireman gave Marion the nickname, “Little Duke.” Marion preferred the name to, well, Marion, and worked hard to make, “The Duke” stick.

Rejected by the U.S. Naval Academy, Wayne attended the University Of Southern California on a football scholarship, where he played under famously terrifying USC football coach Howard Jones (not to be confused with the famously terrifying 80’s British New Romantic pop star of the same name).

Howard Jones and Howard Jones (L-R)

Wayne broke his collar bone while body surfing and, unable to play football, lost his scholarship.

BUT…

Howard Jones, not the one who sang “What Is Love?” was friends with early Hollywood Western film star Tom Mix, and as a favor to Jones, Mix got Wayne a job as a prop boy and an extra. There, Wayne met director John Ford. He also met Wyatt Earp. Yes, THAT Wyatt Earp. Who was a friend of Tom Mix’s. It was from Wyatt Earp, yes, THAT Wyatt Earp, that Wayne got his famous walk, talk and persona.

Wayne soon graduated from prop boy to bit parts, billed at the time as, “Duke Morrison.” In 1929, director Raoul Walsh saw him moving studio furniture and cast him in a starring role – yep, that’s true – in a film called THE BIG TRAIL. He suggested Duke Morrison change his name to Anthony Wayne after a Revolutionary War general of the same name, but the head of the studio rejected it as being “too Italian sounding,’ and suggested John Wayne.

John Wayne and Margaret Churchill in The Big Trail

THE BIG TRAIL bombed and Wayne went back to bit parts. In one film, THE DECEIVER, he played a corpse. He finally caught his break in 1939 with John Ford’s STAGECOACH. Ford had trouble financing that film so he struck a deal with producer Walter Wanger for actor Claire Trevor, who was a much bigger star at the time, to receive top billing even though Wayne had the lead role.

Fun fact! Years later, Walter Wanger, upon learning that his wife, actress Joan Bennet, was having an affair with producer Jennings Lang, confronted them both and shot Lang in the balls. Shot in the balls by Wanger! (For the record, I have been assured by a mutual acquaintance that the bullet hit his thigh). Anyway…

Stagecoach became a huge hit and Wayne became a star. It was on this film that John Ford predicted Wayne would become the biggest star ever because of his appeal as an American “everyman.” A guy with a personality taken from one guy, a fake name from another guy, who made his living pretending to be other people. What could be more American? Even within his manufactured persona, there were elements that were manufactured. Like Leonardo DiCaprio in ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, an actor playing an actor who is acting, John’s Wayne’s manufactured persona has layers within layers.

John Wayne’s ascension as a star coincided with World War 2’s ascension as a … well, a war. Hollywood A listers abandoned their contracts to go overseas and fight the good fight. James Stewart, Henry Fonda, future stars Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Charles Bronson, etc. all signed up. John Ford served in the military. Wayne wrote him frequently, expressing his desire to serve in Ford’s unit, always, “as soon as I finish up these one or two pictures.”

Wayne did have deferment status. He was 34 years-old and had children, but so had many others. The National Archives does show an application by Wayne onto the OSS, what would later become the CIA, but it was turned down. In their defense, I can’t imagine a real life movie star would make a very good spy.

According to his widow, not serving in the war would become the most painful part of Wayne’s life, and his later transformation into a hard right-wing super patriot was born largely out of his guilt.

World War 2 ended in 1945 and the world went back to work. Wayne would continue to make films with Ford, including the 1956 masterpiece THE SEARCHERS, widely considered his most complex and nuanced performance as well as the high water mark of Ford’s legendary career. That said, Ford never fully forgave Wayne for not serving in the war. It was a source of great pain to Wayne and a chasm between the two men that would never be bridged.

The U.S. military also got back to work after World War 2,. and it is here that the US military and John Wayne would finally, somewhat grotesquely, cross paths. It was a little thing called Operation: Upshot Knothole.

As the U.S. entered the Cold War, its fight for nuclear supremacy over the Soviet Union was the primary focus of our national defense. The first atomic weapon was tested in the United States in 1945 as part of the Manhattan Project. Code named Trinity, it was a test of the weapons that were to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (see: OPPENHEIMER).

In the 1950s, the United States had established a dedicated atomic weapons test site in the Nevada desert as well as a site in the Marshall Islands (see: GODZILLA). One of the tests at the Nevada site was called Operation: Upshot Knothole, a series of eleven nuclear explosions.

According to an excellent article in The Guardian, Hollywood And The Downwinders Still Grapple With Nuclear Fallout the local Nevada press cheered the chance of beating the Russians in the arms race and being a part of history. “Spectacular Atomic Explosions Mean Progress in Defense, No Cause For Panic,” blared an editorial in the The Deseret News. One local columnist, Clint Mosher, said he never saw a prettier sight. “It was like a letter from home or the firm handshake of someone you admire and trust.’’

Okay, Clint.

The Nevada test site was located in Nye County, sixty-five miles Northwest of Las Vegas and one-hundred-and-thirty-seven miles north of the small town of St. George, Utah. In 1956, St. George was invaded by a Hollywood movie company and its star, John Wayne.

The film was called The Conquerer. Produced by legendary rich guy and nut case Howard Hughes, The Conquerer told the story of Genghis Kahn, the founder and Great Kahn of the first Mongol Empire. Genghis Kahn was Mongolian so the casting was obvious: John Wayne.

No.

The Conquerer would go down in history as one of John Wayne’s worst movies, going so far as to win a Golden Turkey Award. Although the film is set in the early 13^th century, in one scene Genghis Kahn can clearly be seen wearing a wristwatch.

John Wayne, along with the film’s co-stars Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, Pedro Armendariz along with the film’s director, Dick Powell (a fine actor in his own right) arrived in St. George, Utah in 1954, several months after the conclusion of Operation: Upshot Knothole.

Despite being just downwind of the Nevada test site, The U.S. Govt. had declared the area completely safe. Back then, when the government said something was true, people believed it without question. Well, white people did. Other groups were ahead of the curve on that one.

Accompanying Wayne to the set were his two young sons, Michael and Patrick. Being kids, Michael and Patrick went out into the dust covered rocks surrounding the set with their nifty new gadget: a Geiger counter. It’s radiation readings were so off the charts bananas that they assumed it was broken.

The crew continued working, unaware of the danger. In fact, when reshoots were needed at the studio, producer Howard Hughes spared no expense in having massive amounts of (radioactive) soil from St. George trucked back to Hollywood for continuity and matching.

The film was released in 1956, and although it did make a tiny profit, it soon became a laughingstock.

As the years passed, one by one, the cast and crew of The Conquerer started to fall sick. Director Dick Powell got cancer, Pedro Armendariz got cancer, Susan Hayward got cancer. John Wayne’s sons got cancer (both battled it successfully). No such luck befell their father. John Wayne, The Duke, passed away from the disease in 1979.

Now granted, this movie was made in the 1950’s when everybody smoked like chimneys. John Wayne himself was a five pack a day smoker. But, of the 220 cast and crew of The Conquerer, ninety-one contracted cancer and more than half of them died from it.

And that, sadly, is not taking into consideration the poor souls who lived in that area year round. Despite repeated assurances from their government that they were safe, the approximately 100,000 people who lived in the three-state fallout zone north and east of the Nevada testing site were living in a nuclear waste dump. To this day, through their political action committee The Downwinders, they continue to fight for compensation for their health and for their loved ones.

Oh, they said it was safe. But that was just kayfabe.

If you enjoy True Tales From Weirdsville, give a listen to the new episode of The Dana Gould Hour Podcast, dropping this week, where we take a True Tales deep dive into Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan’s creepily predictive, A Face On The Crowd.

The end!