This biography charts John Wayne's rise to stardom and investigates his remarkable durability. It focuses on the manufacturing of "John Wayne" from the raw material of Marian Morrison, the young man from Iowa who became a myth. Wayne avoided World War II service, but his greatest successes were in playing America's military heroes. The book traces his career from the cowboy serials that almost doomed his career, through his breakthrough with "Stagecoach" and "Red River", to the pinnacle of his popularity in the 1950s and 1960s.