The Young Duke: The Early Life of John Wayne by Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss

By the time Stagecoach made John Wayne a silver-screen star in 1939, the thirty-one-year-old was already a veteran of more than sixty films, having twirled six-guns and foiled cattle rustlers in B Westerns for five studios.

By the 1950s he was Hollywood’s most popular actor — an Academy Award nominee destined to become an American icon. This biography reveals the story of his early life, illustrated with rare archival images.