John Wayne, World War II and the Draft

[Freedom Is Not Free]

by

Dan Gagliasso



John Wayne has been on people’s minds lately. Dick Cavett recently
wrote a nostalgic New York Times piece about his lone meeting

with Hollywood’s “Duke.” He also told of the meeting on the Dennis Miller Show. Meanwhile,
liberal author Gary Wills, presumably an expert because of his 1992 book
John Wayne’s America; the Politics of Celebrity, was
on another radio show loudly exhorting Wayne as a draft dodger during
World War II. Oh, the hypocrisy of it all, Wills went on with glee that
America’s biggest media patriot had shirked service during one of the
nation’s most trying times. Perhaps Cavett and Wills were both reacting
to last years Harris Poll
where amazingly Wayne was still ranked third amongst America’s favorite
male film stars. Wayne is the only deceased actor on the list and the
only one to have appeared in the top ten every year since the poll was
started in 1994, despite the fact that he died in 1979.

Wayne once said, “It’s kind of sad when normal love of country makes you a super patriot.” That kind of honest sentiment that came across on
film has helped the “Duke” maintain such a revered place in so many
American hearts and minds.

The charges of Wayne being a “draft dodger” are not new and with a simple Google search one can find any number of far left types
absolutely blowing their “peace and love” credentials over Wayne and his
lack of service in World War II. The truth is far more complex and even
“hidden in plain sight” than one would think.

Upon graduating from Glendale High School in 1925, Wayne applied to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, hoping to live out his dream of
being a career Naval officer. He came close but was instead chosen the
first alternate candidate.

By the start of World War II Wayne had been suffering for years from a badly torn shoulder muscle incurred in a body surfing accident that
cost him his football scholarship at USC in 1927. He also had a bad back
from performing his own stunts during ten years acting in “B” Westerns.
Moreover, he suffered from a chronic ear infection, resulting from
hours of underwater filming on Cecil B. De Mille’s Reap the Wild
Wind in
1941. Had Wayne actually undergone a pre-induction physical, he might
indeed have been classified 4-F.

According to Randy Roberts and James Olson’s top notch John Wayne American, as a married but separated father of four and thirty-four years old in
1942 Wayne was classified by the Selective Service as 3-A (deferred for
family dependency). In 1944 as the U.S. Military feared a manpower
shortage he was reclassified 1-A (draft eligible). There is no record
that he disputed this reclassification but his employer, Republic
Studios, did and requested he be given a 2-A classification (deferred in
the national interest, i.e., war bond drives, visiting the troops,
etc.). Selective
Service records for World War II are spotty at best, many having
been destroyed, but surviving records indicate these claims were filed
“by another,” i.e. Republic Studio’s
legal department. In fact, a letter from Republic Studios head Herbert
Yates threatened to sue Wayne for breach of contract should he leave the
studio for volunteer military service, though it is doubtful he would
have carried through with the threat. But Wayne was indeed Republic’s
biggest moneymaker during the war and that studio’s only “A” star at the
time.

Yet, according to director John Ford’s grandson, in 1943 John Wayne tried to get a commission in the Marine Corps and get
attached to Ford’s O.S.S.
(the forerunner of the C.I.A.) Field
Photographic Unit. In Pappy; the Life of John Ford, Dan
Ford says emphatically “…that the billets were frozen in 1943. John
(Ford) couldn’t get Wayne in as an enlisted man, much less an officer.”

For Duke; the Life and Image of John Wayne Ron Davis interviewed over seventy Wayne intimates including Jimmy Stewart,
Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Harry Carry Jr., Robert Stack and Gene Autry, who
all served during World War II. He never noted criticism of Wayne on
the draft issue from any of them.

There is a letter from Wayne to Ford in May of 1942 in the John Ford Papers at Indiana State University quoted by Davis in which
Wayne practically begs his mentor to find a way for him to join up:
“Have you any suggestions on how I should get in? Can you get me
assigned to your outfit, and if you could, would you want me? How about
the Marines? You have Army and Navy men under you. Have you any Marines
or how about a Seabee or what would you suggest or would you? No I’m not
drunk. I just hate to ask for favors, but for Christ sake you can
suggest can’t you? No kidding, coach who’ll I see.” No response by Ford
has yet surfaced but these don’t sound like the words of a man shirking
his duty. Wayne’s sometimes secretary at Republic, Catalina Lawrence,
remembered writing letters to various military officials inquiring about
possible service during this time period.

There has always been a suspicion that Ford refused to intercede on Wayne‘s behalf because he knew that with so many other male “A” stars in
uniform that his friend would have an excellent chance of becoming a
major star. Also, as great a director as Ford was he could often display
a manipulative and sadistic side a mile wide. He might have refused to
help in order to have something that he knew was important to the actor
over Wayne’s head for the rest of his life.

Ford’s Field Photo Unit was no rear echelon cakewalk either, composed mainly of cameramen, sound men and editors with Ford as the boss. They
were often right in the thick of things as they were on June 4, 1942 at
the decisive naval battle at Midway where Ford himself was wounded by
shrapnel. Two of Ford’s cameramen were killed during the war, Junius
Stout and Arthur Meehan, both sons of well-known Hollywood
cinematographers.

By 1943, with officer’s slots all filled, the only way Wayne could have gone into the service was as an army private; he had waited too
long. Years later Wayne told Dan Ford that as a private, “I felt it
would be a waste of time to spend two years picking up cigarette butts. I
thought I could do more for the war effort by staying in Hollywood.”
Almost all of the stars who served went in the armed forces knowing they
would receive officer’s commissions. Most stars in the service found
they were relegated to public relations duties out of harm’s way
strictly for morale reasons. Adolph Hitler, a huge Clark Gable fan,
reportedly put a bounty out for Gable’s capture Both Gable and Jimmy
Stewart managed to cajole their way into combat, Gable in charge of a
film crew aboard a B-17 and replacing wounded gunners more than once
and Stewart flying twenty combat missions as the pilot of a B-24.

In 1993 Dan Ford, a decorated Vietnam combat officer, told Wayne biographer Davis, “It must have weighed heavily on him which way to go.
But here was his chance and he knew it. He was an action leading man,
there were a lot of roles for him to play. There was a lot of work in
”A” movies, and this was a guy who had made eighty “B” movies. He had
finally moved up to the first rank. He was in the right spot at the
right time with the right qualities and willing to work hard. Would I
have done any different? The answer is hell no.”

Then in 2003 the above document surfaced in a National Archives traveling exhibit that at the time stirred no great interest — John Wayne’s application to
the O.S.S. On page twenty-three in a Los Angeles Times Magazine
article dated September 21, 2003 Coming
Soon: Living History On Exhibit are photos of two pages of at
least twelve of Wayne’s August 2, 1943 application SA-1, page eleven
marked in red pencil at the top “22087.” There is no doubt it is Wayne,
he uses his birth name of Marion Robert Morrison, his middle name being
changed to Mitchell after the birth of his younger brother Robert and
his next of kin is listed as his then estranged wife Josephine Morrison
with Mrs. John Wayne in parenthesis. Here for the first time is the
first hard evidence that Wayne volunteered for potentially dangerous
service with the equivalent of today’s C.I.A., and the papers are not
out of someone’s attic, but official government documents. The only way
Wayne’s application would have wound up in the National Archives is if
it had actually been submitted to the O.S.S. The National Archives was
created in 1934 to house and manage all federal records, including
documents, photos and film, and now includes well over 4 billion items.

According to Roberts and Olson Wayne’s Republic Studios secretary remembered typing a letter in the spring of 1943 inquiring about
openings in John Ford’s O.S.S. Photo Unit. A navy official responded
in May that the navy and marine allotments for Ford’s unit were filled,
but there was room for Wayne in the unit under the army’s allotment.
Wayne secured the application and we now know he turned it in. Dan
Ford recalled that Wayne told him he had been approved by O.S.S.
commander William
Donovan to join the Field Photographic Unit, but that the letter
went to his estranged wife Josephine’s home and she never told him about
it. The National Archives documents list her address as the same
address as Wayne’s, the family home at 312 North Highland Avenue, Los
Angeles. By the summer of 1943 Wayne had moved out and was staying at
the famous Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, though he still
visited his children at the Highland Avenue home. The dates and
sequence of time seem to line up to support Wayne’s story, though
additional information is needed to document the last part of the puzzle
conclusively.

Wayne did do a USO tour in early 1944 in the Pacific and was asked by John Ford to keep
his eyes out for O.S.S. commander William Donovan. The Pacific Theater
commander General
Douglas MacArthur was highly suspicious of the freewheeling O.S.S.
and Donovan, who Ford was serving under, wanting to keep them from
operating in his area of responsibility. Wayne is quoted in Dan Ford’s
book that “I got to go places the average entertainer wouldn’t get to
go… but I never did catch up with MacArthur. When I got back to the
States I made my report, and they gave me a plaque saying I had served
in the O.S.S. But it was a copperhead, something Jack (Ford) had set up.
It didn’t mean anything.” When the certificate was sent to Ford’s home
to give to Wayne, he didn’t even bother to pick it up and it remained
amongst the director’s personal effects until his death.

That Wayne acknowledged that the recognition was meaningless, says a great deal, given the bloated egos of many actors, especially today, who
are more than willing to exaggerate their own perceived accomplishments
far beyond the credible. This also seems to raise doubt that there was
any connection between Wayne’s O.S.S. application and the organization’s
recognition of his “report” to William Donovan. If Wayne didn’t value
the recognition in the first place, why bother to go through a formality
to receive it.

On that same USO tour Wayne made it to dangerous combat zones where Japanese bombing runs and enemy infiltration occurred routinely. Not
really a performer in the singing, dancing or comedy sense, mainly he
just talked with regular grunt troops staying up drinking locally brewed
“jungle juice” and swapping stories. He brought back vivid stories
about these ordinary servicemen, “They’re where 130 degrees is a cool
day, where they scrape flies off, where matches melt in their pockets
and Jap daisy-cutter bombs take limbs off at the knee. What the guys
down there need are letters and snap shots, cigars and lighters,
phonograph needles and radios. They need the support and love of
Americans back home.”

John Wayne was a patriot but not a hero, and he would have been the first to tell anyone that, though his courageous battle with cancer
displayed the kind of understated heroics many could relate to. But if
you watch some of Wayne’s best films his representation of a hero was
certainly of great value and still has great value. He once explained
the appeal of his image quite succinctly, “I define manhood simply; men
should be tough, fair, and courageous, never petty, never looking for a
fight, but never backing down from one.” So here’s one for the “Duke,”
he may not have been a military hero, but we now have proof that he did
actually volunteer for service in World War II.