The “un-American” movie John Wayne blasted for making a “mockery” of the US Army
On horseback or on foot, John Wayne made his way across the vast and bloody landscape of American western cinema as the champion cowboy he truly was.
Leaving an eternal etching on the statue of Hollywood, Wayne stood over his contemporary actors with a pistol in hand and a cigar smoking out his mouth, always a ruthless and hulking figure against the sky. He was, by and large, the all-American hero, in every sense of the word.
Through phenomenal efforts like the movies True Grit and The Searchers, Wayne embodied the kind of rugged masculinity that became a mainstay throughout the course of classic western cinema, and his performances managed to capture the spirit of a time long gone by, of frontiers and saloons and tense standoffs in the blowing dust.
Wayne was also never one to shy away from a strong-worded opinion or two (most of which were high in controversial terms), and when he found himself on stage at the Academy Awards accepting the ‘Best Actor’ Oscar on behalf of the actor Gary Cooper, he made sure to use the opportunity to lambast the movie that Cooper had won his recognition for.
High Noon was deemed “the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life” by Wayne. It’s the 1952 classic western directed by Fred Zinneman. Taking place in real-time, the narrative unfurls in a truly tense fashion with Cooper’s Marshal Will Kane facing something of a moral conundrum on the eve of his retirement.
Grace Kelly also features in the movie as Kane’s Quaker wife, and her role creates a refreshing counterbalance to its gritty nature. ‘Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’ won the ‘Best Original Song’ at the Academy Awards, and the film manages to defy the conventions expected of the western genre, looking deep into the well of morality and justice and remains a classic of the cinema world.
However, it’s fair to say that The Duke was not the biggest fan of Zinneman’s film. “How they got Gary Cooper to do that one! To me, at least, it simply degrades the Medal of Honour,” Wayne said at the Oscars. “The whole story makes a mockery of America’s highest award for valour. The whole premise of the story was wrong, illogical, because they don’t pick the type of men the movie picked to win the award, and that can be proved by the very history of the award.”
It is, of course, somewhat admirable that Wayne would take such offence at the idea of a movie discrediting the award. Of course, anyone who felt offended by the picture and was in possession of such an award has the right to be so. However, it does feel particularly humorous considering Wayne was famously omitted from serving in the war.
It should be noted that Wayne did not serve for a variety of very normal reasons, such as his age and marital status at the time, and was denied by Republic Studios from enlisting, but not serving in the military would be a constant bugbear for the actor who so often represented America on screen. It would be a source of ridicule from his most beloved collaborator, John Ford, and might well have added to why Wayne felt so quickly offended by such seemingly benign material.
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