Name: John Wayne
Brand: Sammon Publishing Limited (UK)
SKU: 9780954003104
Price: 21.95 GBP
Availability: InStock

John Wayne

A Giant Shadow

By (author): Carolyn McGivern, Foreword by: Steven Spielberg

Published by Sammon Publishing Limited (UK)

Temporarily Out-of-Stock Available to Pre-order

£21.95

Format: Paperback
Pages: 428
Illustrations: b/w photos
ISBN: 9780954003104
Publication Date: 19-Oct-2001

Subjects:
Film
TV & radio
Individual actors & performers

Quantity

"My real name is Marion Morrison... I'm happy people call me 'Duke'... If you were my size, wore cowboy boots and a big hat, outrode, outfought and outshot all the bad men in the west... how would you like to climb down off a horse, throw your saddle over the corral rail and then walk off-camera to sit down in a chair labelled Marion?" "I don't work for the producers... I don't work for the studio... I don't work for the critics... I work for the audience... I try always to give the best of myself so that people aren't disappointed in me." "When the doctor taps you on the shoulder and says, 'You've got cancer' the sun sure doesn't shine any brighter. Yeah! I was scared. I was tough to get along with. I'd discovered I was fallible." A flesh and blood study of John Wayne, unashamedly aimed at the audience, the way he liked to do business. McGivern allows Wayne to tell his own story, mostly in his own words. It is the story of a man who chose to leave normality behind to create his own legend. Of all the complexities and composites that made up John Wayne, the image perhaps shines the brightest, but whilst his face is still seen on the TV screens around the world people will remember a man of true courage and honesty.

"Eating and drinking to his fans, it is articulately written, exhaustively researched and jam-packed with quotes..." -- Modern Woman: Ireland, March 2002.

"The biography of a giant of a man who also cast a long shadow over the film industry..." -- Brave New World Website, October 2002.

"...not just a personal vindication but a magnificent achievement... This is a triumphant but not triumphalist book, written with admiration, affection, and even love -- but McGivern is constantly intrigued by her subject rather than in awe of him... McGivern shrewdly makes the connection between Wayne's private heartaches and the exorcizing of these torments in the conflicts and relationships he enacted on the screen... There's a wealth of information about Wayne's screen career, and a good deal of intelligent commentary about the films themselves. Yet it cannot be overstressed that this is primarily a book about John Wayne, the man -- and, as such, it is of inestimable value in deepening our appreciation of the enduring potency and poignancy of Wayne as an American icon... One can't help feeling Wayne would've been proud of the result, and would've been first in line to offer (to borrow from a Henry Fonda Western) 'a big hand for the little lady'..." -- Film International 2005.

"...well-written and riddled with a score of never-before-published anecdotes and quotes from the Duke and the people who knew him best. McGivern covers his early life, his declining years and everything in between with detail and sensitivity. " -- Special Issue #7, December 2005.