Wayne in typical cowboy mode[NC]

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John Wayne starred in 169 movies, playing so many heroic cowboys that many Americans believed he had single-handedly won the West – and he came to believe it. Yet Wayne was living a lie. Behind closed doors the man born Marion Morrison was a restless, melancholy, troubled actor struggling to live up to the screen persona he had created, a bombshell new biography reveals. In John Wayne: The Life And Legend author Scott Eyman exposes a John Wayne very few knew. Haunted by three failed marriages and bad relations with his children, he always struggled to win the respect he believed he deserved and felt forced to hide his sensitivity and artistic leanings. For 25 years until 1974 he was one of the world’s top box-office stars, yet he worked almost until his death not because of a love of acting, but because bad business deals and betrayals by friends meant that he never felt financially secure. Instead the movie legend battled against his inner demons trying to live up to the John Wayne the world thought him to be. Despite his success he was tormented by his failures. “The guy you see on the screen really isn’t me,” Wayne once admitted. “I’m Duke Morrison and I never was and never will be a film personality like John Wayne. "I know him well. "I’m one of his closest students.

Wayne as a small boy [REX]

The guy you see on the screen really isn’t me John Wayne

"I have to be. "I make a living out of him.” But playing the role of John Wayne off screen was tearing the actor apart, the new book reveals. Wayne starred in Second World War drama The Sands Of Iwo Jima, winning an Oscar nomination for his part as the quintessential US Marine. In reality the actor was guilt-ridden having avoided military service during the conflict, staying home with his children while other stars from Henry Fonda to Ronald Reagan enlisted. Wayne preferred the comfort of a yacht rather than a saddle and while his on-screen kisses may have been bashful, off screen he was a sex-hungry, unfaithful husband. Wayne’s inner turmoil drove him to extremes. He smoked up to six packs of cigarettes a day, consumed heroic quantities of booze and food, and made harsh demands of those around him. He often woke at dawn and roused his family because he disliked being alone. His second wife Esperanza Diaz accused him of infidelity, violence and emotional cruelty. Born in Winterset, Iowa in 1907 he moved with his family to California at seven, the college football star worked as a movie prop-man and extra before being spotted by director John Ford who launched him as an actor.

Marlene Dietrich and Wayne in 1942 - they were lovers for 20 years [REX]

Yet before his breakout role in 1939 Western drama Stagecoach, Wayne spent a decade honing his persona: “A voice, a name, a walk that would grow more pronounced in the future, an overall attitude,” writes Eyman. A symbol of American machismo, simultaneously an outsider and an authority figure, Wayne played a series of idealised frontier Western heroes on screen. He summed up his persona as “the character the average man wants himself, his brother or his kid to be. "Always walk with your head held high. "Look everybody straight in the eye. "Never double-cross a pal.” But Wayne’s jingoistic patriotism was also his undoing. He spent 10 years and £1.2million of his own money making 1960 flop The Alamo. “Everybody made money from it but me,” Wayne lamented. His 1968 pro-Vietnam War movie The Green Berets at least made money but alienated a younger generation that never forgave him. Wayne endured the constant failure to live up to his screen persona. When diagnosed with lung cancer in 1964 he poignantly recalled: “I sat there trying to be John Wayne.” Surgery removed part of a lung but Wayne continued wheezing through a succession of mediocre Westerns to pay the bills, while rejecting stronger roles that didn’t fit his image, including Dirty Harry and The Dirty Dozen. “He intended to play only men who mirrored his own beliefs, his own values,” says Eyman. Yet while Wayne’s on-screen character was a man of constrained violence, in real life the actor was quick to apologise if his temper exploded. From 1951 drama The Quiet Man until his death from stomach cancer in 1979 at 72, Wayne gave every cast and crew member on all his movies a personalised coffee mug as a thank-you. On screen he was a man of action and few words, yet off camera he played chess and bridge, would quote Shakespeare and Dickens and had a penchant for Tolkien. Fans of his Westerns never knew that Wayne collected Eastern woodblock prints and native American kachina dolls. The son of impoverished parents who struggled throughout their lives, Wayne never lost his passion for catalogue shopping, buying gifts for family and friends until “mail-order packages would arrive in bunches, 10 or 20 at a time,” reveals Eyman. But Wayne could not find happinessin a mail-order catalogue and his personal life was tormented. His mother Mary was cold and hypercritical no matter how successful he became.

Wayne with third wife Pilar and daughter Aissa [ALAMY]