On this day in 1979, legendary actor, producer, director, Academy Award winner, recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, American icon, Duke, John Wayne, died of stomach cancer at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 72. Born Marion Robert Morrison on 26 May 1907 in Winterset, Iowa. Wayne’s family moved to Palmdale, California, and then in 1911 to Glendale, California. A local fireman at the station on his route to school in Glendale started calling him “Little Duke” because he never went anywhere without his huge Airedale Terrier, Duke. He preferred “Duke” to “Marion” and the name stuck. For his screen name, director Raoul Walsh suggested “Anthony Wayne”, after Revolutionary War general “Mad Anthony” Wayne. Fox Studios chief Winfield Sheehan rejected it as sounding “too Italian.” Walsh then suggested “John Wayne.” Sheehan agreed, and the name was set. Wayne himself was not even present for the discussion. Wayne attended the University of Southern California on a football scholarship. My list of favorite Wayne movies includes: Howard Hawk’s Red River (1948); John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952) with Maureen O’Hara; Ford’s The Searchers (1956) with Vera Miles, Jeffrey Hunter, Ward Bond, Ken Curtis and Natalie Wood, perhaps my favorite movie ever; Hawk’s Rio Bravo (1959) with Angie Dickinson, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Bond; North to Alaska (1960) with Capucine, Stewart Granger and Fabian; Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) with Miles, James Stewart, and Lee Marvin; McLintock! (1963) with O’Hara, his son Patrick, Stephanie Powers, Chill Wills and Yvonne De Carlo, The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) with Martin and Dennis Hopper; Hawk’s El Dorado (1966) with Robert Mitchum, and James Caan; The War Wagon (1967) with Kirk Douglas; Hellfighters (1968), with Katherine Ross and Miles and based on the real-life hellfighter Red Adair; as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (1969) with Kim Darby, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, Strother Martin and Hopper; The Undefeated (1969) with Rock Hudson and Roman Gabriel; Chisum (1970); Hawk’s Rio Lobo (1970); Big Jake (1970); The Cowboys (1972); Cahill, United States Marshall (1973); Don Siegel’s The Shootist (1976) with Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, and Stewart. His memorable movie quotes include;
- “I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, I require the same from them.” (The Shootist)
- “Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!” (True Grit)
- “That’ll be the day!” (The Searchers – Spoken four times; inspired Buddy Holly to write a song with that title.)
- “Pilgrim.” (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and McLintock!.)
- “I haven’t lost my temper in 40 years; but, Pilgrim, you caused a lot of trouble this morning; might have got somebody killed; and somebody oughta belt you in the mouth. But I won’t. I won’t. The hell I won’t!” (He belts him in the mouth). (To Leo Gordon in McLintock!)
- “Not hardly!” (Big Jake – used several times throughout the movie when told by others “Jacob McCandles?! I thought you were dead!”)
- “It’s a hard life!” (The Cowboys – in response to “The ‘long-haired man'” played by Bruce Dern saying “You’re a hard man!”)
- “We’re burnin’ daylight!” (“The Cowboys”)
- “Wrong word. Fact!” (When Laurence Murphy accuses Chisum of a threat.)
Wayne was married three times Josephine Alicia Saenz (1933-1945 divorce), Esperanza Baur (1946-1954 divorce), and Pilar Pallete (1954-1979 his death).
The Final Footprint – Wayne is interred in Pacific View Memorial Park, a Dignity Memorial property, in Corona del Mar, California. His grave is marked by an individual flat bronze marker with the epitaph; “Tomorrow is the most Important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.” Reportedly, Wayne wanted his epitaph to be; “Feo, Fuerte y Formal”, a Mexican epitaph Wayne described as meaning “ugly, strong and dignified”. There are many memorials, celebrations and landmarks dedicated to him.
On this day in 1999, United States Army Air Forces veteran, actor, screenwriter, poet and singer, DeForest Kelley died of stomach cancer in Wooodland Hills, California at the age of 79. Born Jackson DeForest Kelley on 20 January 1920 in Toccoa, Georgia. Known for his iconic roles in Westerns and as Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy of the USS Enterprise in the television and film series Star Trek. “He’s dead, Jim.”
The Final Footprint – Kelley was cremated and the ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean.
On this day in 2014, actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and civil rights activist Ruby Dee died at her home in New Rochelle, New York, from natural causes at the age of 91. Born Rudy Ann Wallace on October 27, 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio. Perhaps best known for originating the role of “Ruth Younger” in the stage and film versions of A Raisin in the Sun (1961). Her other notable film roles include The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) and Do the Right Thing (1989).
Dee was married to Ossie Davis, with whom she frequently performed until his death in 2005.
For her performance as Mahalee Lucas in American Gangster (2007), Dee was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Female Actor in a Supporting Role. Dee was a Grammy, Emmy, Obie and Drama Desk winner. She was also a National Medal of Arts, Kennedy Center Honors and Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award recipient.
Ruby Wallace married blues singer Frankie Dee Brown in 1941, and began using his middle name as her stage name. The couple divorced in 1945. Three years later she married actor Ossie Davis, whom she met while costarring in Robert Ardrey’s 1946 Broadway play Jeb.
The Final Footprint
In a statement, Gil Robertson IV of the African American Film Critics Association said, “the members of the African American Film Critics Association are deeply saddened at the loss of actress and humanitarian Ruby Dee. Throughout her seven-decade career, Dee embraced different creative platforms with her various interpretations of black womanhood and also used her gifts to champion for Human Rights. Her strength, courage, and beauty will be greatly missed.”
“She very peacefully surrendered”, said her daughter Nora Day. “We hugged her, we kissed her, we gave her our permission to go. She opened her eyes. She looked at us. She closed her eyes, and she set sail.” Following her death, the marquee on the Apollo Theater read: “A TRUE APOLLO LEGEND RUBY DEE 1922-2014”.
Dee was cremated, and her ashes are held in the same urn as that of Davis, with the inscription “In this thing together”. A public memorial celebration honoring Dee was held on September 20, 2014, at the Riverside Church in Upper Manhattan. Their shared urn was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Other notable final footprints at Ferncliff include; Aaliyah, James Baldwin, Béla Bartók, Cab Calloway, Joan Crawford, Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern, Malcolm X, Thelonious Monk, and Ed Sullivan.
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