John Wayne: The Politics of Celebrity

Almost twenty years after his death, John Wayne is still America's favourite movie star. In this book , Garry Wills investigates this astonishing durability. He focuses on the manufacturing of 'John Wayne' from the raw material of Marian Morrison - the young man from Iowa who became a myth. Wills charts Wayne's rise to stardom, from the cowboy serials that almost doomed his career, through his breakthrough with John Ford's Stagecoach and Howard Hawke's Red River, to the pinnacle of his popularity in the fifties and sixties. Though Wayne went to great lengths to avoid military service in the Second World War, films such as The Sands of Iwo Jima made him the model of the American soldier, a model American. John Wayne's story is a large one: as large as the truths- and evasions - with which his screen image was confected. It produced some film masterpieces, and featured some of the greatest talents in film-making. It is a fascinating, unparalleled phenomenon, which Garry Wills explains with great originality and insight.