John Wayne is among the biggest movie stars to ever grace the silver screen, yet if it weren’t for a bodysurfing accident, that legendary career may never have happened. The Duke was attending USC on a football scholarship with eyes on a law degree. However, when he injured his shoulder and could no longer perform on the field, he was cut from the football team and lost his scholarship. Looking for cash and with a film studio connection through his former coach Howard Jones, the 20-year-old started hauling props for Fox Film Corporation. This led to some minor roles in John Ford movies and his first starring role in The Big Trail when Raoul Walsh saw him moving around furniture for the studio. The rest, as they say, is history. But how much of the story is true? How much is merely the product of Singing in the Rain-style studio propaganda? Was The Duke just not a good enough lineman?
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Born Marion Robert Morrison (not Marion Michael Morrison, as is widely believed) in 1907, it’s probably not surprising that a young John Wayne was teased and beaten up for his name. That kind of thing stopped once he started to grow into the large man he would become, clearing 6 feet tall in his early teens. That’s when football started, reportedly becoming a star on the Glendale High team. According to Wayne himself, in Michael Munn’s biography of him, John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth, his desire after high school was to become a Naval Officer, however he was rejected by the Naval Academy. Instead, he attended the University of Southern California on a football scholarship to study law. Director Henry Hathaway, who would work with Wayne on six movies — including his Oscar-winning turn in True Grit — claimed that becoming a lawyer was The Duke’s actual goal and the Navy story is no more than a studio invention. Whatever the truth is, acting clearly wasn’t his first choice.

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When Wayne joined USC in 1926, the Trojans were in a period of change, with now legendary coach Howard Jones having taken over the team in 1925. Not only did The Duke play football at USC, but it is also where his connection to the film industry really began. Tom Mix, who is essentially the silent film equivalent of Wayne, just happened to work out a deal with Jones that saw Mix get tickets to USC Trojans games and players on the team given opportunities to work summer jobs at Fox Studios. Wayne was a beneficiary, with Mix hiring him as a personal trainer to keep him in shape. But was this actually true? The jobs at Fox certainly have evidence to back them up, but the personal trainer story is another that Hathaway puts down to studio publicists. Wayne himself seemed to back off this part of the story in later life, talking about carrying props rather than personal training.

Bodysurfing Ended John Wayne’s Football Career

According to The Young Duke: The Early Life of John Wayne by Chris Enss and Howard Kazanjian, Wayne badly dislocated his shoulder while bodysurfing at Huntington Beach. The injury took a toll on his performance as a lineman at USC, which was a bit of a problem given that his scholarship was tied to football. After continued poor performance, The Duke was cut from the team and in May 1927 gave up his attempts at a degree. What followed was an unsuccessful job hunt in San Francisco before stowing away on a steamship to Hawaii. He was found, arrested, and sent back to California, where he went back to Fox to work in the props department on a more permanent basis.

Once again, this version of the story is disputed. Another director, George Sherman, said: “My feeling is that if Duke said he hurt his shoulder, then it was true, but I don’t believe that was the reason he was dropped from the college football team.” Woody Strode, who worked with Wayne on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, told Michael Munn it’s more likely The Duke simply wasn’t a good enough lineman: “Wayne was never a great football player, but somehow he got into the USC’s hall of fame. I guess becoming the greatest movie star in the world will do that for you.” While Strode never played with Wayne, having attended rival school UCLA roughly a decade after The Duke, he does know football. His teammates on the Bruins included Kenny Washington and Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in football and baseball, respectively. Strode signed with the Los Angeles Rams less than two months after Washington to become the second African American in the NFL.

Wayne Got His Break and His Name at the Same Time

While he was working at Fox hauling props around, Wayne started getting put in movies as an extra, notably working with John Ford, which would later become one of the most successful actor-director pairings in cinema history. At this point Wayne was known as Duke Morrison, though not for much longer. When Fox was getting ready to make epic Western The Big Trail, director Raoul Walsh wanted to cast a young unknown in the lead role. Luckily for Wayne, Walsh spotted him carrying an armchair above his head on the lot and decided that this should be his lead. Shockingly, this part of the story doesn’t seem to be disputed anywhere. However, there was a catch: the studio didn’t like his name. Walsh claimed that he had a meeting with studio executives where they came up with the name John Wayne without even talking to him. Michael Wayne, The Duke’s eldest son, said an agent came up with it. Like many of the tales surrounding Wayne’s life, both versions have holes, such as why a prop worker would even have an agent. Ultimately, the truth could be anything, but however it truly came about, The Big Trail launched Wayne’s career as a leading man. And the rest, of course, is cinematic history.