Cinema: John Wayne as the Last Hero

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"Nonsense," says Wayne, or words to that effect. "The Green Berets made $7,000,000 in the first three months of its release. This so-called intellectual group aren't in touch with the American people, regardless of Fulbright's blatting, and Eugene McCarthy and Mc-Govern and Kennedy. In spite of them the American people do not feel that way. Instead of taking a census, they ought to count the tickets that were sold to that picture."

Nonetheless, Berets was an expensive production. Warner Brothers, which distributed it, will end up with some profits. Batjac, the Wayne-owned company that produced it, will just about break even. The old Hollywood axiom still holds: "If you've got a message, send a telegram." In the territory of True Grit he can safely espouse the hard line without having a Congressman on his back. "In spite of the fact that Rooster Cogburn would shoot a fella between the eyes," theorizes the law-and-order man, "he'd judge that fella before he did it. He was merely tryin' to make the area in which he was marshal livable for the most number of people."

Down at Newport Beach, Wayne also makes it livable for the most number of people. Out in Newport Bay bobs his boat, Wild Goose II. Lesser men would have a yacht; Wayne's craft is a converted minesweeper. His house overflows with memorabilia and sentimental tributes from institutions as far apart as Good Housekeeping and the U.S. Marines. His collection of Hopi Indian kachina dolls is probably second only to Barry Goldwater's. Though the family car appears to be a standard Pontiac station wagon, it was custom built. "I wrote to the head man at G.M.," he beams, "and said, Tm gonna have to desert you if you don't stop makin' cars for women.' " They fixed him up with a model deep enough to accommodate him, Stetson and all. Three of his seven children live with him: Aissa, 13, John Ethan, 7, and Marisa, 3. Two older sons, Pat and Michael, run Wavne's Batjac film-production outfit. And 16 grandchildren frequently wander around the spacious house. No one has counted all the people on the payroll; there are the folks at Batjac, the moviemaking cronies who travel with Wayne from picture to picture, the employees on his cotton and cattle ranches, one of which covers 60 square miles. Plus assorted domestic servants.

Well-Deserved Epitaph