Here’s Why John Wayne Never Served In WWII

It’s all the more shocking considering that Wayne’s lack of military service could have had a real effect on his career. In the 1940s, you see, men who were deemed “draft dodgers” could expect their peers to look down on them. And Wayne was actually surrounded by people who had enlisted and done their part for the war effort – Clark Gable, Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart among them. But was the actor really a draft dodger?

Perhaps he did want to serve but was unable to? Or maybe he enjoyed the Hollywood lifestyle so much that leaving it for the military was virtually unthinkable? Maybe it was some combination of all of these things? As with many things surrounding Wayne, the real reason for him not serving is somewhat controversial.

It could even be argued that Wayne’s public persona was itself carefully constructed. As fans know, the actor didn’t grow up with the name under which he became famous. Instead, he was originally known as Marion Mitchell Morrison. The nickname “Duke” was given to him after a childhood dog.

And young Marion was named after his grandfather, who, interestingly, was a veteran of the American Civil War. This first Marion Mitchell Morrison signed up for the Union Army when he was still a teenager. He later sustained several injuries in combat, apparently only surviving the 1863 Battle of Pine Bluff by playing dead.

The older Morrison apparently had an injury that sometimes caused him headaches for the rest of his life. And after he left the army, he married, settled down on a farm and ultimately had four kids. By the end of Morrison’s life, however, he was in such ill health that he was placed in a sanatorium, where the grandchild who bore his name would sometimes visit him.

Did the young Marion Morrison think about the horrors of war whenever he saw his grandfather? We may never really know. Yet the star didn’t only take his original name from a veteran, but part of his screen name, too. Specifically, the last part of that famous moniker was in honor of Revolutionary War general Anthony Wayne.

Wayne didn’t actually pick his own screen name, mind you. That came courtesy of The Big Trail director Raoul Walsh and Fox Studios head Winfield Sheehan. And before that, the actor was credited under the name Duke Morrison. Gradually, though, he settled into the persona of the man whom the world now knows as John Wayne.

And after performing in a lot of B movies, Wayne properly broke through with the John Ford film Stagecoach. Ford had insisted on casting Wayne, reportedly believing that he had what it took to become a major star. The director was right, too. Stagecoach was a massive hit and turned Wayne into an A-lister.

But no matter how famous Wayne became, some were of the opinion that he had shirked his responsibilities during the war. Ford apparently wasn’t impressed, for one. Reportedly, the filmmaker criticized Wayne for pursuing his career as a film star while the war raged on.

There’s even a story that Ford was once sufficiently angry to humiliate Wayne in the presence of a movie crew. In the 1945 film They Were Expendable, Wayne plays a soldier – a role he hadn’t experienced in real life. And during filming, Ford allegedly said to his lead actor, “Duke, can’t you manage a salute that at least looks like you’ve been in the service?” In response to this slight, Wayne supposedly left the set in a rage.

Yet given the realities of World War II, one may sympathize with Wayne’s seeming reluctance to fight. It was, after all, a hard and dangerous situation for a person to put themselves in, and many men who might’ve found themselves in Wayne’s privileged position may not have wanted to leave it for a battlefield.

Nevertheless, Wayne would go on to make comments that could be construed as hypocritical. At the height of the Vietnam War, for instance, he reportedly called the men who didn’t enlist “soft.” And while by then the actor was too old to fight in Vietnam himself, he seemingly pushed others towards serving via the medium of film.

In 1968, for instance, Wayne created and starred in a movie called The Green Berets. And it’s since been argued that the work is no more than propaganda – an accusation lent some credence, perhaps, by the fact that the Pentagon had authority over the script. Wayne also received approval from President Lyndon B. Johnson to make the film.

And as you may have guessed, the movie is devotedly in favor of American involvement in the Vietnam War. “What’s going on here is communist domination of the world!” a character even announces at one point. It’s up to Colonel Mike Kirby, as portrayed by Wayne, to convince everyone that the war is important and necessary, then. By the end, even a left-wing journalist is swayed.

But The Green Berets was, to put it mildly, not well-received by critics. The New York Times’ Renata Adler wrote, for instance, that the film “becomes an invitation to grieve – not for our soldiers or for Vietnam (the film could not be more false or do a greater disservice to either of them) but for what has happened to the fantasy-making apparatus in this country.”

Nor was The Green Berets Wayne’s only propaganda piece during the Vietnam War, as in 1970 he also hosted a documentary called No Substitute for Victory. And Wayne’s narration in the movie criticizes those standing against the conflict. Quoting Abraham Lincoln, the actor opens the film by saying, “To sin by silence when you should speak out makes cowards of men.”

Indeed, Wayne makes it very clear throughout the documentary where his sympathies lie. “The street demonstrators demand that we get out of Southeast Asia so that there will be peace. Where do they get the idea that there’ll be peace just because we quit?” he said. He also seemed to blame America’s losses on “the politicians and civilians that we’ve let stick their nose in it.”

Yet some have suggested that Wayne was gung-ho about Vietnam to compensate for the shame he felt over not serving in World War II. And his third spouse, Pilar Pallete, seemed to support this theory. She reportedly once wrote of Wayne, “He would become a ‘superpatriot’ for the rest of his life, trying to atone for staying home.”

But many different stories still circulate as to why exactly Wayne didn’t show up for World War II. And the tale seems to be a fairly complex one. At the time of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. joining the war, Wayne was excused from the obligation of serving in the military. He was 34 years old during the period and had four children.

Owing to Wayne’s situation, then, his status at the beginning of the war was 3-A, which meant family deferment. Yet there is a possibility Wayne wanted to enlist at that time. Indeed, in 1942 the actor wrote to Ford, saying, “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?”

Yet if Ford ever answered the letter, there’s no evidence of it. It’s true, though, that Wayne applied to serve in the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) and was subsequently accepted into the Field Photographic Unit. The letter of approval went, however, to the home of his estranged spouse Josephine Saenz – and she kept it from him.

And in 2016 the website Den of Geek suggested the motive that Saenz may have had for keeping the O.S.S. acceptance from Wayne. “[Saenz] certainly would have had good reason to withhold the letter,” the article theorized. “If [Wayne] died in the war, she alone would be left to provide for their four children.”

It should also be noted, though, that the studio Wayne was signed to throughout the war was also determined to keep its star out of battle. And so when Wayne was eventually reclassified as eligible for combat, Republic Pictures intervened. In particular, studio president Herbert J. Yates told Wayne that he would be served a lawsuit if he joined up as it would be a breach of his contract.

So, Republic Pictures did apparently take significant steps to stop Wayne from joining the army. Indeed, the company reportedly requested that its star actor should actually be excluded from combat “in support of national interest.” Still, this hasn’t stopped Wayne’s critics from suggesting that the performer himself may have had a hand in this decision.

And while there’s apparently no evidence that Wayne actually did anything to prevent himself from being sent to war, it does seem like he didn’t try particularly hard to join up, either. For a start, a Hollywood studio had never actually followed through on threats of a lawsuit when one of their clients had left to be part of the war effort – meaning Wayne may not have really had much to fear there.

It’s possible, too, that Wayne wouldn’t have been able to serve in the military no matter what, as old football injuries may have prevented him from being able to fight. However, the usual charge leveled against the actor is that he didn’t actually try particularly hard. Indeed, it’s argued Wayne could have simply gone to a recruiting station and signed up – but he didn’t.

Furthermore, there have been implications that Wayne may have felt serving as a private was beneath him. Allegedly, he once told Ford’s grandson Dan, “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.”

Then, in 1997 – nearly two decades after Wayne’s death – the BBC made a documentary about the star called The Unquiet American. Somewhat shockingly, the film suggested that one of the reasons Wayne had given for avoiding the war was because he didn’t have a typewriter with which to complete the appropriate forms.

And The Unquiet American’s producer James Kent spoke to The Independent at the time about Wayne’s avoidance of the war. “It was a purely careerist move. [Wayne] manipulated it so he didn’t have to sign up and could fill the vacuum left by the other Hollywood stars who did,” Kent claimed. “Later he found himself a flag-waver and arch Commie-baiter with no military record.”

In fact, Wayne’s legacy as an American icon has been significantly tarnished over the years – and not just because of his lack of military credentials. In particular, a 1971 interview he did for Playboy has become infamous since his death. In the piece, Wayne is quoted as having said, “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.”

Wayne’s racism didn’t end there, either. “We can’t all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of the blacks,” he added. And on slavery, he said, “I’m not condoning slavery. It’s just a fact of life, like the kid who gets infantile paralysis and has to wear braces so he can’t play football with the rest of us.”

And while Wayne claimed that he had always tried to have racial equality in his films, his justifications were remarkably insensitive by contemporary standards. “I’ve directed two pictures, and I gave the blacks their proper position,” he said. “I had a black slave in The Alamo, and I had a correct number of blacks in The Green Berets. If it’s supposed to be a black character, naturally I use a black actor.”

Wayne also seemed to hold Native Americans in disdain. “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them,” he said in the interview. “Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”

On top of all this, there’s also Wayne’s apparent homophobia to take into account. In the Playboy interview, he mentioned “perverted” films that he implied should not have been permitted to circulate throughout the United States. “Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy – that kind of thing,” he offered up as examples of such movies.

And, finally, Wayne shared his thoughts on the Vietnam War. The Playboy interviewer told the actor that many of the men fighting there had “never wanted to go to Vietnam in the first place.” Wayne answered, “Well, I sure don’t know why we send them over to fight and then stop the bombing so they can get shot that much more.”

Wayne announced, “I figure if we’re going to send even one man to die, we ought to be in an all-out conflict. If you fight, you fight to win.” Yet while the interviewer seemed unimpressed with Wayne’s opinions, he didn’t actually point out that Wayne himself had never been involved in the sort of war he was promoting.

The Playboy interview came to more widespread attention in 2019, when it spread across Twitter. Wayne was naturally slated for his views, while some people labeled him as a “draft dodger” – among other epithets – to slate him further.

Writer Glenn Greenwald was one of the most vocal critics, labeling Wayne as “one of the 20th century’s most deceitful and pitiful men.” In his excoriating verdict on the actor, Greenwald added that Wayne had been “[a] war cheerleader and moralizer who casually impugned patriotism and called people perverts while draft-dodging and having serial drunken affairs.”

In the Playboy interview, however, Wayne himself was asked what legacy he wanted to leave. To this, the star replied, “I hope my family and my friends will be able to say that I was an honest, kind and fairly decent man.” And while some relatives have indeed since spoken out in support of the actor, Wayne’s status as an American icon is undoubtedly in question these days.