description: Born Marion Robert Morrison, a high school and college football hero, the young actor who took the name John Wayne was for years featured in nothing but pedestrian Westerns. From there he moved on to become the leading man to many of the greatest women stars of that period, including Marlene Dietrich, Claire Trevor, Paulette Goddard, Jean Arthur, Claudette Colbert, Susan Hayward, and Joan Crawford. Then suddenly he emerged as that giant figure, Duke Wayne, a magnificent and wildly successful star in his own right, the closest associate and lifelong friend of the screen’s greatest director of the era, John Ford. Wayne is a man of many paradoxes. He was the most popular drawing card for decades but was consistently overlooked by the Oscar awards bestowers until, in the twilight of his career, he finally received that recognition. He is a 100 percent super-American, but all three of his marriages were to Latin women. He has been a sometimes misguided but consistently idealistic patriot, whose militantly conservative political convictions almost destroyed him for reasons he never comprehended. Maurice Zolotow has written a remarkably candid and objective biography about his friend. It is a book that any film fan will find engrossing, whether a Duke Wayne admirer or not, for it is an honest story of a truly epic figure.
language: English
title: Shooting Star : A Biography of John Wayne
titlecomplete: Shooting Star : A Biography of John Wayne
genres: Film, Biography, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 37
publisher: Simon & Schuster