LUCKY WAYNE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 2, 3 January 1931, Page 5 (Supplement)

LUCKY WAYNE.

NOVICE GETS CHANCE. (Special Correspondent.) NEW YORK November 25. John Wayne is having the enviable experience of visiting New York for the first time. One of the things he likes best about it is its hurdy-gurdies. He admitted following one spellbound for blocks. One of the things he likes least its its subways. He said he felt as if all Manhattan's vaulting skyscrapers were crushing him to death down ■ there. He has been whirled about to night clubs, speakeasies, movie houses and theatres and has got a kick out of it all. Yet, it was the spurting gas flame casting grotesque shadows from its tottering lamp post in McDougal Alley that fascinated him. For this young man to whom chance brought the leading role in "The Big Trail" seems to have a feeling for the picturesque, and a sense of the strangeness and adventure in life. He was disappointed in Broadway's fanfare, but he was delighted by the lost gardens in crevices of Greenwich Village. It was only a short time ago that John Wayne was attending classes in Los Angeles, at the University of Southern California- Because of his six feet three and his 200 pounds he made an excellent football player. The records show that he was an honour student as well. At the end of his second year he was badly in need of money, and set about finding a job. He got an offer to work as an apprentice electrician at the Fox Studio and took it. At the end of the summer vacation he was so absorbed in "movies" and how they were made that he decided not to go back to school. By this time he was working as a prop man—carrying all kinds of properties to all kinds of sets. He watched directors at work closely, and made up his mind that this was the thing he would do some day. But fate, it appears, had different plans for him. For one day as he was walking across the studio lot, he was notified that Raoul Walsh wanted to see him- Walsh was then casting his new picture, "The Big Trail," and had been hunting for days for a male lead. He noticed Wayne on the lot carrying props, observed his great size, rugged build, erect walk, and decided he would exactly fit the part of Breck Coleman, trapper, hunter and trailblazer. The screen and voice tests proved satisfactory. There was nothing left for Wayne to do but prove himself an actor. He did this by simply acting the part the way it seemed most natural to him. And that sums ,up an impression of John Wayne: he is always himself, a genuine and unaffected young man. He still wants to be a director some day.