C Thomas compares Tom Cruise with John Wayne. Let’s listen who seems to be the greatest movie actor of all time.
“Coughlin’s Law: never show surprise, never lose your cool.” Tom Cruise as Brian Flanagan in “Cocktail”Good morning! I’m Austerity Jones and someone that has never seemed to lose his cool is Tom Cruise so its hard to believe that he is 60 years old today. For over 40 years he has been making movies and I was telling C Thomas that he is the greatest movie star of all time. He said “he’s getting close Austerity, but not yet. That title still belongs to Duke. “
C Thomas: I see a lot of Tom Cruise in John Wayne even though they couldn’t be more different. John “Duke” Wayne was a giant of a man, standing 6’4” and a half whereas as Tom Cruise is know n to be 5’7” with lifts in his shoes apparently. Duke was born in Iowa but grew up in California, whereas Tom was a New Yorker. Yet when we look at the most popular actors over the history of movie making stretching from roughly 110 years ago through today’s green screen cartoon superhero franchise pictures we see two names stand out and roughly cover the entire era of film making. Duke first appeared in the film Bardelys the Magnificent in 1926 in the silent film era and Tom Cruise currently holds the box office top spot with Top Gun Maverick, a sequel that he reprised from 36 years ago and it is his biggest hit to date. So these two have covered most of the movies’ history so what makes them age so well? Let’s learn some history,.
Howard Jones won 3 national titles as a college football player at Yale from 1905-1907 and parts of 6 national championships as a football coach with his last 4 coming at USC, but it is his 1928 team that is of particular interest. That class was made up of his recruiting class from 1925 and one of them was a large offensive tackle names Marion Morrison, later John Wayne. Duke while at college was given a job working for the studios as a favor to Coach Jones from Tom Mix, who got free tickets from Coach Jones. Mix hired Wayne and he worked on props and as an extra on a film directed John Ford. John “Pappy” Ford would go on to work with Duke on 14 major films together and win a record 4 directing Oscars. Coach Jones who gave tickets to games to Tom Mix the largest silent western star of the time who was also friends with Wyatt Earp. Wayne is rumored to have picked up some of his mannerisms from his meetings with Earp, one of the largest legends of the American West. Duke would have been on the 1928 national title team as he was playing on the varsity as a sophomore, but he broke his collarbone before his junior year in a bodysurfing accident and Coach Jones took away his scholarship. Hollywood owes Coach Jones a large debt of gratitude.
Duke appeared in 175 films and a record 142 of them in a leading role over his 50 year career. It took him 13 years from that first extra role before he became a star in Pappy’s epic western Stagecoach. He was famous for Westerns, the action movies of the day, and his last role was in the Shootist, where he played an aging gunfighter in 1976. He along with rodeo champion and stuntman Yakima Canutt, also rumored to have influenced Duke’s mannerisms, pioneered many stunts and screen fighting techniques. Punches became much more realistic, and stunts became safer while becoming more eye catching, like the runaway wagon scene in Stagecoach in 1939. Wayne was so committed to authenticity in his craft that years later he was still falling off a horse using the techniques that he developed working with Yakima, and even jumping over the 4-rail fence horseback in the last scene of his 1969 Oscar winning role in True Grit.
Tom Cruise didn’t have to wait nearly as long to become a star as his first small role was in 1981’s Endless Love, yes Brooke Shield’s fan that one, and by 1986 he was Lieutenant Pete Mitchell, call sign Maverick and a superstar. That puts his career at 41 years and counting. Cruise has portrayed a racecar driver, a pool hustler, a bartender, and even a paralyzed Vietnam War veteran. Like Duke’s biggest hits were mostly action packed westerns, most of Cruise’s biggest successes came in action movies: The Last Samurai, the Top Gun pair of films or his popular Mission Impossible where he stars as agent Ethan Hunt. Although one of his best movies and roles might have had him doing no action except legal action in the courtroom thriller with Jack Nicholson in Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men.
Austerity: You can’t handle the truth!
C Thomas: Thank you Colonel Jessup.
Austerity: You’re welcome.
As I was saying, both as Ethan Hunt and Maverick, Tom has also developed a reputation for amazing stunt work. He hangs from sandstone cliffs, climbs tall buildings, and even dangles out of airplanes. Not content with just dangling out of airplanes, he flies them including the F-18 in Top Gun: Maverick. While other 60 year olds are content to play comic grandpas, Cruise seems determined to go out at “Mach II with his hair on fire.” Which brings us to our word of the week, dedication.
Dedication- the willingness to give a lot of time and energy to something because it is important.
Their dedication to their craft of film making might reveal a bit about their famous longevity. Cruise famously broke his ankle performing a stunt for Mission Impossible- Fallout while jumping across a chasm from one building to the other. He kept going after breaking the ankle. Wayne fell off and under a horse in The Undefeated almost killing him. Wayne also suffered during the making of another movie although unknowingly. During the 1954 filming of The Conqueror, one of Duke’s few duds as he tried to portray Genghis Kahn, there was something wrong with the filming location. The Snow Canyon area near present day St George Utah was downwind of the nuclear tests that had been occurring for years outside of neighboring Las Vegas, Nevada. In fact,there is a famous photograph of Wayne and his two kids watching a Geiger counter that was crackling so fast they thought it was broken. Government officials said that the area was safe, but in reality the radioactivity of the area was quite high. By 1980, of the 220 people who worked on the Howard Hughes’ film, 91 had contracted cancer and 46 had died including Wayne in 1979 from stomach cancer although he had beaten lung cancer once in 1964 although he lost a lung. Duke was a smoker so it could have been the cigarettes, but the local non-smoking Mormon population was eventually determined to have cancer rates 5 times as high as other Mormon sects away from the filming location. Both sons from the photograph are also cancer survivors…
Tom Cruise with 56 movies and counting, doesn’t have cancer and seems like a spry 60-year-old so he will likely continue to chase John Wayne as the film industry’s biggest star of all time. If he continues to make movies as good as Top Gun: Maverick he will narrow the gap considerably if there is one at all. I’m sorry Austerity but as recently as 2016 John Wayne was ranked as America’s 4th favorite actor, 35+ years after his death. When Cruise has been gone that long, we will see if he still connects with America like the Duke, until then I give the edge to Duke.
“Government has no wealth, and when a politician promises to give you something for nothing, he must first confiscate that wealth from you - either by direct taxes, or by the cruelly indirect tax of inflation.” John WayneThat is a rather appropriate quote for someone who lived through the 70s, and food for thought for next week.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
If I had a dime for every time – by G Spot Johnson:
If I had a dime for every time I heard about lung cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer or lady part cancer and the ensuing hystericalectomy, I ‘d have way too many dollars. We need more elbows. When is the last time you ever heard of someone getting the elbow cancer, or I got a suspicious lump on my elbow MRI, or I got to get an elbow replacement. Plus they are super bad ass weapons- they outlawed them in basketball, boxing, and even football. An elbow is solid and dependable…We need more elbows is all I’m saying and less parts that break. Tim Duncan was an elbow, which is ironic because he seldom used his.
Also born on this date:
Olivia Munn,
Sebastian Vettel,
Montel Williams,
Julian Assange,
and the owner of the vista cruiser himself Kurtwood Smith