We cats have nine lives, so we've been around long enough to remember when Marion Morrison was alive and at large. "Who?" you might ask. Sorry — of course we mean John Wayne.
And since Wayne has been gone for 40 years, we sure were surprised when we saw him trending on Twitter yesterday. What didn't surprise us was why: an old magazine interview in which he shot off his mouth about some mightily offensive things.
Thus begins another episode in the long, long saga of trying to come to grips with the fact that a performing artist you admire is a horrible person. Welcome aboard, all you newbies!
Classic Hollywood had plenty of right wingers: Adolph Menjou, whose politics lived up to his first name. George Murphy, later a Republican US Senator. James Stewart, one of the Vietnam War's biggest supporters. Charlton Heston, who flipped from being a fan of Martin Luther King to loving the guns that killed him. And Bob Hope, OMG.
So yes, John Wayne was a total pig — a venomous McCarthyite, a Nixon lover, and a hater of almost everybody else. But we still saw "True Grit" a dozen times. The last scene of "The Searchers," with his haunting tribute to Harry Carey, never fails to choke us up. We love "They Were Expendable," even though we know Wayne fought World War II on a sound stage and not in the Pacific. (And even though co-star Robert Montgomery, whom we adore, was far-right too. On the other hand, at least Montgomery served.)
Maybe it helps that these guys are all dead? Does it mean that someday we'll feel all warm and squishy about James Woods? We doubt it. Unlike Woods, those we've mentioned all have respectable bodies of work. We can admire the art if not the artists. We cats PURR.
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