John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa in 1907. His family was Presbyterian; father Clyde Leonard Morrison was of Scottish descent and the son of a Civil War veteran, while mother Mary Alberta Brown was of Irish descent. Wayne's family moved to Glendale, California in 1911, and it was neighbors in Glendale who started calling him "Big Duke," because he never went anywhere without his Airedale Terrier dog, who was Little Duke. He preferred "Duke" to "Marion," and the name stuck for the rest of his life.
 The movies Wayne starred in rode the range from out-of-the-money sagebrush quickies to such classics as "Stagecoach", "Red River.", "The Searchers" and "The Shootist". He won an Oscar as best actor for another western, "True Grit," in 1969. Yet some of the best films he made told stories far from the wilds of the West, such as "The Quiet Man" and "The Long Voyage Home."
For millions of moviegoers who saw him only on the big screen, it was John Wayne the western star that was their hero. Although he had not created the western with its clear-cut conflict between good and bad, right and wrong, but it's almost impossible to mention the word "western" without thinking of "the Duke."
Here is some John Wayne trivia you may not have known:
- He's been honored with a commemorative postage stamp by the US postal service. (April 6, 2004)
- He holds the record for the actor with the most leading parts - 142. In all but eleven films he played the leading part.
- His favorite drink was Sauza Commemorativo Tequila, and often served it with ice that he had chipped from an iceberg during one of his voyages on his yacht, The Wild Goose.
- He was offered the lead to star in THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967), but went to direct THE GREEN BERETS (1968) instead. Later, the lead role went to Lee Marvin.
- The evening before a shoot he was trying to get some sleep in a Las Vegas hotel. The suite directly below his was that of Frank Sinatra (never a good friend of Wayne), who was having a party. The noise kept Wayne awake, and each time he made a complaining phone call it quieted temporarily but each time eventually grew louder. Wayne at last appeared at Sinatra's door and told Frank to stop the noise. A Sinatra bodyguard of Wayne's size approached saying, Nobody talks to Mr. Sinatra that way. Wayne looked at the man, turned as though to leave, then backhanded the bodyguard, who fell to the floor, where Wayne knocked him out by crashing a chair on top of him. The party noise stopped.
- John Wayne's spoken word RCA Victor album America: Why I Love Her became a su prise best-seller, and Grammy nominee, when it was issued in 1973.
- Although playing the same character as in FORT APACHE (1948), his character is spelt with an extra e at the end of RIO GRANDE (1950).
- In the climactic scene of THE SEARCHERS (1956), he and Natalie Wood run up the side of a hill in Monument Valley, Utah... and come down the other side of the hill in Bronson Park, Los Angeles (1,200 miles away!).
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