John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity [Hardcover]

Garry Wills (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 1997

The best-selling author of Lincoln at Gettysburg explores the life and times of John Wayne and his legend, explaining how the man, Marion Morrison, became a myth and how that myth shaped Americans' political attitudes and ideas. 75,000 first printing. $60,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This book poses an interesting question: How is it that John Wayne came to embody a certain politics for America? In giving his answer, Wills flashes his usual encyclopedic knowledge of intellectual and cultural materials. He knows his Aristotle and his Groucho and knows when to use them. The knee-jerk analysis of Wayne's status is that he was a blustery flag-waver. Wills's answer is more subtle: that Wayne "stood for an America that was disappearing or had disappeared." And according to Wills, Wayne did this in different ways at different stages of his career. In his early successes (such as Stagecoach), he represented naive virtue; later he would portray the dark acceptance of responsibility (Sands of Iwo Jima). And finally, he moved on to model a conscious acceptance of the anachronism of all such individual honor (The Shootist).

From Library Journal

Wills here examines American icon John Wayne and tries to determine why, 16 years after his death, Wayne was still voted America's favorite movie star. Why has the public persona of Wayne as created by his film roles had such a resounding and lasting popularity with the American masses? Wills argues that Wayne, mostly through his close association with the Western film genre, became the most recent embodiment of the "American Adam," the mythic American roaming free on the frontier, untainted by education but wise in the ways of nature and reaching success through his own efforts. This thesis isn't presented until the last chapter of the book, however, and despite the subtitle, politics are not emphasized. The body of the work is a critical analysis of some of Wayne's films. Academic subject collections should consider, but this latest work from the author best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln at Gettysburg (LJ 5/1/92) is not an essential purchase.
-?Marianne Cawley, Enoch Pratt Free Lib., Baltimore
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (March 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684808234
• ISBN-13: 978-0684808239
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #812,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Garry Wills is one of the most respected writers on religion today. He is the author of Saint Augustine's Childhood, Saint Augustine's Memory, and Saint Augustine's Sin, the first three volumes in this series, as well as the Penguin Lives biography Saint Augustine. His other books include "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power, Why I Am a Catholic, Papal Sin, and Lincoln at Gettysburg, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing biography of the Duke!, May 10, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: JOHN WAYNE'S AMERICA: THE POLITICS OF CELEBRITY CASSETTE (Audio Cassette)

An immensely engaging analysis of the actor who for many years was the #1 most popular film star in the world, even many years after his death. The author diagnostically and exhaustingly detailed perspective of Wayne the actor vs. Wayne the man is what sets it apart as a landmark bio. You will not be displeased. In one chapter the author discusses the fact that, after having seen "High Noon" he was so upset with the scene wherein Coop throws his marshall's badge into the dusty road that he was instrumental in seeing to it that the script writer was investigated and later forced out of the country after being suspected of pro-communist leanings during the McCarhty witchtrials. Wayne is ultimately admired as an artist yet condemned for his staunchly conservative political views

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars America's John Wayne, March 13, 2011

By 

Steven Daedalus "Steve" (Deming, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity (Hardcover)

I'll try to make this comment short, although John Wayne was a complex man and Gary Wills' book is 380 pages long. The subject of this discursive biography (1907 - 1979) was born in Iowa, moved to California at an early age, worked his way into low-budget Westerns, and during the 1940s had risen into box-office stardom. He more or less stayed there during the 50s, 60s, and much of the 70s. Wayne was an American icon. There are monumental statues of him larger than life, a major airport bears his name, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor.

Yet, what he did was act in the movies. Gary Wills does a perceptive and erudite number on Wayne, separating the man from the myth. That's as it should be in a factual document. If it were a hagiography, instead of "John Wayne's America" it would have to be called "John Wayne, America."

Actually, it's not nearly the mean-spirited analysis some might expect. It's by no means a tabloid expose. John Wayne emerges as a genuine human being, at least as virtuous as most of the rest of us. He could make fun of his own image, walking through brick walls on "Laugh In." And the "politics" of the subtitle has more to do with social relations within a community than with Wayne's sometimes fierce nationalism and anti-communism. Wills also seems to have done his routinely thorough job of research his subject and has interviewed just about everyone left alive with an opinion on Wayne and his career.

When it comes to stripping the myth away from the man, unwrapping the package, so to speak, Wills pay considerably more attention to people who had a hand in shaping the legend of John Wayne, particularly director John Ford, with whom Wayne had a prickly friendship but whose talent helped make Wayne into the myth he became. In later years, it was Wayne's star presence that helped keep aging auteurs like Ford and Hawks afloat. Wayne's personal life -- marriages and so forth -- are hardly mentioned. Ford was far more brutal towards Wayne for not enlisting during World War II than Wills ever is. The author gives us a reasonable understanding of Wayne's awkward and arguable position. With Ford, you were either in or out.

Mostly, time and space are given over to an analysis of Wayne's best movies such as "Stagecoach", "Red River," and "The Searchers," and including a couple of examples that I, for one, wouldn't ordinarily think of as among Wayne's better efforts: "The Shepherd of the Hills" and "Big Jake." Full credit is given to Wayne for his subtle but sometimes superb performances.

But it's not the directors alone that made Wayne the icon, nor was it just his talent. It was the embodiment of certain exceptionally American sentiments in his Westerns. More simply put, it was the city versus the freedom of the countryside. Everybody hates the city, even those who love it. That's why everybody moves to New Jersey and Florida and Oxnard. It's as close as they can get to Monument Valley and still have Starbuck's. In the country, especially as it was two hundred years ago, people could be free of federalist constraints and make their own rules. It was the appeal of Thomas Jefferson over Alexander Hamilton. The city caused people of different kinds to mix with each other, sometimes uncomfortably, and it brought anonymity and corruption. All real Americans are eager to cut off financial aid to the cities while giving tax breaks to the farmers, even if the farmer's name is Tenneco, Incorporated. The city is libraries. The frontier is experience. City people deserve to suffer while those on the frontier need to be rewarded for the risks they've taken.

I'm exaggerating here to make a point, but it's Wills' point and it makes sense in terms not only of our own history but our own current affairs.

I wouldn't avoid reading this because I expected it to be a hatchet job. And I wouldn't avoid reading it because I thought it would substitute the figure of John Wayne for that of Uncle Sam. I'd invite anyone to read it, though I disagree with some of Will's meditations, because we'd all be better off looking at the essence instead of the accident. Fooling ourselves can be fun. We all need fantasies from time to time. They provide us with guidelines for actions. But, when their values are adopted as axioms, in the long run they don't lead us anywhere except into trouble.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Most Serious and Egaging Wayne Biography, July 31, 2007

By 

Brent Andrew "SF Brent" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity (Hardcover)

Wills, author of many other works, including the amazing Lincoln at Gettysburg, sets an examination of Wayne's films squarely in the American zeitgeist - given them added heft and importance.
Wills will appear at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral on October 15, 2007, for a conversation with Dean Alan Jones. It will also be webcast live and archived for later listening. More information is available at: http://www.gracecathedral.org/calendar/detail.php?eid=1053.