(Source: Monogram Pictures Corporation)
In the four and a half decades that John Wayne was the quintessential Western hero, he wasn’t supposed to die very often, so it may be surprising that his characters were killed more often than we might think.
In fact, some of his most famous roles, from Sgt. John M. Stryker in The Sands of Iwo Jimafor which he received an Oscar nomination, to Davy Crockett in The Alamo, involve his assassination by enemy forces. Then there are the three early roles in which his characters die by drowning. In 1933’s Central Airport, he is a nameless pilot who dies in an underwater rescue attempt after a plane crash, while Harvest the wild wind And On the trail of the Red Witch Both feature horrifying depictions of deaths in diving suits. In the first, Wayne’s character is strangled by a giant squid, while the second features a close-up of his helmet filling with water.
Most Wayne fans may remember him best for two of his final film roles. The iconic shooting of his character Wil Andersen as he fearlessly turns his back on armed cattle rustler Asa Watts in the 1972 film. The Cowboys is one of his best moments in front of the camera. His last film role in The shooter In “The Last Man” his character JB Books also dies, but a stunt double had to be used to raise money because Wayne was already seriously ill with lung cancer during production.
And while neither Big Jake, Ethan Edwards nor Rooster Cogburn meet their end on screen, at least some of John Wayne’s more famous film characters die before our eyes. And it’s a good thing we’re only talking about Wayne’s characters, because the man himself narrowly escaped death on several sets.
But what is the total death toll?
Not only was Wayne drowned, shot in the back, shot during a cigarette break at the front, impaled during the defense of the Alamo, and stood by a stunt double to take the movie-worthy bullet, he also suffered death at his own side in 1944. The fighting SeabeesHis character, Lt. Commander “Wedge” Donovan, is shot by friendly fire from American soldiers during a machine gun attack on the Japanese in World War II.
In a rare portrayal of a person with ambivalent moral attitudes, his character Ted Hayden is poisoned in a bar while posing as the murderous Gat Ganns in the early Western film West of the watershed. Wayne’s characters obviously didn’t cope with water in the 1930s and 1940s.
That makes a total of nine deaths of John Wayne characters on screen. His character, Tom Doniphon, is killed off-screen in the John Ford classic The man who shot Liberty Valance. If we include this death in the final number, that’s ten deaths of John Wayne characters in the films he starred in. That’s still a ratio of only one death for every 14 features he made in total. The Duke is still very much alive in the rest.
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