Just how much of a Manly Man was John Wayne anyway?

If you have been lucky enough to have avoided this Latest Outrage until now, my apologies.

“What Latest Outrage is that?” you might ask.

Ah, yes.

Allow me to Enlighten.

It seems the late movie actor John Wayne (that’s The Duke, to you Pilgrim…) expressed some exceptionally Un-Politically Correct Thoughts in a decades ago interview in Playboy magazine and the reverberations of said interview have been dug up to create the Most Outrageously Outragey Outrage since, uh, last week I guess.

Jim Treacher at PJ Media has the Cliff’s Notes take here:

Apparently we’ve all run out of problems in 2019, because now some folks are angry about an interview John Wayne gave half a century ago. As it turns out, the Duke wasn’t very #woke. He was #problematic and it’s like OMG I literally can’t even.

We’ve already forgotten about Ralph Northam running around in blackface 35 years ago, so now this is what we’re supposed to get upset about: the John Wayne Playboy interview from 1971.

So it goes; yadda yadda yadda.

But what I found most interesting was a comment thread buried in Treacher’s post about about the Manliness of the Star’s of the Silver Screen Back Then versus same today.

(At this point I am going to invoke the Mark McGuire-Barry Bonds-Roger Clemens Rule and stipulate that Those Old Guys were studly in the Pre-Juiced Era, unlike some of the doped muscle-bound stars of today.)

No, we’re talking Classic Manly Men.

So in keeping with The Idea I So Shamelessly Stole, let me offer up a Top Ten of Leading Male Actors Who Were Manly Men When Manliness Mattered (1950’s & 1960’s Division); here’s a list that’s as good as any.

In no particular order:

John Wayne

Clint Eastwood

Steve McQueen

Sean Connery

James Coburn

Robert Mitchum

Richard Burton

Charleton Heston

Yul Brynner

Charles Bronson

This is by no means an exhaustive list and I didn’t include Chuck Norris cuz he’s a Different Kinda Cat altogether. (Insert Chuck Norris joke here.)

Basically you can take the casts from The Magnificent Seven, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly  and The Longest Day, put them in a bowl, shake, pull out ten random names and pretty much get the same list.

Kinda makes the point that Shia LaBeouf is the AOC of today’s Hollywood, don’t it…