The Young Duke: The Early Life of John Wayne - Tapa dura

By the time Stagecoach made John Wayne a silver-screen star in 1939, the thirty-one-year-old was already a veteran of more than sixty films, having twirled six-guns and foiled cattle rustlers in B Westerns for five studios. By the 1950s he was Hollywood's most popular actor-an Academy Award nominee destined to become an American icon. This biography reveals the story of his early life, illustrated with rare archival images.

By the time Stagecoach made John Wayne a silver-screen star in 1939, the thirty-one-year-old was already a veteran of more than sixty films, having twirled six-guns and foiled cattle rustlers in B Westerns for five studios. By the 1950s he was Hollywood’s most popular actor—an Academy Award nominee destined to become an American icon.

Through rare photographs and revealing family anecdotes, The Young Duke offers an unflinching look at how Marion Morrison became the legend known as John Wayne—from his boyhood in Winterset, Iowa, and his days as a college football star, to his stunning box-office success in Westerns and war movies in the 1930s and 1940s. Shedding new light on Wayne’s formative years and early Hollywood roles and influences, this stirring biography uncovers the true stories behind the screen legend’s public and private lives.

Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss have coauthored several other books for Two Dot/Globe Pequot Press, including The Trials of Annie Oakley, The Cowboy and the Senorita, Mochi's War, Sam Sixkiller, Death Row All Stars, Happy Trails, Thunder Over the Prairie, and Ma Barker. Kazanjian is an award-winning producer and entertainment executive who for three decades has been producing television programs and feature films, including two of the highest grossing films of all time, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. He lives in San Marino, California. Enss is an award-winning screenwriter and the author or coauthor of more than two dozen books. She lives in Grass Valley, California.