John Wayne Named His Son After His Most Iconic Western Character
When John Wayne died on June 11, 1979 at the age of 72, he was survived by his third wife, Pilar Pallete, and seven children. He sired four of his offspring with his first wife Josephine Sáenz and the rest with Pallete, and, according to everything I've read, he loved his kids equally. Wayne wasn't the warmest of men, but after his death his children remained active in tending to his legacy, which included founding the John Wayne Cancer foundation at the longtime smoker's behest.
The closest Wayne ever came to doing one of his children harm was naming his sixth child John. Could you imagine growing up with the name John Wayne Jr.? Every kid on the playground would be looking to whup you so they could go home and tell their fathers that they kicked the crap out of John Wayne. This would almost certainly extend to your adult life. Show your ID walking into a bar, and the next thing you know you're being cold-cocked by the bouncer. Everyone in your life, from your doctor to your dentist to your butcher, would be champing at the bit to get a piece of you. You couldn't leave the house without wearing a football helmet.
How did poor John Wayne Jr. escape a lifetime of having to fight everyone he met? By using his middle name, which was inspired by one of The Duke's most famous characters. No, he was not known as Ringo Wayne, nor did he go by Rooster Wayne. While the character in question wasn't necessarily a good man, he was one moviegoers will never forget.
Ethan Wayne was named after his father's bigoted character in The Searchers
John Ford's "The Searchers" is just about impossible to top as far as Westerns go. You might prefer "Rio Bravo," "The Wild Bunch," "Once Upon a Time in the West" or "Unforgiven" to it, but Ford's film about a racist ex-Confederate soldier determined to rescue his kidnapped nieces from the Comanche remains a searing experience. And Wayne's antihero, Ethan Edwards, is easily the nastiest man he ever played.
This raises the question of whether you might prefer a lifetime of concussions to being associated with a gruff bigot, but Ethan, now aged 63, chose the latter. And he bore no ill will to his father, whom he dearly loved. As he told The Guardian in 2020, "My father was tough, but very loving. He was old school. I don't know how else to describe it. He didn't talk much, but he could make his few words very, very impactful and meaningful."
Ethan Wayne did a bit of acting, but his crowning big-screen achievement might have been working on the stunt crew of John Landis' mayhem-laden "The Blues Brothers." He hasn't acted since 2010, but he's still down to appear in documentaries about his father's life and career. He's full of great stories about his legendary papa, like this nearly fatal encounter with some poisonous creatures (which he told to The Guardian):
"When we were in Cabo or La Paz, Mexico, we'd anchor the boat far from the shore and swim in. It was about a 25-minute swim. I remember once, when I was seven or eight, swimming into a bunch of sea snakes and saying, 'Holy crap. There are sea snakes here, Dad!' He replied, 'Yeah, just keep swimming, kid.' Once we made it to shore ... he gave me a big hug and said, 'Good job, Big Stuff.' I was just so proud to have made it through, proud to be my father's son."
I'm sorry, how did Ethan not change his name to Big Stuff on the spot? There's still time, my man.