LAST CALL: Duke's Devotees
Macomber, Shawn
L a s T c a L L Duke’s Devotees by Shawn Macomber The Keepers of the flame at the Birthplace of John Wayne in Winterset, Iowa, aren’t exactly the Knights Templar, yet nevertheless maintain...
...Wayne, channeling Davy Crockett in The Alamo, already devised the ready-made: “There’s right and there’s wrong...
...In the final days of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign he visited the Birthplace to pay tribute to his “very good friend” Duke Wayne...
...my guide sweetly chirped as I paused before a touching missive from the film queen...
...Would Wayne have sent the Green Berets into Nicaragua...
...No, he’d just go in by himself,” Reagan cheerfully shot back...
...Hence, even those with barely a middling interest in Wayne will likely be moved standing in the bedroom where a young Marion Morrison once sat without the slightest idea what destiny had in store for him...
...a reporter snarked at Reagan during an informal press conference after the visit...
...The boy who played in this house, after all, became a man whom Nikita Khrushchev and Emperor Hirohito both asked to meet during their respective visits to the United States in 1959 and 1975...
...It’s unreal… how well one great man’s memory can be kept in the heart of a people,” mused Carolyn Wilson, a retired bookkeeper who now manages the site...
...Just straightforward and honest like our namesake...
...Guides—many retirees, some high school students, all Devotees of The Duke—lead pilgrims through the site, pointing out pieces of memorabilia as if each were a biblical artifact unearthed from Mesopotamian soil: A hat from Rio Lobo...
...Nothing fancy about it,” the packaging fairly drawls...
...An eye patch from True Grit...
...Wayne’s costume from North to Alaska...
...5,000) just fine...
...The juxtaposition of this scene with the nearby Congressional Gold Medal Barry Goldwater solicited for his friend—reading, simply, “John Wayne— American”—is striking...
...At least one politician of yore was not afraid of this dichotomy...
...The Duke, of course, is long since past any ability to change...
...To this end the Birthplace is raising money to expand the museum and erect a John Wayne Learning Center to “teach the values of citizenship, respect, trustworthiness, responsibility and caring...
...A copy of his 1973 book, America, Why I Love Her...
...It stands for freedom and fair play...
...Letters praising Wayne line the walls, with such stars as Jimmy Stewart, Gene Autry, and Bob Hope weighing in...
...Stumbling on the Birthplace, however, I discovered a coterie wedded to the kind of hope embodied in dialogue Wayne had added to his 1939 film Wyoming Outlaw...
...According to Michael Munn’s 2004 biography, Stalin thought Wayne a universal enough symbol of American ideals to dispatch KGB agents to kill him...
...In the gift shop a towering nine-foot statue of Wayne keeps watch as patrons browse through an array of T-shirts, movies, posters, and a slew of other tchotchkes, from magnets offering bits of Wayne philosophy (“Talk low, talk slow and don’t talk too much...
...9 0 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R f e b R U a R Y 2 0 0 8...
...You’ve got to do one or the other...
...All consecrated by a long ago proximity, deepened in the present moment by nostalgia and an inescapable cultural familiarity...
...That the Birthplace encourages reflection on what monumental ends can come from such humble beginnings would surely meet with the Duke’s approval...
...Suitcases from Stagecoach...
...Revisionist hero deconstruction may be the order of the day elsewhere, along with talk of actors being confused with the roles they play, but not here...
...Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway”) to John Wayne’s Organic Beef Jerky...
...You know, there used to be a time when being an American meant something,” Ray Corrigan complains...
...Alas, it is all too easy to become pessimistic as to whether a modern day Mattie Ross seeking “a man with true grit” could ever find one, especially driving around Iowa reporting on the current crop of presidential candidates...
...L a s T c a L L Duke’s Devotees by Shawn Macomber The Keepers of the flame at the Birthplace of John Wayne in Winterset, Iowa, aren’t exactly the Knights Templar, yet nevertheless maintain the modest house where the film star spent the first seven years of his life with a reverence befitting a sacred mecca...
...It was only five, really...
...It still does,” Wayne responds...
...It always seems like he made gobs of movies with Maureen O’Hara, doesn’t it...
...And just like the Duke, we’re not going to change anytime soon...
...We just love them more than we think we could love any five movies...
...Why not...
...Presumably this suits the 40,000 people who pass yearly through this quintessential small Midwestern town (pop...
Vol. 41 • February 2008 • No. 1
