Few stars have had such a defined and recognizable persona as John Wayne. The star of western classics like Stagecoach, The Searchers, and Rio Bravo is still one of the most well-known Hollywood stars despite having died more than four decades ago.
During his lifetime, Wayne cultivated an image that was the definition of masculinity for the time. Tall, broad-shouldered, and craggily handsome, he was the consummate American male, a protector of the vulnerable and a formidable opponent of bullies, tyrants, and conmen. The image was a simplistic one that has, not surprisingly, grown increasingly controversial with time. Wayne’s characters often glorified war, paternalism, and racism during an era when these attitudes were particularly dangerous in the real world.
Still, ‘The Duke’ was beloved by even his most liberal co-stars, including Katharine Hepburn and Lauren Bacall, and when he appeared at the Oscars in 1979 to present the award for ‘Best Picture’, he received a standing ovation. Stepping lightly down the stairs of the set to the stage, the 72-year-old looked as powerful and graceful as ever, but when he reached the microphone, there were tears in his eyes.
Unbeknownst to the audience, Wayne was suffering from a new bout of cancer, the disease that had weakened him so completely that he almost didn’t finish his final film, The Shootist, in 1976. The removal of his left lung had left him in a significantly weakened state during filming, and after suffering several bouts of illness and hospital stays, he just barely made it to the end of production.
Three years later, standing on the stage at the Oscars, he somehow cut an impressive figure. Six-foot-four inches tall with shoulders as broad as ever, it looked as if he’d made a full recovery, even if his face was thinner than usual and his tears hinted at something deeper than mere appreciation. But Wayne had a secret. Under his tuxedo and black bowtie, he was wearing a wetsuit to fill out his clothes and conceal the weight loss he’d suffered as a result of the cancer. The fact that he didn’t look unnaturally proportioned demonstrates just how thin he’d become.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” he said to the crowd when the applause subsided. “That’s just about the only medicine a fella would ever really need.”
He proceeded to express his relief that he was able to make it to the ceremony and put his career in perspective by noting that he and the Academy Awards arrived in Hollywood in the same year, 1928. “We’re both a little weather-beaten,” he conceded, “But we’re still here and plan to be around for a whole lot longer.”
When he presented the award for ‘Best Picture’ to Michael Cimino for The Deer Hunter, however, it was a poignant sign that Hollywood had, no matter what the standing ovation for Wayne might have signalled, well and truly moved on. Depicting the horrifying emotional fallout of the Vietnam War on several young veterans, The Deer Hunter is a searing indictment of a war that Wayne had enthusiastically campaigned for on-screen and off. He even directed and starred in The Green Berets in 1968, a blatantly pro-war movie that glorified the US involvement in the conflict.
Wayne died two months after the Oscars ceremony, but the industry had left his brand of masculinity behind long before that.