John Wayne: The Life and Legend by Scott Eyman Read Free Book Online Page B

smile. “I could say ‘isn’t’ as well as ‘ain’t.’ ”
    Duke gave some thought to a career in the Navy, or said he did. He would tell his oldest son, Michael, that he took the test for admittance to Annapolis and came in third in the state. Unfortunately, each state got to place two people per year, and Morrison was odd man out. “A pimply-faced kid like you beat me out,” he told his son, then considered tactics not taken. “If they’d have known I could have played football, I’d have been in Annapolis. . . . You’ve gotta remember that Glendale was a small town, and we weren’t on to sophisticated things like buying athletes. I never even spoke to my high school coach about what I wanted to do.”
    If Annapolis was out, Los Angeles was in. Between his academics and his football expertise, the boy was more than good enough for the University of Southern California. “One thing [USC] insisted [on] was that he have good grades,” remembered Vic Francy, who was attending USC while working as an assistant coach at Glendale High. “I checked his record and he had 19 A’s.” Beginning in September 1925, Duke Morrison began attending the University of Southern California on a football scholarship.
     
    1. Carey was born in the Bronx in 1878, the son of a judge. He initially studied to be a lawyer, then gave it up to write and act. Carey wrote a successful play called
Montana,
and used his own horse onstage every night, while the critics noted his walk—a “swagger” said one.
    CHAPTER TWO
    A USC athletic scholarship was not generous; it covered tuition, which was $280 a year, and one meal a day on weekdays—if you were on the varsity. “The training table was a five-day-a-week thing,” said Eugene Clarke, who lettered in football for Coach Howard Jones in 1930 and ’31. “We sort of had to scratch around for our other meals and for all of our meals on weekends. We were always pretty hungry by Monday mornings.”
    When Duke Morrison reported for his first workout, Howard Jones liked what he saw. Morrison was taller than anybody else on the squad and was soon moved from guard, where he’d played in high school, to tackle.
    The USC freshman team did spectacularly well, and so did Morrison; the team won all seven of their games, scoring 261 points to their opponents’ 20. Only three opponents managed to score at all, and the team’s first victim was the Glendale High team, who got creamed 47–0. Morrison must have had some conflicted loyalties, but not enough to stop him from earning a freshman letter and being singled out in the USC yearbook along with the rest of the line for his “work on the forward wall.”
    Morrison was taking the standard pre-law curriculum, and soon became a leader of the freshman debate team. He joined Sigma Chi fraternity and was again well liked by everybody, although he lacked the aggression that is a necessary part of frat life. One time he got out of a hazing by putting some ketchup in his mouth and letting it dribble down his chin. The other boys thought he was bleeding and let him go, but then Morrison started laughing, and gave his own game away.
    Except for the constant worry about money, everything seemed to be coming together. In later years, Duke would talk about the embarrassment of being in the fraternity and having to cover the holes in his shoes with cardboard. He remembered bartering washing dishes and busing tables at the fraternity house in exchange for his meals, and working with the phone company as a map plotter, figuring out where old telephone lines ran, for 60 cents an hour.
    Otherwise, he was in good standing. He was developing a gregarious personality, and since he was happy to see most people, most people were happy to see him. He wore the traditional freshman beanie, got paddled when he forgot to address upperclassmen as “sir,” walked around with his pants legs rolled up as part of his initiation. For a boy who had always felt like an