As a Symbol of What Was, the Duke Still Looms Large

For no apparent reason on this otherwise dreamlike Orange County day, I have John Wayne in my head. Sheesh, I’ve only lived here seven years and already I’m nostalgic for an Orange County I never even knew.

I bet my shrink probably would tell me I’m overloaded on names like Fleiss, Menendez, Bobbitt. They’re taking up way too much space in my consciousness. I don’t care about any of them, and yet I can’t get away from them. Or their problems. They and various permutations of them are dominating the landscape.

You think I’m going crazy? You are correct, sir.

Give me shelter from the storm.

Give me the Orange County when the big guy would walk around Newport Beach and yet not be gawked at, or expect to be gawked at. Give me something, anything --at least for a day or so--that harks back to a time when we didn’t celebrate superficiality, victimization and sociological oddities.

Give me the Duke.

It’s a tribute to American myth making (either that, or how far I’ve declined psychologically) that I wasn’t even a John Wayne fan when he was alive.

Now, I miss the big galoot.

I miss his commonness, his raw honesty, his unapologetic insistence on being himself.

Come June, the Duke will have been dead 15 years. He died of cancer at 72, 15 years after it was first detected in him.

When he died, Times Staff Writer Robert Kistler wrote of Wayne: “He was, like one of those giant faces on Mount Rushmore, a larger-than-life reminder of the nation’s heritage, as well as a living example of its once-celebrated, rough-and-tumble pioneer spirit.”

While thinking of Wayne, I wondered whether anyone else gives much thought to the Duke anymore. I ventured down to the Class of ’47 tavern in Balboa, a hole-in-the-wall saloon where the Duke used to saunter in, have a couple drinks, and saunter out.

Owner Dominic Restivo has numerous photos of the Duke adorning the walls, along with other old-timers like Bogie, Marilyn and Elvis.

“He came in periodically,” Restivo said. “It was no big deal. He’d come in, drink. When he was kind of sick, he’d come in, get a Scotch and milk. It was just a natural thing. It was like when one of those big football players would come in. He came in here once with James Arness.”

Restivo makes it humorously clear he wasn’t overly impressed with stars. “I didn’t think it was that big a deal. After he died, they flew the flags at half mast. There are plenty of celebrities who live around here.”

I asked Restivo if anyone asks about the Duke anymore. “The younger generation, they ask a lot of questions about him. I’m 65. People my age, it’s history to them. In my day, we could give a (bleep) who it was. To us, they were (just) movie stars. What’s he done? He made a movie.”

I asked Restivo why the younger generation seems more interested.

“I got no idea,” he said. “Young kids are asking questions about him all the time. Just stupid stuff.”

One tribute to Wayne’s popularity is that pictures of him keep disappearing from the bar, Restivo said. “They take ‘em right off the wall, screws and everything.”

How is that possible, I asked.

“Easy, when you got one bartender and he’s half asleep. I had one old picture of him, it looked like he was looking down right over you. I came in one day and it was gone and I asked the bartender, ‘What the (bleep) happened to that picture?’ “He said, ‘I didn’t notice it was missing.’ I said, ‘How could you not notice it? (Wayne) was looking right over you.’ ”

Wayne spent the last 15 years of his life in Newport Beach. He told former Times staffer Joseph Bell that Orange County offered everything he needed to be happy. Although Wayne would be subject to autograph seekers if he went out for an evening, he didn’t let his celebrity greatly restrict his movements.

“People around home don’t hassle me,” he once said. “They mostly respect my privacy.”

I suppose one reason I miss the Duke is because it is increasingly clear how much he stands in contrast to the world he left behind.

He was never trivial, never phony, never whiny.

Oh God, if we could only snap our fingers and make that the norm today.

Maybe Wayne foresaw that his popularity would linger with young people even after his death, because he once told Bell:

“From what I see of the world today, the kids could use a few heroes. Even our sports pages are full of guys who refuse to report for practice or get busted or jump out of bushes at little girls. I don’t know where the kids are going to turn for heroes anymore.”