Brian Eshleman’s Reviews > John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity > Status Update

Other cultures begin with a social hearth, a holy city. American life begins when that enclosure is escaped. One becomes American by going out. We are a people of departures, not arrival. To reach one place is simply to catch sight of a new Beyond. Our basic myth is that of the frontier. Our hero is the frontiersman. To become urban is to break the spirit of man. Freedom is out on the plains, under endless sky.

hatred is something bigger than its container, a fire tougher than the vessel that carries it,

Excerpt from: "John Wayne's America" by Garry Wills. Scribd.
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Ford was in such a charitable mood when he made the film that he forgot to put in any human conflict. All the struggle is against physical difficulties, the ordeal of men stranded in the Mojave Desert.

Excerpt from: "John Wayne's America" by Garry Wills. Scribd.
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Hathaway plays off against each other the idyllic mountain scenery and the festering human relationships.

If I could watch movies with this author, they would no longer be background noise four or a break between books.

Excerpt from: "John Wayne's America" by Garry Wills. Scribd.
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"People learn respect for each other's ministry."

Garry Wills on a crucial "interstates" in the movie Stagecoach in which passengers see beyond social status.