This may come as quite a shock, so sit down, grab a hot brew and brace yourself. John Wayne’s real name isn’t John Wayne. In fact, to go a few steps further, the same goes for the likes of Jamie Foxx, Brad Pitt, Natalie Portman, Whoopi Goldberg and Joaquin Phoenix, with each one choosing to go by a stage name rather than use their real title, often to keep relative anonymity and improve their star persona.
Indeed, the real name of Wayne, who is widely considered one of the most definitive American actors in Hollywood history, is Marion Robert Morrison, yet very few people would be able to identify the king of western cinema by this title. Still, the question remains: considering his real name has no connection to his stage name whatsoever, how did the actor end up choosing John Wayne?
The answer to this mystery goes back to the start of Wayne’s career when he was a mere prop boy and extra for the Fox Film Corporation in the 1920s. Indeed, whilst the actor would later be considered an icon, it would take years of peddling on the lowest rungs of the industry ladder to get his first proper shot under the limelight, eventually taking a starring role in The Big Trail in 1930.
Wanting an unknown actor with the right physical appearance to take the lead role in his film, director Raoul Walsh spotted Wayne while he was carrying furniture from one soundstage to the next. “He was in his early 20s,” Walsh recalled about when he first spotted Wayne, “[T]he expression on his face was so warm and wholesome that I stopped and watched. I noticed the fine physique of the boy, his careless strength, the grace of his movement…What I needed was a feeling of honesty, of sincerity, and [he] had it”.
Understandably, Walsh and the studio couldn’t see the name Marion Robert Morrison written in lights, so they tasked themselves with thinking of a new title for the fresh-faced star. Having no input as to his name, it was Walsh and the studio head Winfield Sheehan who came up with John Wayne, with the latter being inspired by the General from the American Revolution, Anthony Wayne.
The rest is, indeed, history when it comes to Wayne, with the actor later going on to receive two Academy Award nominations and one win, claiming an Oscar for 1970’s genre classic True Grit.
Later in his career, Wayne’s nickname of ‘The Duke’ would be popularised, with this originating back in his childhood when a local fireman on his route to school regularly called him ‘Little Duke’ due to the fact that he was rarely seen without his large Airedale Terrier, called Duke.
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