Cinema: John Wayne as the Last Hero

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No leading man retains prominence without a strong and basic sex appeal. Wayne's has been uniquely conservative. "In a love scene, Clark Gable always forced the issue with a girl," observed Director Howard Hawks (Red River). "Wayne is better when the girl is forcing the issue." The romantic backlash has been operating for two generations on audiences—and on his female costars. Says Actress Vera Miles: "They used to say of the old West, 'Men were men and the women were grateful.' Well, that's how he makes you feel as a woman."

If Wayne stands to the right in sex, he is an unabashed reactionary in politics. A rapping Republican and flapping hawk, he has made the Viet Nam war his personal crusade. Yet his rigid, Old Guard style still wins salutes from the New Left.

Terry Robbins, a Chicago coordinator for the radical S.D.S., considers Wayne "terrific and total. He's tough, down to earth, and he says and acts what he believes. He's completely straight and really groovy. I mean, if they really want to make a movie about Che Guevara, they ought to have Wayne play him."

Says Abbie Hoffman, leader of the yippies: "I like Wayne's wholeness, his style. As for his politics, well—I suppose even cavemen felt a little admiration for the dinosaurs that were trying to gobble them up."

Even Paul Krassner, editor of the black-comic book the Realist, makes his broadside sound like a grudging salute: "Wayne is one of the floats from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade."

Stereophonic Superman

Krassner has a point. John Wayne has become one of the pop-artifacts of contemporary life. He carries with him the unmistakable aura of camp and comic strip, as if his conversation came in balloons. As if when he slugged the opposition there would issue forth a thunderous THWACK! and SOCKO! In person, the seamed, leathery face seems an extension of his saddle. A handshake lets the visitor know how a baseball feels when it is swallowed by Frank Howard's glove. True, the unwigged forehead goes clear back to his crown, but the size-18 neck defies collars, and at 6 ft. 4 in. and 244 Ibs., Wayne remains gristly underneath the adipose. Even so, Wayne is a bit like Clark Kent waiting to change into Superman. The real man seems to be the one onscreen. Up there, equipped with a rug and a role, 60 feet tall and stereophonic, he assumes his rightful proportions.

At his bay-side house in Newport Beach, Calif., Wayne, in Clark Kent disguise, recalled his spiral career in a series of flashbacks to TIME Reporter Jay Cocks. Iowa-born kid turned U.S.C. football star,, the former Marion Morrison began in films as a part-time prop man. He fell into bottom-of-the-bill cowboy pictures and made a few better-forgotten films in civilian clothes. "They had a college picture about girls playing basketball," he recalls. "The man in charge was a little dance director. Everything he did was by the count—one, two, three, four—and then your line. I was completely embarrassed, and that's when I walked down the street talking to myself. Will Rogers went by and he says, 'Hey, Duke, what's the matter?' And I started to tell him and he says, 'You're working aren't ya? Keep it up.' "