John Wayne’s Pretty Darn American, Pard’ner

“Well listen here, pardner, she was just a stripper, she had no family, she can just disappear…”

~John “Marion” Wayne

In the classic song, “A Boy Named Sue,” Johnny Cash tells the story about a boy who had been given the unfortunate first name of “Sue” by a deadbeat father who he had never met.  Throughout the course of this epic piece of American music, Cash describes how the boy named Sue was forced to fight his way through school, due to the ridicule he received for his name, until he grew up to be a hardened man who could take on anyone.  Little did Johnny Cash know, but he was actually describing the story of another famous American who was born with a girl’s name.

That man would be Marion Mitchell Morrison, a.k.a. John Wayne.

This is the look of a man who has had sex with women he shares the same name with

John Wayne was born in 1907, in Winterset, Iowa, a small Midwestern town that somehow managed to be responsible for both John Wayne and George Washington Carver (historically known as “the man who made peanuts his bitch”).  Originally given the name of Marion Robert Morrison, his middle name was changed to Mitchell so his brother could be born with the very-much-not-a-girls-name-even-remotely name of Robert.  Seriously.  His life began with so many insults against his future masculinity that his parents were probably considering making him wear only tutus for his formative years while giving him the nickname of “Prison slut”.

John Wayne spent the majority of his early education involved in epic schoolyard fights that resembled that one scene in Gangs of New York.  Usually, a child would shout something like, “The hell kind of name is Marion?”  At this point, John Wayne would stare down the child and say in his terrifyingly deep 7 year old voice, “What was that, pardner?”

Tense silence would fall over the playground.  Tumbleweed would, erm, tumble.  Eventually, a dozen or so older children would grab chains and attack John Wayne.  Much in the same way that French soldiers would try to run across the trenches in World War I, they often made this march knowing that certain death lay ahead of them.  John Wayne’s permanent file indicates that he had 382 confirmed kills between elementary school and the beginning of high school, for which he received 48 hours of total detention.  The school system in the 1910s and 1920s was a hilarious joke.

Ha, God, the past was messed UP.

While sending in college applications on paper made from the flayed hides of his fallen enemies, John Wayne got accepted into USC to play on their football team, since they did not have anyone on the team to play the position of “Nuclear-weapon-grade-enforcer”.  After being kicked off the team, and seeing his athletic scholarship forfeited, after he was injured body surfing, John Wayne began working at Fox Studios, at first playing bit roles, until several prominent lead actors began dying from acute drinking-competitions-against-John-Wayne related illnesses.  When Wayne was cast in his first starring role, in 1930, for the film “The Big Trail,” director Raoul Walsh decided that Wayne had to change his name because, “The hell kind of name is Marion Morrison?”

Walsh initially decided on Anthony Wayne, after the Revolutionary War General with the balls-droppingly awesome nickname of “Mad Anthony” Wayne.  The studio rejected this, saying that the name of an American hero was “too Italian,” proving once again that movie studios are weirdly and overtly racist.  Seriously.

The Big Trail was a flop, and Wayne began partaking in several of his more prominent American hobbies- cigarette smoking, receding hairlines, and an aggressive hatred of communists.  Wayne was 32 when he was cast in his first hit film, “Stagecoach,” and his career took off.  As he began to blossom into stardom, the newspapers screamed at him.  “WAR!” The Washington Post said in font taking over half of the front page.  “PEARL HARBOR ATTAC-headline continued on page 2” read the New York Times.  “WE WERE NEVER REPUTABLE, WHOSE BANGING WHO?” asked the New York Post.  Amid all this turmoil, Wayne was unable to properly join the Army to partake in the one thing he was born to do.  Kill Nazis.  His age and family status meant he was not directly enlisted, and his film studio threatened legal action if he breached his contract to join the war.  As a result of missing out on his Nazi bloodlust, John Wayne decided to marry three latino women (yup, fact) and work on being the world’s first super-patriot, and acting in a whole mess of pretty badass World War II movies.

In fact, John Wayne became such a patriot, and such a communist hater, that Joseph Stalin, though a fan of John Wayne’s movies, had ordered Wayne’s assassination.  Fucking seriously.  When Stalin died before the order could be taken out (because, as many have learned in this harsh matter, you do not fuck with John Wayne), Khrushchev personally told Wayne that he had rescinded the order.

It is a well known fact that John Wayne was able to snap Communists in half using only his genitalia, but fewer know that he was so potent that he usually had to have sex from inside of a car (a Ford Mustang generally) with the woman standing on the other side of the door.  On the seven occasions where these steel reinforced precautions were not taken, it resulted in seven offspring from two different wives.  His fifth child was born in 1956, when Wayne was 49 and his wife was 20 (or, younger than two of Wayne’s previous children).  John Wayne was so American that he was able to impregnate and marry a 20 year old Peruvian chick from an aristocratic upbringing when he was nearly 50 years old.  Fact.

John Wayne was not able to have affairs, and as a result was a very faithful husband.  This is not due to a lack of opportunity, or desire, but simply because John Wayne would have to absolutely destroy a car in order to have an affair, and he was a very cost conscious individual.

Wayne was such a patriot for his country that, though he supported Richard “Daddy, what’s wrong with the bad man’s nose?” Nixon in his presidential race against John “I, er, ah, pork for freedom” Kennedy, when JFK was elected, Wayne stated, “I did not vote for him, but he’s my president, so I hope he does a good job.”  Rumors that he and JFK double-teamed Marilyn Monroe are greatly exaggerated, though Wayne did silently watch from the corner of the room.

John Wayne is so American that on April 26^th, 1936, he buried a time capsule to be opened in 50 years.  Fifty years later, in 1986, the time capsule was opened in an annual “John Wayne is so Goddamned American” ceremony.  Inside the capsule was a single piece of paper, that said, “boom, bitches.”  At that very moment, the Soviet nuclear reactor in Chernobyl exploded.  It was America’s most effective, and stealthiest, attack on USSR soil throughout the course of the entire Cold War.

When the Berlin Wall came down, the ghost of John Wayne was seen watching the events from the side, nodding proudly like Obi-Wan at the end of Return of the Jedi.  John Wayne is so American that when someone does an impersonation of John Wayne, they are more American than most state senators.  When John Wayne made controversial statements, he chose to do so in an interview for Playboy magazine, and in doing so he managed to increase sales of a magazine that is centered around showing womens’ naked bits and whatnots, this being the only time in history where, “I bought it for the articles,” was a legitimate excuse.  Seriously.

John Wayne had to film all of his scenes before noon, because by the afternoon he was a “mean drunk” (seriously).  John Wayne was so American that if someone burned an American flag in front of him, they would immediately stop and sew a new one.  But really, what’s most important is that, not only was John Wayne one of the greatest Americans of the so-called “greatest generation” (go to hell, Brokaw), but he managed to smear his Americanness all over cellophane, so that future generations can observe him and take note as to what it’s really like to be a goddamn American.  From his humble origins as a boy named Marion (seriously, Marion?), John Wayne was able to carve himself as an icon of all it means to be American.  And that’s something, isn’t it pilgrim?