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In Duke Wayne's final film, "The Shootist," his aging gunslinger has a fight to the death in a saloon against three assailants. His final, and most deadly, opponent is a faro dealer, played by Hugh O'Brien, who actively campaigned for the role.

"I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I require the same from them."...John Wayne as John Bernard Books, "The Shootist"

Maureen O'Hara writes in her autobiography,"'Tis Herself," about appearing before Congress shortly before Duke died to urge them to strike a medal honoring him with just the right inscription. She couldn't come up with the right word, actor or cowboy wasn't good enough. She called Duke one of the three greatest men she had known, her father and recently deceased husband, Charlie Blair, being the other two.

She went on to say, without a prepared statement, that John Wayne was her dearest friend. "To the people of the world,...

I first became obsessed with photography and motion pictures while growing up in post WW2 Manila in the Philippine Islands in the late 1940's/early 1950's. Film noirs were a particular influence. But my first love remains the theater. I acted in numerous amateur productions from 1958 to 1978. In 1979 I earned a MA in drama from the University of Arizona; earlier getting a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, where I co-founded the first film society on campus and ran it for four years. While at the U of A, I studied with the master black and white photo essayist W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) the last year of his life. I am the last person cited in Jim Hughes' definitive biography of Gene, as I wrote about attending his final...