The Young Duke: The Early Life of John Wayne

By the time Stagecoach made John Wayne a silver-screen star in 1939, the thirty-one-year-old was already a veteran of more than sixty films, having twirled six-guns and foiled cattle rustlers in B Westerns for five studios. By the 1950s he was Hollywoods most popular actoran Academy Award nominee destined to become an American icon.

Through previously unpublished photographs and revealing family anecdotes, The Young Duke offers an unflinching look at how Marion Morrison became the legend known as John Waynefrom his boyhood in Winterset, Iowa, to his days as a college football star, to his stunning box-office success in Westerns and war movies in the 1930s and 1940s. Shedding new light on Waynes formative years and early Hollywood roles and influences, this biography uncovers the true stories behind the screen legends public and private lives.