By Lee Pfeiffer
John Wayne has always been, and probably always will be, my favorite actor. My earliest memories of going to movies are filled with images of John Wayne. I was about four years old when I remember seeing him on-screen for the first time in The Horse Soldiers - and I knew who he was even then. He was not the best actor among those I admired, nor was he the Johnny One-Note that his critics liked to paint him as. Wayne, who died 30 years ago today, was not overly diversified. He knew his audience and what they expected of him. The few times he strayed dramatically from that image were disastrous. (i.e The Conqueror in which he played Genghis Khan and his notorious, show-stopping cameo in The Greatest Story Ever Told playing a Roman soldier.) However, since his death, Wayne- who was a polarizing figure politically - has been forgiven for his "sin" of being an unapologetic right winger by most of his critics on the left. They have learned to separate the actor from the man and there is now general agreement that Wayne was capable of delivering superb performances. In my personal opinion, the essential Wayne catalog includes his remarkable work in Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Searchers and Rio Bravo. Unlike many actors, Wayne got better as he got older, bringing a world-weariness to his performances that made his work in films like True Grit, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Cowboys and The Shootist rank among the finest performances of the era. Even his lightweight late career efforts were terrific entertainment: Big Jake, Chisum, The Train Robbers and his two dirty cop movies McQ and Brannigan. Turkeys like Hellfighters and Cahill: U.S. Marshall are more enjoyable than most of the special effects-laden garbage released today.
On a personal level, Wayne represented a time when people held political beliefs based on reason and thought, not blind ideology. His political opponents were inevitably shocked by the fact that the man was a true scholar and proficient in the classics. He enjoyed debating those on the political left, but rarely let it get personal. He detested Jane Fonda's trip to North Vietnam but refused to bad mouth her personally because he knew her since she was a baby and didn't want to cause grief for his old friend Henry Fonda. Wayne was instrumental in supporting Joe McCarthy's deplorable blacklisting tactics in the 1950s, yet he formed a close personal friendship with Kirk Douglas - a liberal who single-handedly broke the blacklist. The two men would star in three films together. Wayne represented a more civil era of political debate. He was stubborn in his support of Nixon and Agnew, but enthusiastically participated in President Jimmy Carter's inauguration ceremonies. He told the new president "I'm a member of the opposition, Mr. President - the loyal opposition. I wouldn't have it any other way." Can you imagine George Clooney having saying the same at George Bush's inauguration, or Rush Limbaugh wishing President Obama the very best?