An audience favorite and top box office draw for decades, John Wayne symbolized masculinity, power, and patriotism, and inspired millions of Americans. Yet despite his popularity and success, he was unfairly dismissed as a "B" movie actor lacking elegance, creativity, range, and depth. This book challenges conventional wisdom and reevaluates Wayne's life and vital cinematic legacy, ultimately placing the man known as "Duke" among a select and brilliant...

A "compilation of John Wayne's statements and sentiments off and on screen, organized and explained in context by one of the world's leading Wayneologists"--

A hotel murder involves Toby Peters with one of Hollywood's toughest stars Toby Peters wakes up with a headache, a gun in his face, and a body on the hotel-room bed. He is less surprised by the gun than by the man holding it: Marion Morrison, a.k.a John Wayne. Both of them were lured here by the dead man. The next arrival is a prostitute named Olivia, and hot on her heels is the house detective, who's come to check on the commotion in Room 303. Reasoning...

High school freshman Lily pours her heart out in letters to her hero, dead movie star John Wayne, in which she tells him about the death of her beloved stepfather, her mother's abusive boyfriends, her fears that her father is gay, getting the lead in the high school play, and her burgeoning romance with a classmate who reminds her of Mr. Wayne.

1966. The year of change. The year of division. The middle of the 1960s, the great dividing line between what America had been, and what it became. All of it, in all its color, glory, and ugliness, came symbolically together on a hot, humid weekend in Austin, Texas. The protagonist? None other John "Duke" Wayne, the larger-than-life movie hero of countless Westerns and war dramas, a swashbuckling, ruggedly macho idol of America, the very embodiment...

A tribute to a legendary, larger-than-life figure of American culture and film history. John Wayne, the man and the myth-but also the man behind the myth-in his own words.