Joseph Stalin was a big movie buff and a huge fan of American Westerns, which he regularly screened for the Soviet elite during his reign of terror.
However, the communist dictator was bothered by John Wayne’s powerful embodiment of America, having been warned about him by Russian director Sergei Gerasimov.
Speaking exclusively with Express.co.uk, Duke’s son Ethan Wayne told us: “I think his films made the American idea very palatable to a broad swath of the world, and it was anti-communist.”
As a result, Stalin wanted the actor assassinated, ordering KGB agents to carry out the hit around 1949. However, they were no match for Duke.
According to Michael Munn’s John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth, Wayne survived a number of attempts on his life, and during the early 1950s, Duke’s stuntman Budd Yakima Canutt “saved his life once”. The FBI had discovered that Soviet agents had been sent to Hollywood to kill Wayne. But when they told Duke this, he just said he would deal with the KGB hitmen when they turned up as “No commie’s gonna frighten me”. It turns out that alongside screenwriter Jimmy Grant, Wayne had planned to abduct his would-be assassins, drive them to a beach and then “stage a mock execution to frighten them.
The historian doesn’t know what happened next but the rumour was that the two KGB men defected and ended up staying in the US to work for the FBI. Even after this, Duke didn’t bother with FBI protection; not even letting his family know about the threat so they wouldn’t worry. Instead, the American icon moved to a house with a huge wall around it. He also relied on his stuntmen friends who infiltrated American communist cells to inform him of future attempts to kill him. According to Munn: “He then gathered all the stuntmen, went to the communist meetings, and had a huge fight.” This is when Canutt saved Wayne’s life. But this wasn’t the end, as there was another attempt on Duke’s life in Mexico by a communist cell when he was filming Hondo, which was released in 1953, the year that Stalin finally died.
Ethan Wayne told us: “Stalin actually had a hit out on John Wayne for a number of years. But then when [his successor] Khrushchev came in, the first thing he wanted to do when he came to meet with the US president in 1959 was [go to Disneyland and] meet John Wayne.” Although President Eisenhower didn’t let the new Soviet premier go to Mickey Mouse theme park on his visit to Los Angeles, he did organise for the Russian to have an audience with Duke at a luncheon with some Hollywood stars.
Talking Wayne’s arm and walking him over to the bar, a beaming Khrushchev told the actor via his interpreter: “I’m told that you like to drink and that you can hold your liquor.” According to the LA Times, Duke confirmed this before the two matched each other shot for shot as they “compared the virtues of Russian vodka and Mexican tequila.” Also during their conversation, the Soviet leader told the Western star of the KGB assassination attempts: “That was a decision of Stalin during his last five mad years. When Stalin died, I rescinded that order.”
Ethan Wayne, who was promoting the official museum John Wayne: an American Experience, added: “It went from somebody who wanted to kill him to somebody who wanted to know him. And what was John Wayne? John Wayne, that character, what he represented on screen to people was quintessentially American ideals, values and character. Duke Morrison was just a human being, but that’s what he did well. It’s like people now, they want to have a franchise of Superman or whatever these Marvel things are so they can make multiple movies on the same subject. But John Wayne had through the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. He became John Wayne. And John Wayne was really the American ideal of what a man should be. And he spoke about it openly. He said he wanted to be the man who the guy wanted to have as a best friend and who the girl wanted to marry, who the dad wanted to have as a son, the son wanted to have as the Father.
John Wayne: An American Experience is open now in Fort Worth, Texas and tickets can be purchased here.