Few Hollywood stars have inspired as much dedication and derision as John Wayne. To his legions of fans, he was The Duke, a paragon of movie masculinity who took no prisoners and always did the right thing. To his detractors, he was a horrible man and a one-note actor who only ever played “John Wayne in a situation.” In truth, though, Wayne was always fully aware of the criticisms levelled at his acting – or lack thereof – and it didn’t bother him. In fact, he was happy to admit he wasn’t a good actor.
Unlike many of his peers, Wayne didn’t begin acting in school and never attended a single acting workshop before entering the business. Instead, he learned everything he knew with on-the-job practice, after being hired as a prop boy and extra who soon graduated to bit parts. This meant Wayne only ever acted in front of a camera, which led film critic Charles Champlin to declare, “Wayne is a motion picture actor, first, last and always.” Champlin believed Wayne’s association with the particular craft of screen acting was so synonymous that it was “as if he were born in Hollywood and belongs to the movies.”
Amusingly, when Fox decided that their handsome young star could maybe benefit from some acting lessons, Wayne didn’t exactly embrace the process. He was assigned to a classically trained Shakespearean coach, who was tasked with familiarising Wayne with stage performing. “He wanted me to act like some of those fancy leading men they had on Broadway,” Wayne later grumbled. He hated how the teacher had him “mincing on my toes, making sweep gestures with my right arm, rolling my r’s like I was Edwin Booth playing Hamlet.”
Wayne eventually told his teacher that he didn’t think he was getting anything out of the lessons, to which the man allegedly responded, “If you live to be a hundred years old, you will never become an actor.” Interestingly, though, Wayne was self-aware, even at that early stage. He reportedly went to Fox and told the executives that if Shakespearean acting was what they expected from him, he knew he wouldn’t “cut the mustard.”
Did this mean Wayne was a “bad actor,” though? Well, director Raoul Walsh, who gave Wayne his big break in The Big Trail, certainly didn’t think so. He was simply savvy enough to realise what Wayne was good at and told him to lean into it. Wayne said Walsh advised him to play his part “with a cool hand, like I think you’d do on a football field” and added, “Speak softly, but with authority, and look whoever you’re talking to right in the eye.”
Ultimately, Wayne’s acting style was defined by naturalism and underselling, which was fairly unusual at the time in Hollywood. According to Walsh, his underacting was “mighty effective”, but he stressed that it wasn’t because he pitched his performances in a low register. Instead, he said Wayne landed on his iconic screen persona precisely because “he can’t overact.”
So, even the director who discovered Wayne’s talents admitted that they only went so far – but did that bother The Duke? Not in the slightest. “What is a good actor anyway?” Wayne asked in John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth. “You might say that a good actor can play all kinds of parts, like Olivier can. Well, my roles are all tailored to fit me—or rather to fit John Wayne.”
Wayne was adamant that he built a thriving career out of being his genuine self on camera, instead of contorting himself into performances that didn’t suit his abilities. “All I do is sell sincerity,” Wayne explained, “and I’ve been selling the hell out of that ever since I started.” He saw his persona as an investment in a film, and it was his job to protect that investment by giving the audience what they wanted from him.
After all, he wagered, “If I don’t, the people will stop coming to see me and producers won’t hire me because I can’t sell their films.”