I'm not a John Wayne fan but he did make some good movies. He's been dead for thirty years now. My friend was named after him.

An American icon and a graduate of the Steven Segal school of acting .

The American Icon. Never took himself too seriously. Maybe a bit flawed in real-life but I can't imagine American cinema without him. "The Quiet Man", "Stagecoach", "Red River", "The Cowboys", "The Searchers", "Rio Bravo", "True Grit", "Rooster Cogburn", and many others. For a glimpse of the non-typical J.W. film see "The Long Voyage Home". Most of his best work was with John Ford. He always thought of himself as a set dresser who got lucky. He and Ward Bond went to USC to play football. After a serious injury Ward Bond got Wayne employment at a local film studio moving furniture, etc. for the film sets. He always had a great relationship with the blue-collar employees at the studios. He was one of them and never forgot it.

Unwatchable, one dimensional and with the most irritating  vocal delivery in Hollywood history. He played exactly the same role whether a cowboy or a soldier. And most of all unlike Audie Murphy, a genuine hero of WW2, Wayne spent his war acting as heroes.

John Wayne was an outstanding actor. His performances in Red River, The Searchers, Rio Bravo and The Shootist were beyond parallel. He was also the greatest movie star of all time and the most famous American of the 20th Century

Hat's off to you Duke! None of this misserable bunch they have in hollywood now is good enough to shine your boots!

The sexiest man there ever was.  I can't praise him enough.  Long live the Duke!

Great review, randy. Wayne was a good actor...a great American.

A Lion among sheep. Domminated every scene he was ever in, no matter who was sharing the scene with him, just by being there. He was a great actor, a great western actor and a great American.

The lefto academy denied him the Oscar for years because of politics. Finally after "True Grit" even that crowd had a twinge of conscience and gave him the award.

He had talent and depth, but oftentimes the script just called for John Wayne.

Underrated and overcriticized as far as his actual acting abilities are concerned. He started out in the black and white era as a very mediocre actor at best, but his life was one of transformation and metamorphosis. By the time that his career was near its end, he was refined and polished in every conceivable way. He couldn't play a wide array of roles but the ones that he did (primarily Westerns), he had as much screen presence, personality, and authority as anyone who's ever acted in the film industry. How can you not love John Wayne and love John Wayne movies. His presence was everything and made the movies what they were. Some of my personal favorites are Fort Apache, The Searchers, and MCQ.

"The Quiet Man" and "The Shootist" are good, but Wayne is strictly from a different era and is shockingly overrated and outdated. . .fat-guy-who-talks-funny does not make for toughness at all. . ."The Green Berets" alone induces giggles. . .

The Quiet Man is one of my favorite movies of all time. John Wayne was a great American who believed in America and its great potential. I admire him for what he stood for. We sure could use more men like him in Hollyweird today. John Wayne could kick George Clooney's ass, and would if he was still around.

the best

America cultural icon.

Boy do we need more like him around today!!!!!! We're stuck with the likes of Sean Penn etc.....

I respected his person. His movie persona always seemed to me, like a caricature of a man, just as Mae West was a caricature of a woman.

Ok I give John Wayne a 5 star because then the biggest John Wayne fan would give me 5 euro

I do like a good western...did John Wayne have a good western? True Grit was a very good movie, but did John Wayne invent type-casting? I think I enjoyed him more in an episode of The Lucy Show more than most movies I've seen him in.

hes sunday morning or afternoon entertainment, the western hero of them all. and he was truly the son of god

Not so much an actor as a personality, the personification of the rugged American individualist, battling Indians and Communists in the name of Mom and Apple Pie. If, like me, you thought the stereotype that Wayne personified was damaging and reprehensible, watching a Wayne film wasn't just an exercise in tedium. Indeed, it could be actively painful.

John Wayne has got to be one of the most over rated actors of all time. He's the same character in every movie he's ever in. Mr. Macho, he's part of the reason I can't stand westerns.

Truly a screen legend in his own time and for ever more. For those who say he was not a great actor, I can only say that you need to watch True Grit, Eldarado or the longest day. The man could act and he knew how to pick parts. His first staring film is Stage Coach and he stole the picture.

Greatest star the world has ever had. Too bad he's not still around.

Don't worry, I ain't gonna hit you mister..Like hell I ain't

One of a kind. Dominated the industry while he was alive and continues to cast a large shadow. Ironic that John Wayne's America was respected worldwide but George Bush's America is hated and feared.

Greatest star of all time. So much charisma and presence that he dominated the screen like no-one else. Showed great courage and leadership in his real life and aspired to the same values he projected on screen. We continue to miss him.

I cannot believe some of the negative comments here about John Wayne. He was the most popular and charismatic star of all time. There's no doubt John Wayne was as impressive in his real life as he was on screen - read the comments made by people who actually knew him. There's a pattern - strong secure men and women loved him, but weak insecure types hated his guts. Most the pansies who knock him down on this site for not enlisting in WW2 would run a million miles at the sound of a single bullet, let alone enlist themselves. John Wayne was directly responsible for the enlistment of thousands of soldiers (and you'll never read of them criticizing him), and worked so hard after WW2 to support American troops everywhere. James Stewart himself knew the Wayne and loved him.

I would actually give him 2* for being involuntarily funny and for the fact that he does have some kind of personality. However,his legacy is so incredibly negative.He should simply say sorry for every Indian he has killed in his Westerns,how phony, racially portrayed and unrealistic that was.As for the patriotic crap a la Green Berets-everyone is entitled to his opinion, but when you depict such a controversial subject in such a manner it is simply horrifying. At least Rambo was funny. American icon? Tell that to the millions that died in Vietnam.

A true character actor.

Was John Wayne a draft dodger? 10-Jul-1998 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Cecil: In your book The Straight Dope you were asked whether John Wayne had ever served in the military. You said no--that though Wayne as a youth had wanted to become a naval officer, during World War II, he was rejected for military service. However, it may be more interesting than that. According to a recent Wayne bio, for all his vaunted patriotism, Wayne may actually have tried to stay out of the service. --Virgiejo, via AOL Cecil replies: John Wayne, draft dodger? Oh, what delicious (if cheap) irony! But that judgment is a little harsh. As Garry Wills tells the story in his book John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity (1997), the Duke faced a tough choice at the outset of World War II. If he wimped out, don't be so sure a lot of us wouldn't have done the same. At the time of Pearl Harbor, Wayne was 34 years old. His marriage was on the rocks but he still had four kids to support. His career was taking off, in large part on the strength of his work in the classic western Stagecoach (1939). But he wasn't rich. Should he chuck it all and enlist? Many of Hollywood's big names, such as Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, and Clark Gable, did just that. (Fonda, Wills points out, was 37 at the time and had a wife and three kids.) But these were established stars. Wayne knew that if he took a few years off for military service, there was a good chance that by the time he got back he'd be over the hill. Besides, he specialized in the kind of movies a nation at war wanted to see, in which a rugged American hero overcame great odds. Recognizing that Hollywood was an important part of the war effort, Washington had told California draft boards to go easy on actors. Perhaps rationalizing that he could do more good at home, Wayne obtained 3-A status, deferred for [family] dependency reasons. He told friends he'd enlist after he made just one or two more movies. The real question is why he never did so. Wayne cranked out thirteen movies during the war, many with war-related themes. Most of the films were enormously successful and within a short time the Duke was one of America's most popular stars. His bankability now firmly established, he could have joined the military, secure in the knowledge that Hollywood would welcome him back later. He even made a half-hearted effort to sign up, sending in the paperwork to enlist in the naval photography unit commanded by a good friend, director John Ford. But he didn't follow through. Nobody really knows why; Wayne didn't like to talk about it. A guy who prided himself on doing his own stunts, he doesn't seem to have lacked physical courage. One suspects he just found it was a lot more fun being a Hollywood hero than the real kind. Many movie star-soldiers had enlisted in the first flush of patriotism after Pearl Harbor. As the war ground on, slogging it out in the trenches seemed a lot less exciting. The movies, on the other hand, had put Wayne well on the way to becoming a legend. Wayne increasingly came to embody the American fighting man, Wills writes. In late 1943 and early 1944 he entertained the troops in the Pacific theater as part of a USO tour. An intelligence bigshot asked him to give his impression of Douglas MacArthur. He was fawned over by the press when he got back. Meanwhile, he was having a torrid affair with a beautiful Mexican woman. How could military service compare with that? In 1944, Wayne received a 2-A classification, deferred in support of [the] national . . . interest. A month later the Selective Service decided to revoke many previous deferments and reclassified him 1-A. But Wayne's studio appealed and got his 2-A status reinstated until after the war ended. People who knew Wayne say he felt bad about not having served. (During the war he'd gotten into a few fights with servicemen who wondered why he wasn't in uniform.) Some think his guilty conscience was one reason he became such a superpatriot later. The fact remains that the man who came to symbolize American patriotism and pride had a chance to do more than just act the part, and he let it pass

The Duke was and is one of my all-time favorites. He is timeless and will live on forever. Political correctness and multiculturalism and all that other garbage did not exist until recently Wonderllama, killing commies was good!

Inspiration for all. Showed that not being able to act does not hinder one in a motion picture career. I find him boring.

Very underrated. Actually a great actor. Could be counted on to make you forget who he was pretty much every time. Took chances.

JW was the best should have stopped smoking sooner

The Duke, the best of them all.

Great actor, great American. Enough said.

Now here is a Man that cared about the people and his country.

What is the appeal of John Wayne? He played the same role or type of role in almost every movie. His only decent films are The Quiet Man which isn't a western, The Shootist, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Searchers. Still in his films he gives a bland, stoic performance.

I have tried with great effort to watch John Wayne movies, but everytime I do I get so bored that I stop after about 15 minutes usually. I personally think he is an actor that could barely do anything but western, and I never cared for his bad ass persona either, it irritated me for some reason....

I think this was actually a very good actor. Sometimes dismissed as a one trick pony, Wayne shows tremendous range in the Shootist, True Grit and the Cowboys.

John Wayne. Is great in so many ways. First off compaired to the weak spoiled actors of today he is much better. He isn't one of these baby limp wristed liberals of today. John was a strong proud to be an American type something that we don't get to see a much of now in todays actors.

Underrated by too many critics. Incredible in "The Searchers" & "The Sands of Iwo Jima." Played roles no one else could have been successful in. Is a standard bearer in the acting industry forever.

Actually, it's -5000. What a total loser. Some hero. He was a hero to most of the Hollywood establishment considering that they can only pretend to be somebody important to society. Of course they weren't going to pump up a veteran like Jimmy Stewart. He actually did his fighting in real life; something the clowns in Tinseltown just can't seem to get a grip on.

What can be said about John Wayne? It's an honor just to write something in his column. His lasting popularity endures and endures. A true legend in every sense of the word. My hero--forever.

don't really care for westerns

The definitive western actor. I love Clint Eastwood, but that title definitely goes to John Wayne. He's an idol of mine.

THE BEST THERE EVER WAS OR WILL BE

The only actor he could play was...John Wayne. Hardly any versatility at all. But I do love the movie the Quiet Man.

Truly dreadful. One of the worst actors ever to make it to "star" status. Played the same part time and time again, and each time it wasn't convincing. Stiff, turgid and mannered performances. A real tough guy who wussed it out during WWII, but was ultra gung-ho during the Viet Nam fiasco when other peoples' sons were getting their asses blown off. Tells you quite a bit about the so-called "man." A phony hypocrite from day one, and so bad on the screen that I'm embarassed for him.