“I was measuring 1.93m and the women were small” John Wayne did not want to play in westerns: it became a star of the genre

News culture “I was measuring 1.93m and the women were small” John Wayne did not want to play in westerns: it became a star of the genre

The West King

Almost fifty after his disappearance, John Wayne continues to fascinate cinema lovers. A real legend, the American actor has forever marked the seventh art and still holds today the record for the largest number of main roles with a total of 142 appearances on the screen. And if Wayne has played in many films, it is especially by winning the great representative of the western that the actor has established himself as an absolute genre. The man who killed Liberty Valage, the fantastic ride, Rio Bravo, the prisoner of the desert … So many masterpieces that we owe to the actor, but also to renowned filmmakers like John Ford and Howard Hawks. But if John Wayne alone embodies the spirit of the West West, you should know that at the origin, the actor did not predestined himself to be so successful with the Western.

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Star despite himself

John Wayne and the Western, an arranged wedding rather than a real love at first sight. In a 1969 BBC interview, preserved and remastered last year by the British chain, the actor explains that the genre fell on it by ease, because it was “What suited the best“.

It was not that I was interested in doing westerns, that was where I was better. I was 1.93 meters, which was really big at that time, to make cinema. And all the women stars are small, so I had to constantly lean very hard towards them, so I bowed better in the western aesthetics.

Trapu, tall and imposing, John Wayne was better based in the genre of western rather than moral films that predominated at the time in Hollywood. But the question of his physique did not stop at his credibility on the screen and also held the order of the practice.

At that time, (studios) did not spend as much as today; For double programs, they expected you that you are solid enough to do certain things, and I entered this category. That’s why I started with (Westerns).

At the time, Hollywood studios launched many more projects with modest budgets, which often asked the various people working on these films to put on several roles. John Wayne already had a waterfall lining, Yakima Canutt most of the time, but the physical capacities of the actor then guaranteed him the favors of the various studios.