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In this college yearbook, his real name appears, Marion Robert Morrison. John Wayne (May 26, 1907 - June 11, 1979), nicknamed -Duke,- was an American film actor whose career spanned the evolutionary phase of American cinema, appearing in silent movies and -talkies- alike. He remains, by many accounts, the most popular star in the history of American film. Despite his prolific output John Wayne won only a single Best Actor Oscar, for the 1969 movie True Grit. He received a nomination for Best Actor in Sands of Iwo Jima, and another as the producer of Best Picture nominee The Alamo, which he also directed. His production company was called Batjac, taken from the name of the fictional shipping company in The Wake of the Red Witch. In 1973, he released a best-selling spoken word album, that was nominated for a Grammy, and re-released with similar success in 2001. John Wayne died of stomach cancer on June 11, 1979 in Newport Beach, California, and was interred in the Pacific View Memorial Park cemetery in Corona del Mar, Orange County, California. Some trace his cancer back to his work in The Conqueror, filmed about 100 miles downwind of Nevada nuclear-weapons test sites.Wayne was married three times; to Josephine Alicia Saenz, Esperanza Baur, and Pilar Palette. He had four children with Josephine, three with Pilar, most notably Patrick Wayne. All but one of his children went on to have minor Hollywood careers.He is the most celebrated utterer, and apocryphal coiner, of the tmesis -ri-goddamn-diculous.-There is an airport named after him, John Wayne Airport, in Orange County, California. John Wayne was entered into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1974, and is mentioned in the Paula Cole song Where Have All the Cowboys Gone.
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