John Wayne: The American hero who never went to war. (From Western Telegraph)

John Wayne: The American hero who never went to war.

10:09pm Monday 22nd June 2009

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JOHN WAYNE: Flawed Icon. I was watching The Magnificent Seven last night and, unlike John Wayne, Yul Brynner wears his six gun as if he knows how to use it. By that I mean slung low against his hip with the holster tied around his thigh.

John Wayne, American icon and someone who made huge progress in his film career by not going to war, wears his gun as if it were a pimple on his fat hip. Wayne, a right wing republican, who acted in some of the best Westerns in the genre (The Searchers; Red River) spent endless hours practising his walk, his positioning in a scene, the tilt of his hat and the results were effective.

But that gun always looked ridiculous. While Henry Fonda, James Stewart, John Ford and others had war careers where they displayed courage (particularly James Stewart) Wayne stayed behind and grabbed the parts better actors would have taken. Most significantly Stagecoach which provided lift-off for his career.

And yet, and perhaps appropriately for those who built him into a symbol, his coolness under fire, his taciturn and stoic approach, his advice to young warriors as the hoary experienced fighter in the films was no more than acting.

He had many repellent traits to his character. Right wing, Bush type republican and prepared to make one of the most jingoistic films ever to come out of Hollywood: The Green Berets.

I didn’t like Wayne and I didn’t like his film persona: that slow drawl, the assumption of casual bravery and the swagger of pretend Hollywood generals and admirals from a man who never saw a bullet fired in anger.

I don’t know what he was like as a husband, parent or son. Perhaps his virtues lay there? The USA had, and has, some of the best and bravest men who ever fought – whether on or off the field of battle.

My own hero is the late Admiral James Bond Stockdale who endured seven years in the hell of a Vietnam prison being tortured severely and frequently. Unlike the fictional characters Wayne portrayed, Stockdale wrote that every man will break in some circumstances. And that included him. Stockdale had a chestful of medals, earned as a fighter pilot and test pilot.

He survived his ordeal in The Hanoi Hilton, he wrote later, by knowing intimately the philosophy of Epictetus, a Stoic Philosopher and Roman slave. The irony of the name for a terrible prison, is typical of a true hero. His courage under the most savage of circumstances, is similar to that of a friend of mine coming close to 20 years on Death Row. Roberto, my Mexican friend, who continues to suffer in that exemplar of literalist Christianity, Texas, USA, calls his cage The Penthouse. He too admires Epictetus and the Stoic Philosophy. Our friendship over many years is through a Human Rights group.

Real courage, true grace under pressure, are in the bone and they do not need the vicarious antics of play acting to sustain them. Perhaps it is unfair to make these contrasts between an actor in a role and his real life.

T.S. Eliot wrote, “The artist who creates and the man who lives are distinct.”

Eliot, a major figure in English Literature who wrote The Waste Land, began working in Lloyd's Bank in 1917. He left in 1925 to devote himself to writing and and became a director at Faber and Faber. A biographer decided to interview a manager at the bank who said, "We couldn't understand it when he left. Do you know, if he had stayed with us he could have become a Branch manager."