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John Wayne's start was a fluke for the Duke

Broadcast Date: June 29, 1961

From an unassuming props assistant to one of the brightest stars on the big screen, John Wayne has come a long way in Hollywood. In 1929 he was carrying a table across the lot when a studio boss spotted him and cast him in the western The Big Trail. Ten years later, he began working with the legendary director John Ford, and Wayne's path to stardom was an easy ride. Countless westerns later, Wayne reflects on his career and his craft in this 1961 interview from CBC Radio's Assignment.

John Wayne's start was a fluke for the Duke

• John Wayne was born with the name Marion Mitchell Morrison in Iowa in 1907. He acquired the nickname Duke as a boy, and it would stick with him throughout his life. The stage name John Wayne was bestowed on him by a director.

• Wayne won his first Academy Award in 1969 for his role as a one-eyed marshal in True Grit. He had been nominated two decades earlier for Sands of Iwo Jima.

• Wayne died of stomach cancer in 1979 after surviving a 1964 bout with lung cancer.

• "[Wayne's] essential character - strong, self-reliant, stingy with words, alternately leader and loner, but always true to his own code of honour - was actually a work in progress, sketched with broad outlines at first, rendered in increasing detail as years went by. It has become a familiar and comforting image, the idealized spirit of America's rugged individualism." — Entertainment Weekly, March 1995

John Wayne's start was a fluke for the Duke

Medium: Radio

Program: Assignment

Broadcast Date: June 29, 1961

Guest(s): John Wayne

Interviewer: Tony Thomas

Duration: 7:54

Photo: Still photo from Stagecoach, 1939

Last updated:
July 24, 2009