The Truth about John Wayne
I posted a post a few days back that caused a bit of an uproar because I used John Wayne’s movies as an example of a good role model for young men. This brought the nut jobs out of the woodwork, attacking both John Wayne and me. They called me every name in the book, but also attacked John Wayne, calling him a draft dodger and a racist. So I thought I would set the record straight.
It seems that once again, lies and misinformation on the internet are assumed to be true to those who do not have the intelligence or take the time to look deeper to find the truth. Let’s start with the popular rumor that John Wayne was a draft dodger. That is completely untrue.
Congress issued revisions to the Selective Service Act to permit all married men deferment from Class 3-A draft classification for military service until further notice. The purpose of this draft amendment was to make sure that the families are “left intact as long as possible and that financial dependency was not the controlling point so much as the status of a man, as the family.”
The 3-A draft deferment was to prevent the draft from putting a hardship on families with children. John Wayne filed for a 3-A draft deferment, as did most men with a wife and children. If the sole provider for a family of four were drafted, it would cause his family undue hardship and we would have had a whole country of single parent families barely scraping by during the war. Wayne was not a big star at the time and was the sole provider for his wife and their four children.
The 3-A draft deferment was repealed on 12-11-43 because of the need for more men in uniform. At that time, Wayne was given a special 2-A status, which meant he was deferred in “support of national interest.” According to the United States Government, Wayne’s patriotic movies were good for the moral of Americans and the troops, and the government decided that his patriotic movies and support of the troops were more important than one more man in the war.
Although his patriotic support for the troops was important to the moral of the country, the decision not to serve in the military actually haunted Wayne for the rest of his life. His third wife said that Wayne became a super-patriot for the rest of his life, as evident through his movies and political actions, as had mixed feelings for staying home to take care of his family instead of joining the fight overseas.
During the war, Wayne starred in the World War II movies, Flying Tigers and The Fighting Seabees. After the war, he made a number of films set in World War II, including some of his most famous, like The Longest Day, They Were Expendable and Sands of Iwo Jima. He continued his patriotic support of the military during the Vietnam War with the movie, The Green Berets.
Filing for legal and legitimate exemptions from the war is absolutely NOT the same thing as being a draft dodger. The rumor that John Wayne was a draft dodger is simply a lie spread by those who are not intelligent enough to understand the difference in a draft deferment and draft dodging.
The fact is, he did so much for America that in 1970, Wayne was one of the nation’s most admired entertainers across the board, and in 1980, President Jimmy Carter (whose politics were completely opposite of Wayne’s) awarded John Wayne the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his patriotic movies and work done to support the troops. Even General MacArthur said of Wayne that “He represented the American serviceman better than the American serviceman himself.” That is a pretty strong statement, especially coming from one of our greatest generals!
People also bash John Wayne for changing his name from Marion Michael Morrison to John Wayne, as if there is something inherently wrong with someone legally changing his or her name. This is so ignorant that it is hard to comprehend people being this simple-minded. A lot of entertainers change their names simply because the studios want them to have a cooler sounding name.
The studio thought that Marion Michael Morrison did not sound American enough, so the studio came up with John Wayne. The fact is, Morrison had nothing to do with it at all, and never was comfortable being called John. He preferred to be called Duke, which is a name that came from his childhood.
John Wayne was a staunch defender of our country to the point of putting himself at odds with many in Hollywood because of his outspoken political views in defense of democracy when many in Hollywood were pushing the so-called virtues of Communism and Socialism. He fought this fight until his death in 1979. He actually had to fight with the elites in Hollywood to make The Green Berets because they sympathized with the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.
In fact, we can clearly see today, looking back over the last 50 years, that what Wayne was saying about the Communists and Socialists in our schools was spot on, as was what he was saying about certain malicious left wing radicals at the time. When you blatantly tell the truth, you end up making enemies. Something that John Wayne and I have in common.
Wayne has also been slandered as a racist and misogynist, both of which is not true. The truth is that he did not support ‘white supremacy’ in any way, and believed that responsible people should gain power without the use of violence or affirmative action. He called out bigotry when he saw it. He hired and worked with people of all races, creeds, and sexual orientations.
Wayne’s haters have no proof that Wayne was racist other than an interview printed in Playboy in 1971, where a single comment was taken out of context. The Left Wing cancel culture does this frequently. If his comments are read in the context of the language and culture of the time period, and what he was actually trying to say, it had nothing to do with race, but with education, affirmative action, responsibility, and leadership.
The fact is, John Wayne had many friends who were black and hired quite a few black actors in movies he directed. Roscoe Lee Browne worked with John Wayne on The Cowboys in 1972, one year after the so-called racist comments were published. The two men bonded over the love of poetry and spent quite a bit of time together sharing their favorite poetry. Browne described working with Wayne as “a delightful experience,” and said that he had “never worked with anyone who was more professional or generous of spirit.”
Jester Joseph Hairston, a black actor who worked with Wayne in The Alamo, stated, “John Wayne was not as bad as people said he was…John Wayne had a poor reputation, as far as blacks and other minorities are concerned, and I went down there with a chip on my shoulder, but he treated me right. While we were on location, the mother superior of a Catholic college heard I was in Texas and she asked me if I could come over and conduct a choral workshop…two weeks later, he [Wayne] gave me the day off and let me use his private plane to fly into San Antonio and conduct the workshop and waited to take me back.”
In addition, all three of John Wayne’s wives were Hispanic; none of them were white. Isn’t it interesting how a so-called white supremacist who could have had most any woman he wanted, elected to marry women of color, not once, but three separate times. It is also interesting how none of the people who worked with John Wayne, or knew him personally, agreed with the racist claims. That doesn’t sound like the racist that the radical left would have you believe he was, does it?
The truth always has a way of surfacing, no matter how much the haters try to spin it or hide it. The truth is that John Wayne was absolutely not a draft dodger and he was not a horrible racist. He was an outspoken conservative, and the Socialist Democrats of the day, as they still do today, wanted to find any reason to discredit him, and the Playboy interview gave them the opening that they were searching for.
The cancel culture is a disgrace to our country. These people do not care about the truth or understanding what someone is trying to say; all they care about is destroying both American culture and American freedom. The cancel culture wants to censor everyone and everything, take your freedom of speech away, and basically destroy the moral foundation that our country was founded upon. And they will lie, cheat, or purposely twist the truth to get their way. To quote John Wayne, “They’re standing up for what they FEEL is right, not for what they think is right – cause they don’t think.” Bohdi Sanders ~ author of the #1 Bestseller, MEN of the CODE
