Stars: The Duke at 60

The visitor at Fort Benning, Ga., stirred as much excitement as if he were the Army Chief of Staff, or at least Cassius Clay getting into khakis. But the commanding and familiar figure that strode past the barracks was dressed in civvies. The only martial markings were a brass wire on his right wrist, symbolizing his initiation into a Montagnard unit in Viet Nam and, on his other wrist, a watch crystal worn inward, combat style, to which was attached a gold tag with name and address, presumably to notify next of kin if anything happened to the bearer. The tag read: JOHN WAYNE.

Just two days before, "Duke" Wayne had celebrated his 60th birthday at the premiere of his 162nd picture, The War Wagon, in Arlington, Texas. Now he was working at Benning without rest through the long Memorial Day weekend to stake out No. 163, The Green Berets. He would prefer to shoot the film in Viet Nam. "But if you start shooting blanks over there," he says, "they might start shooting back." Duke knows. Last year, while touring a Marine encampment for the U.S.O., he heard the crack of Viet Cong snipers' rifles. "They were so far away," sniffs Wayne, "I didn't stop signing autographs." The bullets, in fact, tore up the turf within 17 yards of him.

Kicking "Big C." Thirty-eight years of such energy, courage and authority have made John Wayne the greatest moneymaker in movie history: the gross comes to nearly $400 million. He is still the hero by Hemingway out of Hollywood, the he-man's he-man and the she-fan's idol. He talks and looks as tough as ever, though it was less than three years ago that he lost a lung while, as he put it, "kicking the Big C (cancer)."

Give or take some creases over the eyes, the huge, leathery face has hardly changed. Nor have the jutting jaw, the laconic grin, the squinting eyes blue as the big sky. The shoulders on his rangy (6 ft. 4 in.) frame still seem persuasive enough to get his football scholarship to Southern Cal renewed. He still looks born to the saddle; in The War Wagon, he mounted his horse with his own steam, while Co-Star Kirk Douglas, ten years younger, had to leap aboard his mount with the help of an unseen trampoline. The only perceptible indications of Wayne's years are a bit more heft around the middle and the hairpiece he wears on the set to mask a thinning pate.

Everything else is the original goods. Among them is the same sort of part Wayne has been playing since 1929 with the same acting style that his studio biography calls "naturalistic." "In my acting," he says, "I have to identify with something in the character. The big tough boy on the side of right—that's me. Simple themes. Save me from the nuances. All I do is sell sincerity, and I've been selling the hell out of that ever since I started."