My Father the Duke
John Wayne
Born Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa, in 1907, John Wayne became synonymous with the American West through iconic roles in John Ford’s Stagecoach, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and True Grit. Known as Duke, Wayne had an on-screen persona that was laconic, tough, and stoic. He had seven children, Michael, Mary Antonia, Patrick, Melinda, Aissa, Ethan, and Marisa.
Ethan (age five) with John on the set of El Dorado, 1967
i was born in 1962, at the height of my father’s career. My father named me after Ethan Edwards, his character in The Searchers, which many critics consider to be his best role. Right after I was born, we moved from Los Angeles to Newport Beach, so my experience with my father is probably different from that of my much older half siblings.
My father was tough but very loving. He was old-school. I don’t know how else to describe it. He didn’t talk much, but he could make his few words very, very impactful and meaningful. Other actors fight for lines; my dad tried to remove as many words as possible. He learned from men who came before him—director John Ford, lawman Wyatt Earp (whom he had met while working as a prop boy), and silent film actor Harry Carey. When he first saw himself on-screen, he didn’t like his voice, his look, the way he moved. He was very uncomfortable. So he figured out that guy walks right. That guy talks right. This guy acts like a man. He absorbed all of it from these people and built a persona called “John Wayne.”
But his friends called him Duke, his childhood nickname. It was the name of his dog, an Airedale. Dad used to deliver papers with Duke. The local firemen called the pair Big Duke and Little Duke. The name stuck. He told me, “Now when someone calls me John, I don’t even turn my head.”
My dad was always thought of as a cowboy or a soldier-type. Strong, silent, stern. But in his free time, his life was centered on the ocean. We had a converted World War II minesweeper called Wild Goose that we used to motor out to the Channel Islands off the coast of Newport Beach. Every summer, we would sail up in British Columbia and Alaska. Every winter, we would take it down to Mexico, either to Baja or into the mainland.
When he wasn’t on the boat, Dad was working. So I was raised on movie sets in places like Durango, Mexico; Ridgway, Colorado; and outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Sets were rugged in those days. Our family would stay either in a small rented house or in a little motel. I had a tutor three hours a day, but I learned a lot from my father, too. He never told me “do this” or “do that” but led by example. You never wanted to disappoint him. Sometimes this meant being situationally aware on a set, not crossing into an eyeline, stepping into the frame, or making a sound when film was rolling.
Once when we were at a friend’s ranch, he asked me to drive to the house in an old pickup truck and grab some things for him. I was twelve. I got the truck stuck, and I had to go tell him. He was in the middle of a card game. He didn’t get up or offer to help. It was clear that I was expected to figure out how to get the truck out on my own.
Some of my proudest moments came from living up to my father’s straight-ahead toughness. When we were in mainland Mexico, we’d anchor the boat far from the shore and swim in. It was about a twenty-five-minute swim. I remember once, when I was seven or eight years old, swimming into a bunch of sea snakes and saying, “Holy crap. There are sea snakes here, Dad!”
He replied, “Yeah, just keep swimming, kid.”
Once we made it to shore, we walked around till our clothes dried. He gave me a big hug and said, “Good job, Big Stuff.” I was just so proud to have made it through, proud to be my father’s son.
My father died on June 11, 1979. I was seventeen. At the time, it was just him and me alone in the house; my mother had moved out. He had had lung cancer back in 1964, and it had recurred in his stomach. That day, he said he wasn’t feeling well, so I drove him to UCLA. As we pulled up to the hospital, there was a crowd of photographers at the entrance waiting for him; I don’t know who had tipped them off, but we had to go through the back. I was worried, but I was also a naive teenager and thought he was going to be okay. He just always got through things. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the last ride I would ever take with my dad.