Read Online John Wayne: The Life and Legend by Scott Eyman - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Scott Eyman
Tags: nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Retail, Entertainment & Performing Arts, actor, movie star
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generally go clear around and be on land again by the time I got about halfway out.”
One of Duke’s fraternity brothers set him up on a blind date with a girl named Carmen Saenz. They went to the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, then back to the girl’s house, where he first set eyes on Carmen’s sister, Josephine. And that, as they say, was that.
The Rendezvous became the place for Duke and Josie, as well as for a lot of other young couples. It was, remembered Lindsley Parsons, “a little thing right on Front Street there. . . . Josephine and her sister Carmen were the most beautiful girls in Balboa that summer, in fact I think any summer we went down there.”
The kids were all broke, which posed a problem because you had to buy a ticket for every dance. Morrison and Parsons grew skilled at scrounging discarded or lost tickets off the dance floor. If they found one, they would separate the pasteboard into two halves and get two dances for the price of none.
The actor William Bakewell had been dating Loretta Young and became close to her family and her sisters, who were all devout Catholics. “Josephine Saenz had gone to convent with Loretta, Polly Ann and Sally, and she became like a member of the family. She was over there all the time. And she started to go with this guy named Duke Morrison.”
Josephine Saenz was totally unlike any woman Duke had ever met. Specifically, she was totally unlike Mary Morrison. Josephine embodied class, breeding, intelligence, and composure. Her father, Dr. José Saenz, had a medical degree but had made his living operating a string of pharmacies. In 1921, Haiti, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador retained Saenz as their consul for the city of Los Angeles.
Duke seems to have committed to Josephine quickly, but Josephine . . . Josephine wasn’t too sure, and the Saenz family was definitely on the fence. The more they learned about the boy, the less sure they were. A football player from a broken marriage, who had lost his scholarship, who lived in Glendale, was in love with their ardently Catholic, aspiring socialite daughter from Hancock Park?
Working in Duke’s favor with the Saenz family was his total lack of pretense and his honesty. Working in Duke’s favor with Josephine were his looks. Despite the Saenz family’s discontent, Duke and Josie found ways to keep the relationship alive for the next several years, although Josie’s family forbade marriage until such time as Duke proved he could support his prospective wife and children in a suitable manner.
“Their friends told me they were great fun,” said Gretchen Wayne, the wife of Michael Wayne, and Josie’s daughter-in-law. “They loved games, loved jokes, loved to laugh. Her education didn’t encompass more than a year or two of college, but she was properly reared. And she was very smart, very good with math. She was a Roman Catholic, who seriously lived her religion. A great person.”
Duke never held a grudge about his misfortune at the USC football program; certainly, he became the most famous dropout USC ever had, and he followed the football program carefully. As Gretchen Wayne would observe, “You didn’t want to be around him if the Trojans lost.”
“I think the lesson you learn on the football field is basic,” he would say in later years. “If the player on the other side of the scrimmage line is as good or better than you, you don’t care what color, religion or nationality he is, you respect him. I’ve tried to live by that all my life.”
And so Duke Morrison went back to lugging props at the Fox studio in the summer of 1927, more or less planning on working there for a year, saving his money, and going back to USC in the fall of 1928.
In that summer of 1927, Wayne was working on another picture for John Ford.
Four Sons,
an epic in the style, if not the equivalent emotional impact, of Murnau’s
Sunrise. Four Sons
called for Morrison to wait for a door to open on the
One of Duke’s fraternity brothers set him up on a blind date with a girl named Carmen Saenz. They went to the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, then back to the girl’s house, where he first set eyes on Carmen’s sister, Josephine. And that, as they say, was that.
The Rendezvous became the place for Duke and Josie, as well as for a lot of other young couples. It was, remembered Lindsley Parsons, “a little thing right on Front Street there. . . . Josephine and her sister Carmen were the most beautiful girls in Balboa that summer, in fact I think any summer we went down there.”
The kids were all broke, which posed a problem because you had to buy a ticket for every dance. Morrison and Parsons grew skilled at scrounging discarded or lost tickets off the dance floor. If they found one, they would separate the pasteboard into two halves and get two dances for the price of none.
The actor William Bakewell had been dating Loretta Young and became close to her family and her sisters, who were all devout Catholics. “Josephine Saenz had gone to convent with Loretta, Polly Ann and Sally, and she became like a member of the family. She was over there all the time. And she started to go with this guy named Duke Morrison.”
Josephine Saenz was totally unlike any woman Duke had ever met. Specifically, she was totally unlike Mary Morrison. Josephine embodied class, breeding, intelligence, and composure. Her father, Dr. José Saenz, had a medical degree but had made his living operating a string of pharmacies. In 1921, Haiti, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador retained Saenz as their consul for the city of Los Angeles.
Duke seems to have committed to Josephine quickly, but Josephine . . . Josephine wasn’t too sure, and the Saenz family was definitely on the fence. The more they learned about the boy, the less sure they were. A football player from a broken marriage, who had lost his scholarship, who lived in Glendale, was in love with their ardently Catholic, aspiring socialite daughter from Hancock Park?
Working in Duke’s favor with the Saenz family was his total lack of pretense and his honesty. Working in Duke’s favor with Josephine were his looks. Despite the Saenz family’s discontent, Duke and Josie found ways to keep the relationship alive for the next several years, although Josie’s family forbade marriage until such time as Duke proved he could support his prospective wife and children in a suitable manner.
“Their friends told me they were great fun,” said Gretchen Wayne, the wife of Michael Wayne, and Josie’s daughter-in-law. “They loved games, loved jokes, loved to laugh. Her education didn’t encompass more than a year or two of college, but she was properly reared. And she was very smart, very good with math. She was a Roman Catholic, who seriously lived her religion. A great person.”
Duke never held a grudge about his misfortune at the USC football program; certainly, he became the most famous dropout USC ever had, and he followed the football program carefully. As Gretchen Wayne would observe, “You didn’t want to be around him if the Trojans lost.”
“I think the lesson you learn on the football field is basic,” he would say in later years. “If the player on the other side of the scrimmage line is as good or better than you, you don’t care what color, religion or nationality he is, you respect him. I’ve tried to live by that all my life.”
And so Duke Morrison went back to lugging props at the Fox studio in the summer of 1927, more or less planning on working there for a year, saving his money, and going back to USC in the fall of 1928.
In that summer of 1927, Wayne was working on another picture for John Ford.
Four Sons,
an epic in the style, if not the equivalent emotional impact, of Murnau’s
Sunrise. Four Sons
called for Morrison to wait for a door to open on the
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