John Wayne-John Ford Collection & John Ford Collection: 06-06-06 (1 Viewer)

[Adam_S]

Loved the documentary. The clips of Searchers in HD were STUNNING! Oh man does it look good and that restoration is wonderful. Likewise stellar job on Stagecoach.

 

[John Hodson]

According to Warners, Stagecoach is 'newly remastered from best available film elements.'

I would guess that She wore a Yellow Ribbon which is already stunningly gorgeous, and They Were Expendable will be the existing transfers seeing as the specs are exactly the same as the extant releases.

 

[seanOhara]

Though anyone who refuses to watch Wayne's films because of that is just as insane as the guys who won't watch Jane Fonda pictures or listen to Bruce Springsteen albums because of their politics.

 

[Sean A]

I love a lot of Wayne's films, and can't wait to get the new "Searchers" and "Stagecoach" discs. That's in spite of the fact that our political and social views could not be more opposite

 

[Garysb]

I don't think it is cloudy about why John Wayne did not serve during WW II.
He was in his mid thirties, born in 1907, and had 3 or 4 children at the time.
I believe that would exclude him from the draft. He could have enlisted but
did not. Older actors such as Clark Gable and Robert Montgomery did enlist.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

I just Watched Donovan's Reef for the First time that I got in Walmart's $4.88 bin, Great John Ford Film just excellent. I wish Paramount would give us some Extras lik Warner is doing but you cannot argue with the Transfers they look Great.

 

[John Hodson]

And there's the mystery; he could have enlisted but didn't. By May 1944, and with the war at a critical stage, Wayne, along with many other married men with kids in the USA, was re-classified 1-A 'available for military service', but again, the War Department received deferment claims.

In their weighty and well researched book on Wayne ('John Wayne: American'), Roberts and Olsen claim that one reason Wayne didn't fight were those deferment claims, which they say didn't come from him but probably from Herbert Yates at Republic who was desperate to keep his star on set.

But still, he didn't make any real strenuous efforts to enlist, probably why he became such a superpatriot in later life; we'll never know. It's an interesting aspect of his personal life, which possibly played a real part in his choice of roles after the war. Interesting, but like others have said, I'm poles away from Duke politically - none of this prevents me being a huge fan.