John Wayne Appreciation Day

From Who the Hell’s in It: Conversations with Hollywood’s Legendary Actors, by Peter Bogdonavich:

To me, Duke had always seemed slightly out of breath, as though he hadn’t yet caught up on the last twenty years, not to mention the last twenty minutes. Both [John] Ford and [Howard] Hawks truly loved him, of course, and even knowing him a little, as I did, it was pretty difficult not to like him. All this, and a lot more, obviously communicated itself to the public — still the top American star more than seventy years since his beginning. His visual legacy has defined him as the archetypal man of the American West — bold, innocent, profane, idealistic, wrongheaded, good-hearted, single-minded, quick to action, not given to pretension, essentially alone, ready for any adventure — no matter how grand or daring; larger, finally, than life or death.