John Wayne Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

John Wayne (1907-1979) is considered one of the greatest actors of all time, most famous for his many Western film roles. He made his debut in the 1926 silent film Brown of Harvard in an uncredited role. His first lead role came just four years later in Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail (1930), where Wayne portrays a trapper who is part of a settlement group travelling along the Oregon Trail. This role did not lead to stardom, but he continued to appear in B-movies throughout the 1930s. John Ford's 1939 film Stagecoach is the film that rocketed the actor to fame. Wayne's films tend to be either Westerns or military-themed. His most famous Westerns, including The Searchers (1956), Red River (1948), Rio Bravo (1959), and True Grit (1969), helped define the genre. As he grew more popular, he became a director and producer, earning the job to sit behind the camera for films like The Alamo (1960) and The Green Berets (1968). While his Westerns remain extremely popular today, perhaps his best known movie is the 1962 film The Longest Day, which depicts the events of the D-Day Invasion on the coast of Normandy, France. He was the embodiment of the American hero in over 200 films, fighting (on screen) for his country in many of them. Over the course of his decades-long career, Wayne earned three Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Actor for his role as U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn in True Grit.