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In the best American tradition, John Wayne started his trade at the bottom—as a property boy on the old Fox lot on Hollywood's Western Avenue. He was then a lanky young football player at the University of Southern California, equipped with an amiable grin, formless energy, and a vague ambition to become a lawyer. Like all genuine Hollywood actors, he was born (in Winterset, Iowa) with an alias: Marion Mitchell Morrison. When he was five, his parents moved to California and settled in Glendale, where his father ran a drugstore.
Marion was a healthy, husky kid, a dutiful son and a student who liked sports better than study. In high school he was unwillingly drafted into a student play, to give a rawboned caricature of a British peer. The experience rid him of the hated name Marion by capping him with the slightly suspect nickname "Duke." It did not attract him in any way to the acting profession. After graduating from high school, he joined several other U.S.C. footballers who were working as part-time stagehands at the Fox Studio. And the more young Morrison saw of the studios, the more fascinated he became with their product. "All of a sudden," he says, "I realized that this business is a damn fine business, and I got proud of it."
High, Low, Jack. Nobody on the Fox lot in those days cared much whether strapping young Duke Morrison was proud of his trade or not, but they found him a likable, good-natured companion in horseplay. A favorite sport was to get the big ex-tackle down on all fours in signals position and try to push him over. One day the great director, John Ford, joined the game. Duke took his stance. With a deft kick Ford knocked his hands from under him, and the property man's face hit the floor with a smack. It was very funny. Everybody laughed. Duke got up, his face expressionless. "Let's try that once again," he said. Ford nodded. This time Duke charged forward, sent the director flying across the floor on his rear end.
It was very funny, but nobody laughed. Then Director Ford, still sitting down, gave the cue: he threw back his head and rocked with laughter. From that moment, Duke began to revere John Ford. Not to be outdone, Ford gave the youngster his fatherly affection. "I could see," Ford says now, "that here was a boy who was working for something—not like most of the other guys, just hanging around to pick up a few fast bucks. Duke was really ambitious and willing to work. Inside of a month or six weeks we were fast friends, and I used to advise him and throw him a bit part now and then."
The tie that really bound the friendship was Ford's discovery that Duke played a sharp hand at Ford's favorite game, Pitch. "It's an old New England game—High, Low, Jack and the Game," explains Ford. On Ford sets, whenever Duke wasn't studying the director's professional tricks or shifting props, the two could be found behind some inconspicuous piece of scenery, "claiming low" on one another.