The John Wayne Filmography - Hardcover

Landesman, Fred

9780786417797: The John Wayne Filmography

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 078641779X ISBN 13: 9780786417797

Publisher: McFarland Publishing, 2004

Decades after his death, annual Gallop polls reveal that Marion Morrison is still firmly implanted among the top-ten favorite motion picture celebrities and American heroes. Most of us know this box office star as John Wayne. This comprehensive volume covers his expansive film career, from 1926 to 1976. Listed in alphabetical order are entries on films such as Angel and the Badman and Noah's Ark that exemplify the more than 170 films that the actor worked on. Each entry includes the film's date, run time, cast and crew credits, reviews, and a synopsis. Also under each entry is a special section devoted to rare information and interesting details such as where the productions were shot, budgets, costs, salaries, box-office performance, alternate casting and what competition existed for the moviegoer audience. Also included in this reference work are over 650 capsule biographies of the talent that shared the screen with the actor and worked on the productions, and over 800 contemporary reviews and commentary from such diverse sources as The New York Times, Hollywood Reporter, and Life Magazine. There is a series of five helpful Appendices: Appendix A lists films by order of their release dates; Appendix B lists Wayne's fellow actors and colleagues and tells under which entry the relevant capsule biography may be located; Appendix C offers specific review information for the films; Appendix D provides facts on the biggest box office films; and Appendix E details the most popular films on television.

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About the Author:

Employed by Boeing for almost a decade, Fred Landesman has worked in the Program area for the International Space Station project. He has authored numerous articles for film journals and served as the primary research source for an Arts & Entertainment biography on John Wayne. He lives in Chatsworth, California.

From Booklist:

John Wayne endures, and a filmography of this celluloid hero not only traces his career but reflects much of the U.S. ideology of rugged independence and down-to-earth practicality that he projected onscreen.

Landesman's introduction reviews Wayne's career, noting the mentality of the studios and the critics along the way. It should be noted that the rest of the book does not focus on Wayne per se but rather discusses each movie as a separate entity. The nearly 200 films are arranged alphabetically; one of the appendixes lists them chronologically from 1926 to 1976. Wayne started as a production crew member and extra during his University of Southern California college football days, so the earliest film entries note his role as a stand-in or prop boy (e.g., Brown of Harvard, 1926). Entries vary in length from a half page to four pages. Each one includes the film's date and length, cast, crew, review excerpts, plot synopsis (often taken directly from contemporaneous newsletters and press releases), and notes. Notes vary in content and length but usually include production cost, Wayne's salary, opening venue, minibiographies of directors or selected cast members,^B and other films released at the same time. It is not clear how the author chose whom to cover in these notes, which is a weakness. Furthermore, the notes are printed as one long paragraph, so the different subject matter cannot be easily distinguished; boldface type for the minibiography names also would have helped readability.

Besides the chronological appendix, there are appendixes of box-office hits, most popular Wayne films shown on TV, an extensive bibliography, and unreleased movies featuring Wayne as well as released movies where someone else took over Wayne's role. This latter appendix is probably the most intriguing; imagine Wayne in High Noon or Patton. An index of people and movies concludes the volume.

This filmography covers all of Wayne's movies and shows his range from sports to comedy, from westerns to war. Recommended for large motion-picture collections. Lesley Farmer
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved

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