{"id":3884,"date":"2005-11-15T15:32:27","date_gmt":"2005-11-15T20:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3884"},"modified":"2024-04-26T21:58:50","modified_gmt":"2024-04-27T01:58:50","slug":"john-wayne-appreciation-day-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3884","title":{"rendered":"John Wayne Appreciation Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Who the Hell’s in It: Conversations with Hollywood’s Legendary Actors<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, by Peter Bogdonavich:<\/p>\n

His performances in these pictures [Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, The Wings of Eagles, Man Who Shot Liberty Valance<\/i>] rate with the finest examples of movie acting, and his value to each film is immeasurable; yet none of them was recognized at the time as anything much more than “and John Wayne does his usual solid job,” if that — more often he was panned. The Academy nominated him only twice; first for Allan Dwan’s excellent Sands of Iwo Jima<\/i>, an effective and archetypal John Wayne Marine picture of non-Ford\/Hawks dimension. Yet I remember that Wayne’s sudden death from a sniper at the end of Sands<\/i> was the first real shock — and one of the most lastingly potent — I ever had at the movies. The reason why this worked so powerfully for me at age ten, as well as for millions of all ages, was because of Wayne’s even then accepted indestrucability. In fact, Sands of Iwo Jima<\/i> was the second of only five films in which Wayne dies. Still, it wasn’t until twenty years later, when he put on an eye patch, played drunk, and essentially parodied himself in True Grit<\/i>, that anyone thought he was acting, and so with this over-the-top performance Duke Wayne got his second nomination and finally won his Oscar.<\/p>\n

The particular quality in a star that makes audiences instantly suspend their disbelief — something men like Wayne or Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda naturally bring with them when they enter a scene — is an achievement which normally goes so unnoticed that most people don’t even think of it as acting at all. To a lot of people, acting means fake accents and false noses, and a lot of emoting … John Wayne was at his best precisely when he was simply being what came to be called “John Wayne”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n