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Posted February 1, 2007
John Wayne, perhaps America’s most recognized movie star of all time, spent only six years in Iowa. But his notoriety is still celebrated in Winterset, where he was born on May 26, 1907.

Winterset residents knew him as Marion Robert Morrison, a little boy who played cowboy in the aisles of his father’s pharmacy. But the world knew him as “Duke,” an  Academy Award winning actor whose career began in silent movies in the 1920s. He was a major star from the 1940s to the 1970s. In 1999,
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the American Film Institute named Wayne among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at No. 13. A Harris Poll released in 2007 placed Wayne at No. 3 among America's favorite film stars, the only deceased star on the list and the only one who had appeared on every year's version of the poll.

John Wayne’s father, Clyde Leonard Morrison, was of Irish and Scottish descent and the son of an American Civil War veteran; his mother, Mary Alberta Brown, was of Scots-Irish descent. Wayne's family homesteaded in Palmdale, CA., where he rode his horse to school and then moved to Glendale, California in 1911; it was a local firemen at the firehouse that was on his way to
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school in Glendale who started calling him "Little Duke" because he never went anywhere without his Airedale Terrier dog, Big Duke.

Duke Morrison's early life was marked by poverty; his father, a pharmacist, was a man who did not manage money well. Duke was a good and popular student. Tall from an early age, he was a star football player for Glendale High School and was recruited by the University of Southern California.

Wayne applied to the U.S. Naval Academy, but was not accepted. He instead attended the University of Southern California majoring in pre-law, where he was a member of the Trojan Knights. Wayne also played on the USC football team under legendary coach Howard Jones until a surfing injury cut short his his athletic career.

While at the university, Wayne began working at a film studio recommended by his USC coach. Western star Tom Mix got him a summer job in the prop department in exchange for football tickets, and Wayne soon moved on to bit parts. He appeared in his first film in 1930 but it wasn’t until 1939, when he appeared in Stagecoach, that he became a star. According to the Internet Movie Database, Wayne played the male lead in 142 of his film appearances. One of Wayne's most praised roles was in The High and the Mighty (1954), directed by William Wellman and based on a novel by Ernest K. Gann.

John Wayne won a Best Actor Oscar in True Grit (1969). Wayne was also nominated for Best Actor in Sands of Iwo Jima, and as the producer of Best Picture nominee The Alamo, one of two films he directed. The other was The Green Berets (1968), one of the few films made during the Vietnam War to support the conflict.

Wayne was married three times, always to Spanish-speaking brides; to the late Josephine Alicia Saenz, Esperanza Baur (deceased), and Pilar Palette.

John Wayne died of stomach cancer on June 11, 1979, and was interred in the Pacific View Memorial Park cemetery in Corona del Mar. His enduring status as an iconic American was formally recognized by the United States Congress on May 26, 1979 when he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. The medal was presented to the family of John Wayne in a ceremony held on March 6, 1980 and is now at the John Wayne Birthplace Museum in Winterset.