Read Online John Wayne: The Life and Legend by Scott Eyman - Free Book Online
Authors: Scott Eyman
Tags: nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Retail, Entertainment & Performing Arts, actor, movie star
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that with his injured shoulder it would have killed him. So what he tried to do was twist his body around so he could block with his left shoulder. Well, Jones saw him do that and that was all he needed. All hell broke loose. Jones accused the Duke of being yellow, of being afraid to block and demoted him to the scrubs.
It was an event that would prove a huge boon in the long term, but at the time it must have been devastating. It meant that Morrison wasn’t on the 1927 team that lost only one game—7–6 to Notre Dame—or on the 1928 team that went undefeated and won the national championship, with the minor assistance of a young backbench tackle named Wardell Bond, “Ward” for short.
Woody Strode, who became part of the John Ford stock company in its last years, was an all-around athlete who once played for the Los Angeles Rams. He didn’t buy the story about the damaged shoulder. “It’s unlikely,” he said, “almost unthinkable, that a good coach would drop a promising [player] because of one injury. Duke just was not good enough to stay on the team.” Strode believed Wayne was too slow. Maybe, but Strode was seven years younger than Wayne and never played football with him. In the absence of any other contrary testimony, Eugene Clarke’s story has to be regarded as the best available version of the truth.
Duke Morrison was informed that his football scholarship was not being renewed. If he wanted to stay in school, he’d have to pay his own way. The core problem went beyond his shoulder, or, for that matter, his foot speed, and involved the perennial bête noire of the Morrisons—money.
“I had borrowed money to go to school the year before,” Wayne explained. “The scholarship only took care of your entrance fees. I had other expenses. As a consequence, when I paid them all back, I didn’t have any money to go back to school, and my shoulder was hurting so I figured, what the hell, I’ll lay out this one year so I won’t lose my eligibility for that year and I’ll catch up on some money.”
Losing the scholarship was no joke. It meant that Duke couldn’t get his one meal a day at the training table, which meant that he couldn’t eat. The actual tuition was far beyond Clyde Morrison’s ability to pay. (Duke’s brother, Bob, had better luck in football, if nowhere else; he earned a letter as a USC fullback in 1932.)
“He had to go to work,” says Ralf Eckles. “He had no place to go and he knew my folks, so I brought him home and he lived upstairs over our garage for a while.”
“Duke was in bad shape financially,” said Eugene Clarke. “He owed money to the fraternity for his dues, room and board, and he didn’t have a dime. The fraternity was urging him to pay up; he felt his football playing days were over because of his bad shoulder. So he did what he felt he had to do; he quit school and went to work at the studios.”
The fact that young Morrison was staying at a friend’s house rather than home with his father might indicate either a breach or stubborn self-determination, probably the latter—if there was a disagreement between the boy and his father, Duke never spoke of it.
Either way, Duke had already fallen in love with the woman he would marry. Lindsley Parsons, whose life would intersect with Morrison’s in the movie business, was a Kappa Alpha from UCLA, while Morrison was a Sigma Chi from USC. The two young men got to know each other at the beach at Balboa.
“[Duke] was down there particularly because Duke Kahanamoku was there,” remembered Parsons. “Duke had bought one of those ten-ton mahogany surfboards, and the only place he could use it was down at the Newport jetty. There’d been a wreck of a big sailing schooner down there that one of the picture companies had used, and the wreck had caused some sandbars that made some beautiful waves to ride. He and some of the big swimmers used to swim around the jetty and I would try to do it myself and they’d
It was an event that would prove a huge boon in the long term, but at the time it must have been devastating. It meant that Morrison wasn’t on the 1927 team that lost only one game—7–6 to Notre Dame—or on the 1928 team that went undefeated and won the national championship, with the minor assistance of a young backbench tackle named Wardell Bond, “Ward” for short.
Woody Strode, who became part of the John Ford stock company in its last years, was an all-around athlete who once played for the Los Angeles Rams. He didn’t buy the story about the damaged shoulder. “It’s unlikely,” he said, “almost unthinkable, that a good coach would drop a promising [player] because of one injury. Duke just was not good enough to stay on the team.” Strode believed Wayne was too slow. Maybe, but Strode was seven years younger than Wayne and never played football with him. In the absence of any other contrary testimony, Eugene Clarke’s story has to be regarded as the best available version of the truth.
Duke Morrison was informed that his football scholarship was not being renewed. If he wanted to stay in school, he’d have to pay his own way. The core problem went beyond his shoulder, or, for that matter, his foot speed, and involved the perennial bête noire of the Morrisons—money.
“I had borrowed money to go to school the year before,” Wayne explained. “The scholarship only took care of your entrance fees. I had other expenses. As a consequence, when I paid them all back, I didn’t have any money to go back to school, and my shoulder was hurting so I figured, what the hell, I’ll lay out this one year so I won’t lose my eligibility for that year and I’ll catch up on some money.”
Losing the scholarship was no joke. It meant that Duke couldn’t get his one meal a day at the training table, which meant that he couldn’t eat. The actual tuition was far beyond Clyde Morrison’s ability to pay. (Duke’s brother, Bob, had better luck in football, if nowhere else; he earned a letter as a USC fullback in 1932.)
“He had to go to work,” says Ralf Eckles. “He had no place to go and he knew my folks, so I brought him home and he lived upstairs over our garage for a while.”
“Duke was in bad shape financially,” said Eugene Clarke. “He owed money to the fraternity for his dues, room and board, and he didn’t have a dime. The fraternity was urging him to pay up; he felt his football playing days were over because of his bad shoulder. So he did what he felt he had to do; he quit school and went to work at the studios.”
The fact that young Morrison was staying at a friend’s house rather than home with his father might indicate either a breach or stubborn self-determination, probably the latter—if there was a disagreement between the boy and his father, Duke never spoke of it.
Either way, Duke had already fallen in love with the woman he would marry. Lindsley Parsons, whose life would intersect with Morrison’s in the movie business, was a Kappa Alpha from UCLA, while Morrison was a Sigma Chi from USC. The two young men got to know each other at the beach at Balboa.
“[Duke] was down there particularly because Duke Kahanamoku was there,” remembered Parsons. “Duke had bought one of those ten-ton mahogany surfboards, and the only place he could use it was down at the Newport jetty. There’d been a wreck of a big sailing schooner down there that one of the picture companies had used, and the wreck had caused some sandbars that made some beautiful waves to ride. He and some of the big swimmers used to swim around the jetty and I would try to do it myself and they’d
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