Introduction

This blog, and the posts within it, exist to examine a legendary American icon. In case the blog itself hasn’t already given it away, the icon in question is the Western-movie legend John Wayne. The idea for this blog came as a result of a conversation between me and several of my film enthusiast friends. While discussing the best actors of the twentieth century several names were discussed. However, when the name John Wayne came up it was met with resounding dismissiveness. The general consensus was that Wayne was an overrated actor whose only skill was playing the same role time and time again. After thinking about this some more I decided to question this assumption and try and find some more opinions on the topic. To my surprise, while there were some voices advocating either side with scholarly support, many arguments were simply opinion pieces. It was then I decided to try and enter this argument by having it be the basis for my blog project. With some time and several revisions I came up with the following research question: can a greater theatrical talent be attributed to performers such as John Wayne or is it justifiable to discredit their skill because of their reputation as “character actors”? I set to work researching both sides of the argument and formulating my own opinion and after much research developed the following thesis: the theatrical talent of actors such as John Wayne should not be discredited simply because of the roles they were prone to play. Rather, their performances as these characters should be respected for the depth and complexity these characters have and the aptitude to which the actor portrays them. This blog will be my attempt at proving this claim and validating John Wayne’s status as a noteworthy actor; with evidence from some of his most renowned movies, biographical information about the man himself, and information regarding the context of each of his films I’ll look to support my claims.