JOHN WAYNE
The screen icon’s son shares private stories of The Duke’s courage and compassion.
THE WESTERN MOVIE HERO’S KIDS RECALL HOW HE FOUGHT HIS TOUGHEST BATTLES OFFSCREEN
John Wayne was a convincing actor, even when he was just playing a practical joke. “He once stuck one of my little sister Aissa’s flower decals to the bulkhead of his boat. ‘Aissa! Get over here! What’s the idea of you putting this up?’ ” son Patrick Wayne tells Closer of a beloved family memory. “Poor girl! What could she say? Who else would’ve put that sticker there?” Patrick adds with a laugh, remembering how his dad soon caved and let Aissa off the hook.
When it came to his children, after all, the Duke could be a bit of a softie. “He was a loving father who doted on his kids,” says Patrick, 77, one of four children John had with first wife Josephine Saenz. (Aissa was one of three John had with third wife Pilar Pallete.) “He portrayed an independent, self-reliant guy from the West in most of his films, but he was very sensitive to feelings and he was very family-oriented.” A hero in his kids’ eyes, the rugged 6-foot-4 actor also stood tall as a symbol of true American values for fans of his nearly 200 films. “He had a presence. When he’d walk into a room, everybody would stop and turn and look,” Patrick says of the proud patriot, although only his family knew the true depths of the Duke’s toughness. “His greatest accomplishment was how he lived his life, especially his last six weeks,” Patrick says of the star’s grueling battle with terminal cancer. “You think this guy was courageous onscreen, but that’s when we saw his real courage.”
AMERICAN IDOL
John, who was born Marion Michael Morrison on May 26, 1907, got his stage name during production of his first lead role in 1930’s The Big Trail. His son says he was destined for success. “It was in his DNA,” Patrick insists of his dad, who earned a football scholarship to college only to be permanently sidelined with an
injury. When he lost his scholarship, he left school and went to work as an assistant prop man and extra at the Fox Film Corporation.
“He came from very humble beginnings in Iowa,” Patrick says, and John’s tireless, no-nonsense work ethic helped get him noticed by director John Ford. It was Ford who recommended John to Big Trail director Raoul Walsh, and while that film tanked at the box office, John threw himself into honing his craft. By the time Ford’s Stagecoach rolled into Hollywood in 1939, the Duke would be a bona fide star. “He loved his life and he loved this country,” Patrick says. “He felt that America offered him a lot of opportunity and that it was also there for anyone willing to put that hard work in.”
He proudly taught that lesson to all his kids — Patrick, Michael, Melinda and Toni, from his marriage to Josephine, and Ethan, Aissa and Marisa, his three youngest with Pilar. “He wanted us to be appreciative of all we had,” Marisa, 51, tells Closer, “and to work hard and love this country.” When asked on Dean Martin’s variety show in 1966 what he wanted most for Marisa, his youngest daughter, his response was clear: “I want her to be grateful as I am every day of my life to live in these United States,” he said, adding that he yearned to
“I’m not the sort to back away from a fight. I don’t believe in shrinking from anything.”
— John
teach her the Lord’s Prayer and instill in her a respect for those who serve and protect the country.
Such vocal patriotism made him as big a hero offscreen as it did in his films. “If you suppose for a minute that he graduated from USC, he probably would have been President of the United States,” Patrick shares. “He was driven that way. Success and ambition were a given for him.”
And losing wasn’t something that came easy, which was illustrated by John’s competitive nature. “We’d play cards, mostly gin rummy,” Marisa recalls. “And he taught me how to play poker for money. He just liked any sort of competition —even if it was just racing across the pool,” she adds.
“He loved to play chess, and he was a really good player,” Patrick reveals, “but one time we went on a fishing trip and I beat him three games in a row, which never happened!” When Patrick playfully stalled a fourth game, John grew anxious. “He started following me around like a puppy: ‘Are you ready yet?’ and I couldn’t keep it up for too long,” Patrick says with a laugh. “The rest of the trip, he made sure nothing like that happened again. It was a slaughter!” Still, that fighting spirit was something his kids loved about him, and it only grew stronger through the actor’s final days.
HIS BRAVE BAT TLE
The Duke had been a chain-smoker since his young adult years and it caught up with him in 1964 when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which later led to him having one lung removed. He was one of the first celebrities to go public with his cancer struggle. Against the wishes of his publicist, he called a press conference to announce that he’d “licked the Big C” and urged others to get early checkups. Tragically, the cancer returned, and in January 1979 he had his stomach removed after it was discovered the cancer had spread there.
“He had terminal cancer, but he never complained,” insists Patrick. “He had a bedsore on his back the size of a salad plate. When they rolled him over and I saw it, I thought, ‘Oh, God! He’s had this and I never even heard a peep out of him, even though he was suffering stinging pain all the time.’ ”
Instead of worrying about himself, John strove to give comfort to strangers when he could. During the last month and a half before his death, “he’d still get up and talk to other patients and give them encouragement to help them fight the good fight,” Patrick says. “He’d send donuts to other patients down the hall,” Marisa adds. “He was pretty strong to the end, and he told us, ‘Kids, if you can use my name for anything after I die, use it for people with cancer and their families so they don’t have to go through what we’re going through.’ ”
In John’s last week, he fell into a coma, but two days before he died, he miraculously woke up. “There must’ve been five of us seven kids there,” Patrick recalls, “and for two hours he engaged with us and answered our questions. He was there and focused, and he understood what we were saying. For those two hours, it was great. He was full of humor and love, like the old guy. Then he went back to sleep.”
Like their dad, the family didn’t want to give up hope. “The doctors kept saying he had a week left and then it’d turn into another week,” Patrick recalls, “so at one point we all thought he’d beat this thing.” But on June 11, 1979, the Duke passed away at the age of 72. “It was a shock,” Patrick shares, “but he went out fighting. It was amazing.”
For Marisa, just 13 at the time, a moment she shared with her father on his beloved boat still brings her peace. “I remember looking at the moon on the water,” she recalls. “And he told me he’s not going to be around as long as he’d like, but that he loved me very much and that I should always remember that. He knew he was sick, but I didn’t know at that time,” she adds, touched again by the father who was always trying to protect her.
“I miss his hands, his voice — everything,” she says of the man who gave so much to his family and his country. “He gave big, big hugs where he wouldn’t let you go. I could use one of those right now.” — Reporting by
Amanda Champagne-Meadows