“Our new man”: the actor John Wayne hailed as his successor in 1979
Getting singled out by a legend like John Wayne for special praise would heap pressure on the shoulders of any actor, never mind being heralded as the future of Hollywood in what turned out to be the star’s last-ever public appearance before his death.
‘The Duke’ wasn’t one to mince his words, so adulation and damnation carried equal weight when they came from his lips. By the late 1970s, he wasn’t exactly thrilled with Hollywood’s direction, giving his industry-wide assessments an overarching theme of negativity.
At the start of the decade, in a Playboy interview in 1971, he famously said, “I’m glad I won’t be around much longer to see what they do with it. The men who control the big studios today are stock manipulators and bankers. They know nothing about our business. They’re in it for the buck.” His stance didn’t soften at all in the intervening years.
Whereas he’d have evidently preferred the business he dedicated his life to carrying on in the proud, wholesome, and family-friendly traditions of the ‘Golden Age’, times had changed irrevocably by the time Wayne entered his twilight years. ‘New Hollywood’ was in full swing, and he couldn’t have hated it more. He slammed the ‘sordid’ descent of culture any time he could.
Cinema has always been an art form in a constant state of evolution. Having spent decades playing thinly veiled variations on the persona he’d created for himself to become a superstar in the first place, a combination of turning down parts largely defined Wayne’s latter years he didn’t like and lambasting the boundary-pushing pictures emanating from the next generation of auteurs.
However, he saw enough in one talent to sing their praises in the highest possible fashion and at the Academy Awards, no less. The last time The Duke was spotted in public before his passing at the age of 72 in June 1979 came two months previously when he received a rapturous standing ovation at the Oscars.
Presenting the award for ‘Best Picture’ to Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, Wayne was introduced to Christopher Reeve at the ceremony. When he caught sight of the tall, handsome, charming, and charismatic actor who’d exploded from unknown to sensation in an instant when Richard Donner’s Superman took flight the previous summer, he knew he was looking at a star.
Per Ability Magazine, Wayne turned to fellow legend Cary Grant and told him, “This is our new man. He’s taking over.” Endorsements and seals of approval don’t come much higher than that, and if Reeve was already feeling under pressure to follow up the success of Superman with a career that could thrive outside of wearing his pants on the outside, then being lauded by one of the biggest names in Hollywood history would have increased it exponentially.
Reeve tried his best to carve out a niche for himself away from Superman, but he didn’t quite reach the levels Wayne had prognosticated. In a deliberate attempt to avoid being typecast, he actively avoided square-jawed, clean-cut, and heroic roles so as not to be stuffed into that box. Still, his more intimate and character-driven titles didn’t make much of a splash with either critics or at the box office.
He was a risk taker by nature, saying, “Either you choose to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out into the ocean.” This mindset meant that his film career was similarly filled with the sort of highs Wayne foresaw, and a few lows that seemed inevitable.
He even had a similar outlook to the Wayne in many ways. “What makes Superman a hero is not that he has power,” Reeve once said, “but that he has the wisdom and the maturity to use the power wisely. From an acting point of view, that’s how I approached the part.”
Wayne had seen plenty of stars come and go, but regardless of whether or not he lived up to the billing, Reeve getting the thumbs-up from ‘The Duke’ in his final public outing is a distinction that could never be taken away.
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