- MOSCOW -- Joseph Stalin ordered
the KGB to assassinate John Wayne because he considered his anti-communist
rhetoric a threat to the Soviet Union, according to a new biography of
the film star based on interviews with Wayne's close associates and the
movie legend Orson Welles.
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- Stalin apparently learned of Wayne's popularity from
the Russian filmmaker Sergei Gerasimov, who attended a peace conference
in New York in 1949. Michael Munn, a film historian and author of John
Wayne - The Man Behind The Myth, said Gerasimov told Stalin of Wayne's
fervent anti-communist beliefs.
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- "Stalin decided that he would have him killed,"
said Mr Munn, who says he was told of the plot by Orson Welles at a dinner
in 1983. Welles had said that the KGB was given the task of assassinating
Wayne.
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- "Mr Welles was a great storyteller," said Mr
Munn, "but he had no particular admiration for John Wayne." He
said that Welles had offered the story without prompting, and that his
sources were excellent.
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- A prominent Russian filmmaker, Alexei Kapler (who was
imprisoned for an affair with Stalin's 16-year-old daughter, Svetlana),
had told another Russian filmmaker, Sergei Bondachuk, about the order.
Bondachuk was sceptical at first, but after Gerasimov confirmed the story,
Bondachuk told Welles.
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- Mr Munn said Wayne had also told him that his friend,
the stuntman Yakima Canutt, had "saved his life once". Mr Munn
later asked Mr Canutt what he had meant by this comment. The incident is
thought to have taken place in the early 50s.
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- "Yakima told me that the FBI had discovered there
were agents sent to Hollywood to kill John Wayne," said Mr Munn. "He
said the FBI had come to tell John about the plot. John told the FBI to
let the men show up and he would deal with them."
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- Wayne then apparently hatched a plot with his scriptwriter
at the time, Jimmy Grant, to abduct the assassins, drive to a beach and
stage a mock execution to frighten them. Mr Munn said he did not know what
transpired, but heard the two men stayed in the US to work for the FBI.
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- "Afterwards though, John shunned FBI protection
and did not want his family to know. He moved into a house with a big wall
around it."
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- Wayne then relied upon a group of loyal stuntmen who
infiltrated communist cells in America and learned of plots to kill him.
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- "He then gathered all the stuntmen, went to the
communist meetings, and had a huge fight," Mr Munn said. This was
when Wayne believes Mr Canutt saved his life.
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- A further attempt to kill Wayne was made in Mexico on
the set of the film Hondo (which was released in 1953), led by a communist
cell, according to Mr Munn.
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- The book claims that Stalin's order was cancelled by
his successor Nikita Krushchev after the dictator's death in 1953. The
book says Krushchev told Wayne in a private meeting in 1958: "That
was a decision of Stalin during his last five mad years. When Stalin died,
I rescinded that order."
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- Wayne also told Mr Munn about an attempt to kill him
by an enemy sniper while he was visiting the troops in Vietnam in 1966.
"One of the snipers was captured," said Mr Munn, "and said
there was a price on John's head, put there by [China's communist leader]
Mao Tse Tung."
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- Mr Munn said he had gathered the anecdotes over decades
of work in the film industry. "I am quite convinced that it was not
propagated by John or his inner circle," he added.
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1010266,00.html
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