Wayne in 3-D: Another Dimension to a Distinguished Film Career : Revival: Michael Wayne, son of the Duke, wants to bring ‘Hondo,’ his dad’s 1953 Western, back for a TV screening, using a 3-D process called Natural Vision.

John Wayne died in 1979 after a battle with cancer that had begun 16 years earlier. But the movies offer their own version of immortality and the Duke continues to find viewers and admirers. In a recent poll on admired Americans conducted by the satiric Spy magazine, Wayne was one of the high finishers.

The chief keeper of the Duke Wayne flame is his 55-year-old son Michael, who is the eldest of Wayne’s seven children and who runs Batjac, the production company that made many of Wayne’s later films.

If present plans mature, Michael Wayne said a few days ago, “Hondo,” his father’s 1953 Western, would be seen on television this fall in the 3-D form in which it was originally shot.

“Hollywood was very excited about 3-D in those days,” Wayne says. Nearly 100 films were made in 3-D, in fact, including Alfred Hitchcock’s “Dial M for Murder,” and the hope was that the novelty would combat the onrushing competition from television. “But the glasses were a problem,” Wayne adds, “and ‘Hondo’ was shown in 3-D only in Chicago and Los Angeles.

“Even so, it earned back its negative cost in three weeks. It was Geraldine Page’s first film, and it won her her first Academy Award nomination.”

The idea, presently in negotiation, would be to present the film on a special syndication network, using a 3-D process called Natural Vision, which Wayne thinks is the most effective yet. The process still involves glasses, which might be distributed as a tie-in by one or more retailers. The film has had only two theatrical releases and one cable run in 30 years.

“Hondo” is one of four Wayne films Batjac owns outright. The others are “Island in the Sky” (1953) and “The High and the Mighty” (1954), both directed by William Wellman, and “McClintock” (1963), directed by Andrew V. McLaglen.

Under the so-called right of publicity law enacted by California and several other states, the name and image of a celebrity are owned by the celebrity and can’t be used or exploited without permission. Technically, the Wayne image was purchased from him by a limited partnership of his children.

The law protects the celebrity from demeaning exploitations but it can also be a source of revenue. “I try to maximize the earnings from the films of my father that we own and those we share the ownership of,” Michael Wayne says. He also oversees the licensing of his father’s name and image on behalf of the family, and one of the uses of the money is to support the John Wayne Cancer Clinic at UCLA.

“My father was one of the most loyal USC alumni of all time. When cancer hit him the second time and his doctor in Newport Beach told him the best place for him to be was UCLA, he said, ‘What! I can’t set foot in that place!’ But he did and he very quickly came to love it and to admire Dr. Donald Morton, who ran and still runs the cancer clinic.”

Still Wayne, an undergraduate footballer when he was still Marion (Duke) Morrison, preserved his loyalty to USC. “I stopped in at the hospital every morning on my way to the office,” Michael says. “One day he called me at home and said it was important I bring him a USC cap. The doctors had given him a UCLA cap but he said, ‘I just can’t wear it next to my head.’ I found him a USC cap and he put it on underneath the UCLA hat. And then he went down the corridor in his wheelchair, tipping his UCLA cap right and left and showing off the SC cap below it.”

It was a cheerful silliness in a time when not much else in Wayne’s life was. “He fell in love with the place,” Michael says. “He knew his chances of getting out weren’t so hot, but he vowed that if he did, he was going to do a special about the place, do something to help them because they’d been so good to him.”

Two years after his death, the UCLA Medical School’s Division of Surgical Oncology became the John Wayne Cancer Clinic. The clinic does a great deal of basic research, notably into techniques for the early detection of cancer from substances in the blood and urine, and in the development of immunotherapy, which triggers the body’s own immune system to fight the cancer. The clinic will see more than 1,600 new patients this year.

The John Wayne Clinic’s Auxiliary, the support group now eight years old, holds a major annual fund-raiser, the Odyssey Ball. The 1990 event takes place Saturday night at the Santa Monica Airport Center. It will honor actor Carroll O’Connor and his wife Nancy, longtime supporters of the clinic. They will receive what has been named the Duke Award.

Michael himself attended Loyola (now Loyola Marymount) University here, did a hitch in the Air Force, acted briefly (his brothers Patrick and Ethan are the working actors in the family), then turned to production. He worked at Revue as an assistant director before joining his father at Batjac, producing “McClintock,” among several other films.

One measure of John Wayne’s continuing popularity has been the success of several big-ticket collectibles the family has licensed (revenues going to the clinic): bronzes, prints, a Winchester rifle of which 50,000 were sold at $600 each.

And recently there was what qualifies as an ultimate accolade, a postage stamp, one of four celebrating the Oscars, and showing Wayne as the Ringo Kid in “Stagecoach.” (The others were Gary Cooper in “Beau Geste,” Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz” and Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in “Gone With the Wind.”

“There’s some Nobel Prize level work going on at the clinic,” Michael Wayne says. “As a family we’re proud to be associated with it, and I think we’ve done right by the Duke.”