Timur PANKOV
ALMATY, May 27
(THE GLOBE)
Marion Michael Morrison(John Wayne) was attending the University of Southern California on a football scholarship, when he stumbled into acting by virtue of his summer job as a laborer at Fox. On the studio lot, he met and befriended director-on-the-rise John Ford, in whose films he would occasionally pop up as an extra. Ever a commanding physical presence, Marion, billed as Duke Morrison, was eventually entrusted with several larger, but still largely insignificant, assignments in some of Ford�s late twenties films. In 1930, the director recommended him for the lead role in Raoul Walsh�s epic, The Big Trail. The lackluster reception that greeted the film certainly didn�t lead the newly baptized John Wayne to stardom; in fact, the newcomer was dropped by the studio not long after the picture tanked at the box office. What The Big Trail established, however, was Wayne�s ability to carry a film, and he subsequently slogged through roles in countless low-budget oaters and occasional bit parts in A-grade movies of the thirties. One of his more prominent assignments during this period of little advancement was his role as Stony Burke in eight installments of Republic�s tireless �Three Mesquiteers� series. Tireless was just the word to describe Wayne, who had been busting his hump as an unappreciated contract player for nigh on a decade by then; tireless would continue to be an applicable adjective throughout his amazingly prolific career as an actor, director, and producer.
As the forties drew to a close, there was no doubt that Wayne had become a star of staggering popularity, but he finally proved himself to actually be a fine actor, and thus worthy of all the puffery, by turning in more subtly nuanced performances in such late-decade films as Howard Hawks�s Red River (1948, as an uncompromising cattle baron) and Ford�s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949, as a mustachioed, due-for-retirement calvary captain). Wayne cemented his growing cinematic supremacy by establishing his own film production company, Wayne-Fellowes (later renamed Batjac), in association with his sons Michael and Patrick; the company had a tremendously successful track record, boasting such signature Wayne vehicles as Angel and the Badman (1947), Island in the Sky (1947), Hondo (1953), and The High and the Mighty (1954). Not that the fifties and sixties didn�t deliver a fair share of mediocre outings to outright missteps: when directors relied on the Duke persona to sell their lackluster projects, or when Wayne strained in ridiculous directions to prove himself capable of playing more than just the standard-issue calvaryman or soldier, the results were often unsatisfactory, if predictably lucrative (witness Wayne in the role of Mongol vanquisher Genghis Khan in 1956�s The Conqueror, for proof of the latter). And yet, during this era of easy coasting, Wayne delivered possibly the finest performance of his career, in Ford�s remarkable 1956 Western The Searchers�his mysterious and obsessive Ethan Edwards stands as one of the most compelling and troubling characterizations in the history of American cinema.
John Wayne, American actor, with over 200 movies in his list.
28 may 1908 - Ian Fleming was born (author: creator of Bond ... James Bond).
29 may 1917 John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born (35th U.S. President: the youngest man and 1st Roman Catholic ever elected to that office, the 1st to win a Purple Heart and the 4th U.S. President to be assassinated; 1st Pulitzer Prize winner: Profiles in Courage).
29 may 1957 LaToya Jackson was born (singer: The Jacksons; solo; Playboy photo spread).
30 may 1908 Mel Blanc (cartoon voice: �the man of a thousand voices�: Barney Rubble, Dino the Dinosaur, Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam, Quick Draw McGraw; actor: Jack Benny Show [radio]).
31 may 1908 Don Ameche (Dominic Amici) was born (Academy Award-winning actor: Cocoon [1985]; Trading Places, Corinna Corinna; inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame [1992]).
31 may 1965 Brooke Shields was born (the Ivory Snow baby; actress: The Blue Lagoon, Pretty Baby, Brenda Starr, The Seventh Floor, Backstreet Dreams, Stalking Laura).
29 may 1910 An airplane raced a train � and won -- on this day! The race, from Albany, New York to New York City was worth a $10,000 prize for aviator, Glenn Curtiss. It was sponsored by those promotion wizards at the New York �World� newspaper. Today, airplanes regularly beat trains but, back in those days, the newfangled contraptions had yet to prove themselves.
28 may 1982 The legendary train, �Orient Express�, made popular through Agatha Christie�s thrilling mystery novel, �Murder on the Orient Express�, was reborn this day. The 26-hour train trip resumed across the European continent after a long respite.
28 may 1987 Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, landed a private plane in Moscow�s Red Square after evading Soviet air defenses.
29 may 1985 was a day when 35 people were killed in rioting that erupted between British and Italian spectators at the European Cup soccer final in Brussels, Belgium.
The Kosteyev State National Museum. Exhibition of the works of S. Kalmykov, I. Itkind, V. Eifert, and Rudolf Nuriev�s painting.
From 10.00 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. Closed on Monday.
All Over the Globe is published by IPA House.
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