How did John Wayne die?
John Wayne was one of Hollywood’s most recognisable stars, right up there with Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. Unlike Monroe and Dean, however, he was not the victim of a tragically early death.
Wayne enjoyed a decades-long career in which he became the face of the western genre and reliably brought hoards of audience members to the cinema. His collaboration with director John Ford yielded some of the greatest westerns of all time, including Stagecoach in 1939, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon in 1949, and The Searchers in 1956.
Born in Iowa in 1907, Wayne was a football player in college in Los Angeles and worked as a prop boy and extra on film sets until he landed his first major role in Raoul Walsh’s western The Big Trail in 1930. Wayne was just 23 at the time, but his towering stature and quiet on-screen presence made him a credible choice to play the lead role in a western.
Throughout his career, Wayne cultivated a reputation for being invincible, thanks to the caricature he almost always played in his movies of an unwaveringly powerful, moral hero. But he also smoked six packs of cigarettes a day, and in 1964, at the age of 57, it caught up with him when he was diagnosed with cancer.
He had a lung removed, which fended off the disease for a time, but it weakened him significantly, and he would never return to his full strength.
How old was John Wayne when he died?
After his first bout with cancer, Wayne went back to work and even earned his only Academy Award for 1969’s True Grit. But his poor health had put the production on shaky ground, and he continued to struggle through projects right up until his final screen role in 1976’s The Shootist.
Wayne remained clinically cancer-free until 1979. In January of that year, his stomach was removed after doctors discovered a tumour during a gallbladder operation. In April, the actor made a show of good health when he attended the Oscars to present the award for ‘Best Picture’. He practically skipped down the stairs to the microphone, appearing to be in the prime of his youth, but it was later discovered that he had worn a wetsuit to the ceremony under his tuxedo to hide his rapidly shrinking frame.
The following month, Wayne was hospitalised again for treatment of cancer in his lower abdomen. Part of his lower intestine was removed during the operation, but it did not fend off the rapid onset of the disease. A few weeks later, on June 11th, he died at age 72, leaving behind a vast body of work and legions of devoted fans.
Wayne’s legacy is complicated. He received widespread condemnation for failing to serve in World War II and later became a staunch supporter of the Vietnam War, setting him on a crash course with the younger generation. In 1971, he sparked an outcry for racist remarks he made during an interview with Playboy. Among his inflammatory statements were “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility” and “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from the Indians.”
Still, Wayne remains one of the most iconic figures of the 20th century, and many of his films stand the test of time as exemplary contributions to cinema.
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