The Duke: The Longhorns and Chairman Mao

Steven Travers

This book is a fly-on-the-wall exploration and an immersion into the John Wayne mythology: his politics, his inspirations, the plots to assassinate him, his connections to Stalin, Khrushchev, and Chairman Mao, and the death of the Western.

Did you know that . . .

* Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ordered not one, but two assassination attempts, on the life of rabid anti-Communist movie star John “Duke” Wayne, because the Duke was exposing Communist infiltration of Hollywood?

* Wayne and the FBI captured Russian hit men and turned them into assets of U.S. intelligence?

* Homegrown Hollywood Communists attempted to carry out Stalin's orders in Burbank, California only to be captured by John Wayne and the FBI, then sent to Russia?

* Communist mass murderer Mao Tse-tung sent a Chinese assassin to Vietnam, where he barely missed John Wayne at a Marine base camp, only to be captured and questioned by the Duke himself?

* John Wayne practically slugged Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1958 - a scene that may well have been the model for George C. Scott's confrontation with the Russian general in “Patton”?