How Will You Live Your "Dash"? Part I
Like John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart? A "Which Way America" Question for Each of Us Updated.
Prologue
About a year ago, I published a blog about Jimmie Stewart and John Wayne, and how each of their lives modeled a conflicting idea of our citizenship responsibilities.
The news these past few weeks included the death of Tony Bennett, not only a legendary singer, but like Jimmy Stewart, a WWII war veteran; and Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis’s rewriting Florida’s education standards regarding the history of black lives and slavery. The lives of Bennett and DeSantis also model conflicting views of citizenship responsibilities – Bennett like Stewart, DeSantis like Wayne.
As a frame for the discussion, we begin with a Stewart and Wayne update.
Tony Bennett is the star of “How Will You Live Your Dash”? Part II.
Part II follows this post on August 1, 2023, and will be found on richardjacobs.substack.com.
It All Begins in Hollywood: Make Believe, Not Facts
THERE’S A LOT OF ROMANCE in how we American see ourselves. We’re the Tops. We’re exceptional. We’re individualistic — ruggedly individualistic. There’s a little bit of the wild west in our DNA. At least a lot of us Americans seem to believe so.
Over the decades Hollywood’s western movies, particularly John Wayne movies, glamorized and propagandized those ideas into our American Spirit. Wayne was that tough, no nonsense, gun-toting, punch to the gut, problem-solving hero Americans could love, and many of us wanted to be. He’d stand up for what he thinks right against anyone. That’s how we like to think about ourselves!
Wayne made a bunch of movies in the 1920s and the early 1930s, but it was his 1939 movie Stagecoach that got us hooked and Wayne on the stardom trail.
When WWII came a long, he spiced up his cowboy offerings with war movies, like the Flying Tigers, the Fighting Seabees, and Sands of Iwo Jima. These films added to our ethos of what it takes to be an American hero.
After WWII, Wayne mixed up his movies. He starred in both western and war films, about 140 movies in all. My favorite? His 1969 True Grit, where he played a hard-nosed, drunken U. S. marshal who helped a stubborn teenager track down his father’s killer in Indian territory.
Known as “Duke,” Wayne’s influence jumped off the silver screen and the roles he played became standard-bearers for our belief systems. Wayne became our cultural icon for what it means to be a real American. In 1997, Owen McNally wrote in John Wayne’s Biggest Role: American Cultural Icon: “John Wayne’s righteous machismo, devotion to a cowboy/warrior code and advocacy of the United States’ divine right to unfettered expansion shaped the patriotism and masculinity of countless American males. …Wayne’s unwaning true grit and moral view based on political power’s growing out of the barrel of a gun won him the admiration of such disparate fans as Emperor Hirohito, Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Newt Gingrich.”
But times change. In 2012, Neal Gabler wrote in How Barack Obama killed John Wayne, that, Wayne’s mantra was in contrast to Obama’s view of Americans as being more sensitive:
“Wayne presented values that many now associate with America itself. … He stood like a force of nature. Nothing fazed him. He relied on brute strength to win the day, so he never dickered or soothed or capitulated. … Wayne’s America looked back to the 19th century frontier values. It was anti-urban, anti-intellectual, self-sufficient, highly individualistic and, perhaps above all, masculine. … Wayne’s view of America was hard and unyielding. …
“The emerging America is softer and more sensitive. As opposed to a solitary hero, it embraces the idea of collective heroism. … If America is a movie — which in many ways it is — we changed the marquee. … And there isn’t much of a role for John Wayne in this movie.”
Of course, times can change back again. In 2016, when Donald Trump accepted the Wayne family’s presidential campaign endorsement, he said: "John Wayne represented strength. He represented power. He represented what the people are looking [for] today, because we have exactly the opposite from John Wayne right now in this country. And he represented real strength and an inner strength that you don’t see very often."
Adam Howard followed up in his 2016 Why John Wayne remains an icon of the right:“Wayne's rugged sensibility is something every modern Republican strives for. You can see it in Ronald Reagan's outdoorsy attire, George W. Bush's brush-clearing photo ops, or Sen. Ted Cruz's impromptu hunting trips. His portrayal of dominant white manhood is so precious that when a character suggests he was actually gay in a memorable scene in the 1984 cult classic ‘Repo Man,’ the implication leads to a near fist fight. The thought being that Wayne represented something ‘pure’ — that if corrupted, could call so much of America's romantic self-image into question.”
Howard’s article closes with: “Trump, it appears, is vying to restore the frontier-justice version of America which Wayne’s films often portrayed, the only trouble it is, was always, make-believe.” [emphasis added]
Three of Wayne’s films — How the West Was Won, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Shootest — co-starred James Stewart. Stewart, who starred in about 80 movies, also got his start in the 1930s, a few years after Wayne. Although Stewart is probably best known for his 1946 Christmas Classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, my favorite Stewart film is Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
There is a different tone in Stewart’s movies than Wayne’s. Like Wayne he was a life-long Republican. And he could be tough. But, for the most part the roles he played were differently principled. His characters had a large chunk of Obama’s softer sensitivity and caring for everyone in them. Unlike Wayne, whose screen persona represented what male audiences wanted to become, Stewart was the “everyman” as he is, and as he makes his way through extraordinary circumstances. Stewart made a lot of great films — and American Films listed him as the third greatest screen legend in American film history. But Stewart never became an All-American Icon akin to Wayne.
The Life Lived: Facts, not Make Believe
JOHN WAYNE WAS BORN May 26, 1907 and died June 11, 1979. James Stewart was born May 20, 1908 and died July 2, 1997. The real test of each is not the motion pictures’ “make believe” he portrayed, but how he lived his “Dash,” his life. The dash is the line carved on our tombstones, between the date of our birth and the date of death. For Wayne, it’s the 72 years between 1907-1979. For Stewart it’s the 89 years between 1908-1997.
The dash as a metaphor comes to us from Linda Ellis’s 1996 poem, The Dash. The poem closes with a provocative question:
“So, when your eulogy is being read, with your life’s actions to rehash, would you be proud of the things they say about how you spent YOUR dash?”
Keep the question in mind as we continue. It’s not how long the dash is that counts; what counts is how the Dash is lived, and what kind of legacy it provides to future generations.
James Stewart
As the German blitzkrieg was bolting its way across Europe in the 1940s, Jimmy Stewart was the first from Hollywood to join the Army, ten months before Pearl Harbor. I still remember a Pathé news clip of Stewart in the Army Air Force I saw at the East End Theatre in Superior, Wisconsin when I was 10 years old. It accompanied a Saturday Lone Ranger episode I was ritualistically there to see. (The clip, Winning Your Wings, is below, in Extra Credit. The clip is credited with recruiting 150,000 men for the Army Air Force.)
Stewart didn’t have to go into the Army. He flunked his Army physical — 10 pounds underweight. That didn’t deter him. He bulked up, and with the help of a friend on scales, appealed the draft board’s decision. In February 1941 he became an Army private.
The Army Air Force was short on pilots. Stewart, a licensed pilot with 400 hours experience, some of it in his own Stinson (the training plane used by the Air Force), soon transferred to the Army Air Force, serving as a Second Lieutenant and flight instructor. However, staying stateside as an instructor was not what he had in mind.
After a year in New Mexico training pilots, the 35-year-old Stewart appealed to his commander and in November 1943, went to England as part of the 445th Bombardment Group to pilot B-24 Liberators. He flew 20 bombing missions over Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. On one flight, a 1,000 bomber mission over Germany, his B-24 lost two of its four engines to Nazi gun flack but was able to limp back to England.
After the raid, he became operations officer for the 453 Bombardment Group, raising its proficiency from near the bottom to near the top of the Eighth Air Force units. Before the war was over, he became Major, one of the few ever promoted from private to major in four years. Highly respected by his crews for his leadership, he flew as a group, wing, and squadron leader. He was known as an exceptionally conscientious, dedicated officer. As one of his crewmen remarked, “Hollywood supported the war effort. Jimmy Stewart was the war effort.”
He continued to serve in the Army Air Force Reserve after WWII until he was 60, retiring as a Brigadier General. During his WWII European tour of duty he received two Distinguished Flying Crosses, four Air Medals, a Presidential Unit Citation and the French Croix de Guerre. During the Vietnam war, he flew a mission in a B-52, the result of his requesting active duty during his 1966 reserve-required 2-weeks of service.
After WWII, he returned to Hollywood. His studio, MGM, wanted to capitalize on his military experience, with The James Stewart Story, a movie about his military flight experiences. Stewart refused, unwilling to relive or discuss his war years. Outraged, Louis B. Mayer fired him. “According to Stewart, after he flatly refused to do the movie, LB called him a son of bitch and said, ‘you’ll never work in this town again;’” Fortunately, Stewart’s good friend, Henry Fonda, got him a new agent and his career prospered.
The character Stewart exhibited during WWII was the principled character he lived as a human being. Stewart’s principles led him to turn down at least three roles that won Oscars, including Golden Pond. He was offered the lead role, ultimately played by Henry Fonda. Stewart didn’t like the way the movie father (played by Henry Fonda) treated his movie daughter (played by Jane Fonda). His agent Bill Frye said, that Stewart “didn’t like the relationship the old man had with his daughter in the film. Jimmy loved both his daughters and couldn’t imagine a father treating one the way the character did in the film, and therefore refused to play him.” He also turned down Oscar-winning Network. The script required him to use profanity. He wouldn’t do it on the screen.
John Wayne
While Jimmy Stewart was flying B-24s on bombing runs in Europe, John Wayne was in Hollywood making movies. He made about a dozen during WWII. Like Stewart, at the time the war began, he had an exemption from service. As the war progressed, the exemption was reclassified as A-1, eligible for immediate military service. His studio, Republic Pictures, intervened with the draft board to prevent his reclassification. Wayne was a valuable property, the only A-list actor the studio had during the war. The studio was successful. Unlike Stewart, Wayne didn’t object.
Writing in 2007, on the Memorial Day that was also the centennial of John Wayne’s birth, Ed Rampell and Luis I. Reyes wrote in Memorializing the Deadly Myth of John Wayne: “Wayne’s motion picture persona is associated with cowboys and soldiers. In fact, he was neither…. While Jimmy Stewart and his fellow celebrity servicemen were real action heroes, Wayne was a ‘Lights! Cameras! Action!’ hero who merely played the part in the safety of Tinseltown’s home front and back lot…. Wayne was, in reality, a draft dodger. America’s archetypal soldier was in fact a chicken hawk. He was a cheerleader and champion of militaristic patriotism and combat he had never experienced. Wayne had 'other priorities' during WWII — achieving superstardom (and saving his neck) was more important than defeating fascism.”
Wayne’s “contribution” to the war effort was entertaining troops overseas on USO tours. In Only History Buffs Will Know the Fact from Fiction in these Unbelievable Stories, Khalid Elhassan wrote:
“As one wounded Marine veteran described a wartime incident: 'after my evacuation from Okinawa, I had the enormous pleasure of seeing Wayne humiliated in person at Aiea Heights Naval Hospital in Hawaii. … Each evening, Navy corpsmen would carry litters down the hospital theater so the men could watch a movie. One night they had a surprise for us.
“Before the film, the curtains parted, and out stepped John Wayne, wearing a cowboy outfit – 10-gallon hat, bandana, checkered shirt, two pistols, chaps, boots and spurs. He grinned his aw-shucks grin, passed a hand over his face and said ‘Hi, ya guys!’ He was greeted by stony silence. Then somebody booed. Suddenly everyone was booing. This man was a symbol of the fake machismo we had come to hate, and we weren’t going to listen to him. He tried and tried to make himself heard, but we drowned him out, and eventually he quit and left.'”
Rampell and Reyes close their Memorial Day article with: “On the 100th anniversary of the Duke’s birth, Americans need to distinguish between myth and deadly realities. We must re-examine America’s love affair with settling disputes through gunplay, and question people and institutions that demand that the young sacrifice their minds and bodies in tribute to these actors (of the stage and political theater) and the violence they celebrate.”
Which Way America?
Certainly, these brief observations are not complete biographies of either Wayne or Stewart. But they are insights as to where we are as people. America has moved a far pace from its democratic ideals envisioned by our Founders — even far from the 2007 Memorial Day writings of Rampell and Reyes. We are flirting with becoming an autocratic, illiberal democracy — governed at the state and federal levels by an elected single party which has no interest in meeting the needs of Americans outside the party.
That party, the GOP, operates under the John Wayne view of America — macho problem solving by confrontation or suppression, without negotiation or concern about those who might disagree. It claims to be making “America Great Again,” but its legislative and political efforts will never make America great. Like Wayne, there is bluster and tough talk. Like Wayne who solved his problems with bullets, the party's elected representatives “shoot down” legislation America sorely needs. They offer no legislation, political platform, or plan that could make America Great Again. Rather, they limit the rights of Americans — about half our population — who don’t identify with their party, their beliefs, their view of life.
We are experiencing identity politics at its worst: Minimizing the effectiveness of voting opposition; failing to regulate guns and domestic terrorism; controlling the lives of women, gays and transgenders; reducing the quality of public education; refusing to deal adequately with health care; squelching unalienable constitutional rights; failing to deal with climate change and our warming world; and failing to address the abuses of money in politics are but a few of today’s misdeeds. The list has grown since 2007.
Where we are headed as a country does not honor those who sacrificed their lives to provide us a viable democracy. What honors our country is the kind of service folks like Jimmy Stewart gave. That way of life involves more than one's willingness to put his or her life on the line when doing so is needed for the preservation of our country; it is a way of life that understands that each of us are members of a larger whole. It requires us to take to heart what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration: We are all equal.
In 1986, Oxford Analytica published an extensive study of the trends shaping American society, America in Perspective. The study points out that America's society has always been diverse and fragmented. Since 1986, the diversification and fragmentation has accelerated. Coupled with an increased emphasis on individuality rather than collective fulfillment, governing becomes more difficult, people experience increased anger and distrust about the government's inability to solve problems.
That's where we are today. When confronted with the question, "Which Way America?" when we are unsettled, an autocratic government appears to be an attractive bailout. But, as I have pointed out in Democracy of Dollars, the attractiveness is an illusion, a fantasy. It's the first step to the loss of the inalienable rights our Founders sought to preserve for us.
Democracy is not a spectator sport. Nor does it happen by accident. No longer can those of us who champion a true democratic government — a Democracy of People — sit idly by. Albert Einstein was right: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do it evil, but by those who watch without doing anything." When presented with the WWII challenge, John Wayne sat idly by. Jimmy Stewart answered with gusto.
If we sit idly by and allow those who chose to answer the "Which Way America?" with an autocratic government, our Heroes will have died in vain. They gave us their “lives and sacred honor,” providing us with the opportunity to thrive as a Democracy. We must not blow the opportunity.
Thus, the question we each must answer ourselves, in a very personal way, is "Which Way America?"
How will you address the question?
How will you live your dash?
How Will You Live Your “Dash”? Part II, will be posted on richardjacobs.substack.com August 1, 2023.
Dick, our "DASH" is 92 yrs. R U still with me for a -95 ?