On the 100th anniversary of John Wayne's birth, the Duke still swaggers through the American psyche as not just an actor, but a patriot - his centennial spawning fond remembrance, and perhaps a few small protests on the side.
pervade his memory. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Garry Wills, who wrote John Wayne's America in 1997, described Wayne as "the most popular movie star ever, but also the most polarising.
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symbolise so many things: rugged masculinity, the frontier, even America itself. The Duke has remained, in the truest sense, an icon.
For many, an entire way of life is epitomised in the tired, unblinking eyes that peered knowingly from his cocksure pose.
His voice, too, seems etched in the collective memory: With a simple "pilgrim," a whole lost world is summoned.
Wayne, born Marion Robert Morrison, would have turned 100 on Saturday. He died at 72 of stomach cancer in June 1979 after a career that spanned more than 170 films.
He didn't win an Academy Alamo, which he directed and produced.)
To this day, he still ranks atop polls rating the most adored Hanks.
Nostalgia for strong, silent heroes like those Wayne portrayed He seldom deviated from heroic roles, often set in the West or on the battlefield.
Among his most beloved and acclaimed films are His range was limited, but he mined a narrow path of the his iconic stature.
"When I started, I knew I was no actor, and I went to work on this Wayne thing," he once said. "I figured I needed a gimmick, so I dreamed up the drawl, the squint and a way of moving meant to throw a bottle at your head as not.
I practiced in front of a mirror."
profession that values, above all, malleability. If you want to be an actor, study Brando.
But if you want to be a movie star, study Wayne.
"He never tricked the audience with the characters he played," says Gretchen Wayne, who heads her late husband Michael Wayne's film company, Batjac Production, which was formed in 1954 by her "His films started in the late '20s, early '30s, so there's three generations of people who have grown up with him."
contemporaries: Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, whose centennial was also this month.
Unlike some of the stars of his day, Wayne never served in World War II, ironic since General Douglas MacArthur said he "represented himself." He was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 1979 shortly before his death.
Jim Olson, a Sam Houston State University history professor who co-wrote the 1995 biography, John Wayne: American, believes Wayne's being a fervent anti-communist and symbol of American ideals.
"Wayne was a confused young man," says Olson. "He sort of grew values he ended up portraying on screen. His screen image and his time until the image on screen became his alter ego.
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Especially in his later years, Wayne came to symbolise political conservatism and a dedication to country.
assassinate him, according to Michael Munn's 2005 biography, Wayne famously said, "I always thought I was a liberal. I came right-wing conservative extremist.
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He angered more people with his support of the Vietnam War, film he co-directed and starred in.
"Wayne lived in a world of absolutes. He did not like ambiguity," says Olson.
"He lived in a world where, in his mind, right was right and wrong was wrong. And evil was real and evil had to be crushed with violence if necessary."
It's been not only 100 years since his birth, but nearly three decades since his death.
Yet Wayne still remains one of the most recognisable faces in the world. He is, as New York Times film critic Vincent Camby once wrote, "marvelously indestructible.
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