Webster

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." --American Statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852)


Thursday, July 20, 2017

Possible assassination attempt of the Duke?

 I couldn't post Yesterday, I had a lot of ...you Guessed it..


I am a huge John Wayne fan, his rendition of the "Scout Law" I have posted 2 times on my blog.  John Wayne was a fervent supporter of the Boy Scouts of America.  John Wayne also played the all American hero, his attitudes and beliefs became the what the average American boy ascribed to when he became a man.  John Wayne Had several phrases that I have used, one was this one, I have it on my toolbox at work
I also use this one when I am talking to a scout when I am talking about ethics and doing the right thing. I would say "Courage is being scared and doing the right thing anyway".  I also remembered when John Wayne passed on beyond the rim in 1979, a Japanese Newspaper had a quote "Mr. America passes on" and that was pretty much accurate, John Wayne embodied the traditional American values that used to be celebrated.
    I clipped this from the Guardian, I had seen something in my Facebook feed about an assassination attempt on John Wayne and when I clicked it, it was clickbait, so after I extricated myself from that mess, I figured I would look up the story and "googled" it.    I knew that John Wayne was virulently anti-communist, when he made the movie "Green Beret" in 1968, it was direct "shot across the bow" of the anti-war movement. 


Joseph Stalin ordered the KGB to assassinate John Wayne because he considered his anti-communist rhetoric a threat to the Soviet Union, according to a new biography of the film star based on interviews with Wayne's close associates and the movie legend Orson Welles.

Stalin apparently learned of Wayne's popularity from the Russian filmmaker Sergei Gerasimov, who attended a peace conference in New York in 1949. Michael Munn, a film historian and author of John Wayne - The Man Behind The Myth, said Gerasimov told Stalin of Wayne's fervent anti-communist beliefs.
"Stalin decided that he would have him killed," said Mr Munn, who says he was told of the plot by Orson Welles at a dinner in 1983. Welles had said that the KGB was given the task of assassinating Wayne.
"Mr Welles was a great storyteller," said Mr Munn, "but he had no particular admiration for John Wayne." He said that Welles had offered the story without prompting, and that his sources were excellent.
Alexei Kapler after 10 years in a Soviet Prison
A prominent Russian filmmaker, Alexei Kapler (who was imprisoned for an affair with Stalin's 16-year-old daughter, Svetlana), had told another Russian filmmaker, Sergei Bondachuk, about the order. Bondachuk was sceptical at first, but after Gerasimov confirmed the story, Bondachuk told Welles.
Mr Munn said Wayne had also told him that his friend, the stuntman Yakima Canutt, had "saved his life once". Mr Munn later asked Mr Canutt what he had meant by this comment. The incident is thought to have taken place in the early 50s.
"Yakima told me that the FBI had discovered there were agents sent to Hollywood to kill John Wayne," said Mr Munn. "He said the FBI had come to tell John about the plot. John told the FBI to let the men show up and he would deal with them."
Wayne then apparently hatched a plot with his scriptwriter at the time, Jimmy Grant, to abduct the assassins, drive to a beach and stage a mock execution to frighten them. Mr Munn said he did not know what transpired, but heard the two men stayed in the US to work for the FBI.
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"Afterwards though, John shunned FBI protection and did not want his family to know. He moved into a house with a big wall around it."
Wayne then relied upon a group of loyal stuntmen who infiltrated communist cells in America and learned of plots to kill him.
"He then gathered all the stuntmen, went to the communist meetings, and had a huge fight," Mr Munn said. This was when Wayne believes Mr Canutt saved his life.
A further attempt to kill Wayne was made in Mexico on the set of the film Hondo (which was released in 1953), led by a communist cell, according to Mr Munn.

The book claims that Stalin's order was cancelled by his successor Nikita Krushchev after the dictator's death in 1953. The book says Krushchev told Wayne in a private meeting in 1958: "That was a decision of Stalin during his last five mad years. When Stalin died, I rescinded that order."
Wayne also told Mr Munn about an attempt to kill him by an enemy sniper while he was visiting the troops in Vietnam in 1966. "One of the snipers was captured," said Mr Munn, "and said there was a price on John's head, put there by [China's communist leader] Mao Tse Tung."
Mr Munn said he had gathered the anecdotes over decades of work in the film industry. "I am quite convinced that it was not propagated by John or his inner circle," he added.

4 comments:

  1. Stranger things have happened...

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    1. Hey Old NFO;

      Yep stranger things have happened, lol

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  2. I miss the days when Hollywood was pro-American. And by that, I mean the traditional view of what America was and was meant to be. Yes, that's been on the wane for decades now. Many of the Hollywood studios, as well as some American theater chains, are now under Chinese ownership. And many of today's so-called stars are a bunch of self-appointed evangelists for socialism.

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    1. Hey Doug;

      That is why I like older movies, that actually tell a story and you have to have a good plotline to hold an audience without all the sex and violence. A lot of them believe in socialism because they believe that it won't affect them, they will still be part of the party apparatus and not the great unwashed.

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I had to change the comment format on this blog due to spammers, I will open it back up again in a bit.