<\/span><\/h2>\nThere have been quite a few John Wayne impressions that have featured in various movies over the years, so let\u2019s start with the most obvious \u2013 to me anyway.<\/p>\n
![\"Big](\"https:\/\/s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/mostlywesterns\/JW+Impressions\/big-trouble-in-little-china-1.jpg\")
If the truth be told Kurt Russell has served up at least three cinematic impressions of Duke over the years, starting with his turn as adventurer Jack Burton in John Carpenter\u2019s Big Trouble in Little China (1986).<\/p>\n
In the last couple of years, with both The Hateful Eight and Bone Tomahawk respectively, Kurt has morphed alarmingly into the irascible and stubborn late career persona of Wayne that it\u2019s starting to be hard to tell the two apart.I\u2019m not sure whether this is something Russell is consciously aware of.<\/p>\n
I do note, however, that he once said in an interview that he decided to do an impression of Clint Eastwood as Snake Plissken in Escape from New York as an homage to his co-star in the same film, Lee Van Cleef, so maybe Kurt\u2019s going to continue exercising the limits of his impressionistic skills in his future work.<\/p>\n
I might advise him to avoid the Eastwood impressions from now on though. Christian Bale annoyingly growled so much like Eastwood every time he put his cape on that I\u2019m now unable to watch any of the Batman films he starred in without wanting to crawl through the TV\u00a0screen and strangle him with my bare hands.<\/p>\n
![\"Mathew](\"https:\/\/s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/mostlywesterns\/JW+Impressions\/full+metal+jacket-1.jpg\")
Matthew Modine\u2019s Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket is a full-on Wayne impression, although if memory serves he only does it twice in the film. The first time he drawls \u2018Is that you, John Wayne? Is it me?\u2019, incurring the wrath of the platoon sergeant who rewards his impressionistic skills with a punch to the gut.<\/p>\n
The second time is when he exhorts one of his fellow soldiers to forage for peanuts in his excrement. At least he had the decency to refer to his co-killer as Pilgrim.<\/p>\n
Someone reminded me of Nathan Lane\u2019s attempt to replicate Wayne\u2019s walking style in The Birdcage, in which Robin Williams, as Lane\u2019s partner, remarks that he never actually knew Duke walked that way.<\/p>\n
I seem to also recall a film with Peter Fonda, made back in the 1970s \u2013 Open Season maybe? \u2013 in which Fonda, along with two other Vietnam vets, indulge in a joint Wayne impression exercise.<\/p>\n
Fonda also does a pretty good impression of Duke in a documentary entitled Being John Ford, which can be found in the Ford at Fox DVD box set, released in America back in 2007.<\/p>\n
He recalls an incident in which Wayne complained that Ford was so drunk he had collapsed in the cabin of his sailing boat and Duke was going to have to literally hose the famous director down in order to make him once again acceptable to polite society.<\/p>\n
When I was a kid I caught a Wayne impression by Rich Little on TV\u00a0that always stuck in my mind because the basic joke was that Duke was going to try his hand at Shakespeare, Hamlet to be exact. Little joined the two word \u2018to\u2019 and \u2018be\u2019 together and pronounced it as \u2018tubby\u2019 instead, so it came out something like this:<\/p>\n
\u2018Tubby or not tubby. That is the question:
\nWhether \u2018tis nobler in the mind to suffer
\nThe slings and arrers of some goddam Comanch renegade
\nClean off the reservation, and by opposing,
\nPut the son-of-a-bitch in the ground where he belongs\u2019<\/p>\n
Something like that anyway. I made up the last 3 lines myself but I\u2019d give an arm and a leg to actually hear Wayne try his hand at the Bard.<\/p>\n
![\"Walter](\"https:\/\/s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/mostlywesterns\/JW+Impressions\/rio+bravo-1.jpg\")
My vote for one of the best Wayne impressions is when Walter Brennan suddenly mimics Duke as John Chance at the end of Rio Bravo, sweeping the front of his hat back and bellowing \u2018I told you to stay in there\u2019 in a loud commanding voice.<\/p>\n
You can tell by Dean Martin\u2019s reaction that the whole thing was totally unexpected, trying hard to stay in character as Brennan walks off-screen. Although it might not be a definitively accurate Wayne impression, Brennan successfully summons the essential essence of Duke and nails it in about ten seconds.<\/p>\n
In the final analysis I don\u2019t think anyone does John Wayne better than John Wayne himself. In fact there is an argument that True Grit\u2019s Rooster Cogburn is in effect a self-parody of all the characteristics that define Duke\u2019s persona, off-screen as well as on.<\/p>\n
![\"John](\"https:\/\/s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/mostlywesterns\/JW+Impressions\/John-Wayne-in-True-Grit-1.jpg\")
Old, bald, running to fat, a little too much affection for the bottle, cantankerous, irascible and a mean streak that comes in handy when dealing with the bad guys. The fact he finally got an Oscar for just playing himself kind of says it all really. Why take an impression when you can get the real thing for free?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was checking out a Western made a year or so back called Bone Tomahawk \u2013 a mashup of The Searchers meets The Walking Dead and a film I would suggest you do not watch if you have either recently … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[4,46,45,42],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2909"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2915,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909\/revisions\/2915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}