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John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa in 1907, but his parents soon decided they wanted Robert for their next son's name, and changed his middle name to Mitchell (one wonders if he would have been as big a star as "Marion Mitchell Morrison"!). His family moved to Glendale, California in 1911, and there he had a huge dog named Duke, and people started calling him that as well (and the nickname stuck, and he would later name his movie horse that, and eventually everyone would refer to him that way). He went to the University of Southern California (USC), and played on the football team, but he got injured and that ended football for him, and he lost his scholarship and left school. Starting in 1926, he got bit parts in many movies, including in ones for director John Ford. In 1930. after just one tiny credited role he was given the lead in The Big Trail, a major Fox western, and his name was changed at that time. But the movie was filmed in a new 70mm process, and as the Great Depression was kicking in, few theaters ordered the new equipment, so it was mostly shown in a regular version, and the movie did poorly, and that looked like the end of Wayne's career. But Wayne refused to give up, and he made ten minor appearances the next year and a half before he got the lead in a low budget serial, The Hurricane Express, and Warner Bros signed him to appear in a series of B-westerns (he had made an impression in some supporting roles in Tim McCoy movies). In 1933 he starred in a modern serial version of The Three Musketeers, and after his Warners westerns he moved to Poverty Row filmmakers, Monogram, Mascot and Republic, appearing in over 50 movies (mostly B-westerns) between 1932 and 1939. In 1939 he got his second giant break when John Ford gambled his major production Stagecoach on Wayne (but only after Gary Cooper turned down the part) and the movie was a big hit, and Wayne was finally a major star. He would go on to make over 20 films with director John Ford, including some of his very best, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). In 1959 he made one of his very best non-John Ford movies, Rio Bravo, for Howard Hawks. In 1969, he was sentimentally awarded the Best Actor Oscar for True Grit, and this was perhaps the greatest "robbery" in the history of the Oscars, for he won over Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, who were both nominated for Midnight Cowboy! He passed away in 1979 at the age of 72. John Wayne is a true American icon, and along with Marilyn Monroe, among the absolute most recognizable actors there is, even in the present day, decades after his passing. He made 170 movie appearances, and while many are very forgettable, some of them rank with the finest movies ever made, and if you have never seen his movies, I urge you to seek out those listed above, especially The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Rio Bravo, because both quickly show you just how much "larger than life" John Wayne really was! Some of his other movies include: The Sands Of Iwo Jima (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), Big Jake, and The Comancheros.

And now you can see headshots of John Wayne in our gallery, Through The Years: John Wayne (from 1930 to 1979)! AND Loretta Young was born Gretchen Young in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1913. Those of you who remember her as the super-elegant, proper, sweet and saintly well-dressed beauty from her 1950s TV show may well be surprised to learn of her earlier life! Her parents separated when she was three, and her mother moved her and her two older sisters to Los Angeles. She had some minor film roles as a child, and then went to parochial school, but when she was 14 she returned to acting. At 15 she got a huge break, in Laugh, Clown, Laugh, where she played the role of the orphan adopted as a child by circus clown Lon Chaney Sr., and when she becomes a teen Chaney decides he is in love with her and wants to marry her! Between 1928 and 1933 she appeared in an amazing 44 movies, most for First National, often in very sexy roles, in movies like They Call It Sin, Life Begins (when she played a female convict who gives birth in prison), Play-Girl, and Too Young to Marry. Audiences loved this young, sexy child-like actress with giant eyes and couldn't get enough of her! In 1933 Loretta, who had just turned 20, but had already been in 50 movies, left First National for Fox (soon to merge with Twentieth Century Pictures and become 20th Century Fox) and at first she played some similar roles to what she had played earlier (like the starring role in Born to Be Bad), but she soon was getting a variety of more substantial roles. In 1930, Loretta had married co-star Grant Withers, but the marriage was annulled less than a year later. In 1935 she co-starred in The Call of the Wild with Clark Gable, and she had a an alleged affair with Gable (she later stated that he he acquaintance raped her) that resulted in Young getting pregnant. Since Gable was married, the resulting scandal might well have ruined both their careers, so Young took a long "vacation"! She returned to Hollywood with not one, but two babies, and made the bizarre announcement that this single 22 year old was "adopting" two babies! Apparently she knew that the public would catch on if she returned with just one baby, so she found another baby to adopt, and then pretended to adopt both babies, and somehow she pulled it off (maybe the public really knew, but liked her so much they forgave her!). Only late in her life would she admit that her daughter was actually her and Gable's baby, but photos of their child made that obvious, for she looked like a perfect merge of Young and Gable! Young resumed being a leading lady and was active in movies through the rest of the 1930s, and 1940s. In 1940 she married Tom Lewis, with whom she had two more children. In 1947, Young (who was still quite beautiful, in spite of having starred in movies for 20 years) had one of her best years ever, starring in The Bishop's Wife, The Farmer's Daughter (winner of the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), and The Perfect Marriage, all in the same year! In 1949 she was in Come To The Stable (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), and in 1953 she moved to TV, starring in what is today called "The Loretta Young Show", but which was actually called "Letter to Loretta", and it had a different drama each week, all of which starred Loretta. It was one of the most popular shows of the 1950s In 1963 she retired from TV, and in 1969 she divorced Lewis, and from 1963 to 1986, she did not appear in any TV or movie role until she re-surfaced in a TV movie in 1986 and another in 1989, looking wonderful! She passed away in 2000 at the age of 87, after being married to famous designer Jean Louis from 1993 until he passed away in 1997 AND William Powell was an actor from the 1920s to the 1960s. He was born in 1892 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and he was far from an overnight success. He became a stage actor when he was 20, and it would be 12 years before he went to Hollywood, and for the first seven years, he worked for Paramount Pictures, mostly playing villains! He became a star with The Canary Murder Case in 1929, which was made as a silent movie, but remade with sound, and it was Powell's wonderful voice that made him a star. In 1931, he switched to Warner Bros., and then in 1934 to MGM, where he became a top star, first with Myrna Loy in Manhattan Melodrama, and then with her again in The Thin Man the same year (he was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this first film in the series). He had been married to Carole Lombard from 1931 to 1933 (and they made My Man Godfrey together, for which he was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award), and he was also very memorable in his movies with Kay Francis, which included One Way Passage. In 1935, he made Reckless with Jean Harlow, and the two were engaged, but she became ill, passing away from kidney failure in 1937. Powell took a year off after her death, but returned to make many Thin Man sequels and other successful movies. In 1940, he married Diana Lewis after only knowing her for three weeks, and she was 27 years his junior, but their marriage lasted the rest of his life! As he aged, he seamlessly moved to older leading parts and character roles, including in Life With Father (for which he was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award), Mister Roberts, and scores of others! He retired in 1955, and lived a quiet life until he passed away in 1984, at the age of 91. He lived a most remarkable life!

Important Added Info: Note that this news photo, which measures 7 1/4" x 9" [18 x 23 cm], shows John Wayne and his wife eating with Loretta Young and William Powell in the famed Brown Derby restaurant in Beverly Hills before attending a movie premiere in 1939.

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