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John Wayne started off as a prop man at the Fox Film Corporation for 75 bucks a week, his first starring role was in the 1930 movie The Big Trail. The first western epic sound motion picture established his screen credentials, although it was a commercial failure. Before this film, Wayne had only been given on-screen credit once (in Words and Music), as "Duke Morrison". The director Raoul Walsh, who "discovered" Wayne, suggested giving him the stage name "Anthony Wayne", after Revolutionary War general "Mad Anthony" Wayne. Fox Studios chief Winfield Sheehan rejected "Anthony Wayne" as sounding "too Italian." Walsh then suggested "John Wayne." Sheehan agreed and the name was set. Wayne himself was not even present for the discussion. His pay was raised to $105 a week.
Wayne continued to make westerns, most notably at Monogram Pictures, and serials for Mascot Pictures Corporation, including The Three Musketeers (1933), a French Foreign Legion tale with no resemblance to the novel which inspired its title. Coincidentally, he also appeared in some of the Three Musquiteers westerns whose title was a play on the Alexandre Dumas, père classic. He was tutored by stuntmen in riding and other western skills.He and famed stuntman Yakima Canutt developed and perfected stunts still used today.
Beginning in 1928 and continuing to work over the next 35 years, Wayne appeared in more than twenty of John Ford's films, including Stagecoach (1939), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), The Searchers (1956), The Wings of Eagles (1957), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). His performance in Stagecoach made him a star.Appearing in well over 100 classic western movies, there are still many very popular today. This internet site selling the best classic movies on dvd has some.
His best and one of the early colour films was Shepherd of the Hills (1941), in which he co-starred with his longtime friend Harry Carey. The following year he appeared in his only film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, the Technicolor epic Reap the Wild Wind, in which he co-starred with Ray Milland and Paulette Goddard; it was one of the rare times he played a character with strange values.
He lost the leading role in The Gunfighter to Gregory Peck because of his refusal to work for Columbia Pictures after Columbia chief Harry Cohn had mistreated him years before as a young contract player. Cohn had bought the project for Wayne, but Wayne's grudge was too deep, and Cohn sold the script to Twentieth Century Fox, which cast Peck in the role Wayne badly wanted but refused to bend for. The best know and one of Wayne's most popular roles was in The High and the Mighty (1954), directed by William Wellman and based on a novel by Ernest K. Gann. His portrayal of a heroic airman won widespread acclaim. Then in the end John Wayne won a Best Actor Oscar for True Grit (1969). Wayne was also nominated as the producer of Best Picture for The Alamo, one of two films he directed. The other was The Green Berets (1968), the only major film made during the Vietnam War to support the war.It was during the filming of Green Berets, the Degar or Montagnard people of Vietnam's Central Highlands, fierce fighters against communism, bestowed on Wayne a brass bracelet that he wore in the film and all subsequent films. According to the Internet Movie Database, Wayne played the lead in 142 of his film appearances.
John Wayne's films. This event also included the groundbreaking for the rest of his life trying to atone for staying home.