Flag and Family in John Wayne’s Westerns: The Audience as Co-Conspirator

Abstract

M A X W E S T B R O O K The University ofTexas atAustin FlagandFamilyin John Wayne’sWesterns: TheAudience as Co-Conspirator Professional heroes in Western films are seldom allowed to be good husbands and fathers. Amateurs may fight a single battle and return to family life, but the skilled professional—sheriff, rancher, the one who has the ability to rescue ordinary folk—is consumed by duty and cannot be a family man. The hero of the West, like the tough detective in a big city back east, may enjoy a tender moment with a child or a would-be wife, but professional heroes are not presented as role models who show us what a good family man should be. John Wayne is different. He is widely credited with being a role model who enacts on the screen the best ofAmerican and family values. He has been called “one of the great defenders of the American nuclear family as a sacred institution,” the “almost perfect father figure”1 (Wayne 54). The narrative in his Westerns argues that crisis is the American way of life; therefore, the hero’s fanatic devotion to duty makes him the ideal American male. By ignoring wife and children—and at times the law—he demonstrates his love of wife and children and his respect for laws deeper than the written word. In John Wayne’s America, the necessity of defending a local and specific cause is promoted to a political prolegomena, and the professional hero is thereby granted dispensation for extremism and hypocrisy. In at least twenty-four of twenty-nine post-Stagecoach Westerns, John Wayne’s screen character is significantly involved in fatherly or avuncular duties.2The action may take place in Monument Valley, but family values are a major part of the story, and we are all supposed to be inspired by a screen image so persuasive it made John Wayne “the biggest box-office draw in film history” (Levy 17). He was “on the poll of the ten most popular stars” in America, “the most accurate and most 26 WesternAmerican Literature important in the industry, for an all-time record of 25 years, from 1949 to 1974. No other star, male or female, American or foreign, has been as popular as Wayne for so long a time, and consistently so” (Levy 17). When he lay dying, Maureen O’Hara and Elizabeth Taylor “im­ plored Congress to present Wayne with a special congressional gold medal of the kind given such national figures as the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindberg” (Zmijewsky 25). Congress agreed, and the words on the gold medal became famous: ‘John Wayne, American.”AJapa­ nese newspaper headlined his death with the announcement that “Mr. America is Dead.” Post Office employees in Brooklyn “threatened to walk off theirjobs if the lowered flag was raised. Americans all over the nation mourned the one man who epitomized their ideal of what an American should be” (Zmijewsky 25). President Jimmy Carter made this exaggerated praise official: ‘John Wayne was bigger than life. In an age of few heroes, he was the genuine article. But he was more than just a hero—he was a symbol of many of the most basic qualities that made America great. The rugged­ ness, the tough independence, the sense of personal conviction and courage—on and off the screen—reflected the best of our national character. Itwasbecause ofwhatJohn Wayne said aboutwhatwe are and what we can be that his great and deep love ofAmerica was returned in full measure” (Zmijewsky 25-26). A celluloid hero, however, is a pathetic choice for a “genuine” hero, and the widespread praise of our leading box office attraction becomes an overt contradiction when we examine what happens on the screen. Wayne’s films, specifically his Westerns, do not represent “the best of our national character,” nor do they represent what a good father and family man should be. Frequently,John Wayne plays the role ofa misogynist. In Tallin the Saddle, his hatred of women is the basis of an immediate bonding with Gabby Hayes. Wayne says, “I never feel sorry for anything that happens to a woman,” as Gabby nods and grins...