The great John Wayne.

Despite his reputation as a stern and stoic man, the Duke was not above laughing at himself. In 1973, Wayne was invited by satirical Harvard University newspaper, The Harvard Lampoon, to receive the “Brass Balls Award.” What started as a joke at his expense became an Army convoy complete with an armored personnel carrier for Wayne who received a standing ovation when he came onstage.^[1]

Wayne was a conservative and anti-communist and did not entertain a delicate aversion toward the work of the the House Un-American Activities Committee, the committee that Senator Joe McCarthy is always said to have chaired. For some reason communist actors and screen writers had an aversion to discussing their admirable allegiance to the Soviet Union before congressional committees.

It's interesting that Wayne was a member of the John Birch Society (the Colonel is a member of that fine organization) "but resigned after the organization denounced fluoridation." I've never looked into that particular issue but if I did I'd go in with a favorable view toward any group who thought that having chemicals introduced into the water supply without our consent was an imposition.

Fast forward to today and we have a much worse case of the Enlightened Ones wanting to directly introduce a sketchy, if not lethal, experimental vaccine directly into everyone's internal piping. It's the same objection now as then and the questions are the same: Who in the hell is mandating this infinitely more dangerous and intrusive invasion of our own flesh and on what scientific basis?

Anyway, on the topic of actor politics, I was reading about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers a few days ago and was interested to learn that Rogers had also been a Republican. Yay, Ginger.

I don't know anything about Astaire's politics but there's no doubt that they were both superb dancers. He was a perfectionist and wanted his dance partners to practice with him for weeks before the actual filming. They made it look easy but what they did was preceded by a lot of hard work.

But I digress. Enjoy this great piece about Wayne by Mr. Jacobs.

Notes
^[1] "John Wayne: The Forgotten History of 'The Duke.'" By Sam Jacobs, Ammo.com, 6/__/21.