Elvis Presley and John Wayne are two icons of Americana whose symbolic legacy lives on almost half a century after their deaths.
The Hollywood contemporaries, who have both received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, almost co-starred together in 1969’s True Grit, for which Duke won his Best Actor Oscar.
Nevertheless, Elvis, who greatly admired Wayne from watching his movies as a child, would occasionally bump into the Western legend on studio lots.
Given their shared patriotic and conservative values, it’s hardly surprising that the pair got on like a house on fire.
In a previous exclusive interview with the Daily Express the details of their first meeting were shared by Elvis’ step-brother David Stanley, a Memphis Mafia bodyguard to the King of Rock and Roll.
Speaking from the Las Vegas stage where Elvis performed his residency shows, David confirmed: “He loved John Wayne.”
The Memphis Mafia member recalled being “overwhelmed” meeting Duke, who had huge hands and introduced himself by saying, “My name is John Wayne”, to which he stuttered in reply as a teenager, “I know who you are, sir”.
And when it came to Elvis greeting the Western star, the King honoured Duke in the most incredibly touching way.
David recalled: “Elvis walked up to him, shook his hand and said, ‘I want to personally thank you for winning World War II.’ Now the only reason he said that was because John did all those army movies. So Elvis, like any other 10-year-old when the war was on… he just saw the John Wayne movies and he associated John Wayne with victory.”
Duke didn’t serve in the military during the Second World War but stayed in Hollywood making movies, something his regular directing collaborator John Ford would tease him for in the years afterwards. As a result, Wayne felt it his duty to continue to make patriotic war movies that honoured veterans past and present. In fact, Elvis did the same after his army service in West Germany with movies like GI Blues.
After we pointed all this out to David, he nodded and replied: “Elvis had that mentality when he met him. He honoured him.”