For Ford, Wayne starred in what has come to be known as the Cavalry Trilogy: Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950), three elegiac films in which Wayne portrays stoic cavalry officers of the Old West. Marion Morrison was the son of an Iowa pharmacist; he acquired the nickname Duke during his youth and billed himself as Duke Morrison for one of his early films. is your television home for series and movies with action, crime drama, detectives and surprise plot twistswatch the best in the business solve cases and put away the bad guys every day for free on CHARGE! And there was a competitive faction in town, led by Lawrence Murphy. If youve got Big in front of your name, theres a good chance you know how to throw down. Waynes standout films for other directors include Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), in which his performance as an uncompromisingly tough Marine sergeant earned an Oscar nomination; Hondo (1953), perhaps the only classic western filmed in 3-D; The Alamo (1960), an epic-length film that Wayne himself directed and in which he starred as Davy Crockett; The Longest Day (1962) and In Harms Way (1965), two hugely successful World War II epics; and McLintock! If you're wondering why film star John Wayne didn't use his real name as his stage name, that's because his real name wasn't "Duke" - that was the nickname he went by from the time he was about 9 or 10 years old on. The film had been made six years earlier. Some of his more notable war movies include Flying Tigers (1942), The Fighting Seabees (1944), They Were Expendable (1945), and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.