American Titan: Searching for John Wayne Read Free Page A

used by the British and Irish for males since medieval times—who fought in the Civil War and was wounded in the Battle of Pine Bluff.
    Marion’s son was the outgoing and ambitious Clyde Morrison, who attended the University of Iowa, in Iowa City, hoping to earn a degree in pharmacy. He hoped to start a practice in Des Moines, which was still mostly farm country, and although Clyde had never worked a yard of land in his life, he figured all these farmers, and their wives and children, would need medicine and family supplies. Marion was not just smart; he was big and strong enough to make the university’s all-star football team.
    He had another, perhaps more surprising talent. “Doc,” as everyone called him, possessed a deep and sonorous singing voice. Whenever he was asked to at the university’s social gatherings, and even sometimes when he wasn’t, he loved to break into song. If slightly annoying in its arrogant braggadocio, there was also something undoubtedly charming about a big, handsome, hulking athlete who loved to sing.
    At one such university social gathering, a diminutive, vivacious blue-eyed redhead named Mary (Marion) Brown, sometimes called Molly, heard the tall, husky Doc perform, was charmed and, despite being pursued by all the handsomest and well-set young men at the college and in town, decided he was the one she was going to marry.
    She made a plan.
    In August 1906, at an especially intimate moment, she politely informed Clyde she was pregnant.
    Because he was about to become a father, Doc had dropped out of the university, and before Mary started showing, he decided it might be best to relocate with her to Winterset, Iowa, the county seat and a robust farming community with a population of 17,770, forty-five miles southwest of Des Moines. There, Doc believed, he’d have a good chance of finding real work even without a degree. Soon after they settled in, they were married that September. The officiating was done by the Justice of the Peace at the Civil Hall rather than by a preacher at the local church. On May 26, 1907, Mary gave birth at home to a big baby boy, thirteen-pound Marion Robert Morrison; big babies ran in the Morrison family genes. Marion was named after his grandfather, who was in turn named after his grandfather, and his mother, Mary.
    Doc took a job as a pharmaceutical clerk, a “pill-pounder” in M. E. Smith’s, Winterset’s only drugstore. The work was menial, the pay reflected it, and it was difficult for Doc to provide Mary the lifestyle she had dreamed of. It took three long years, but by 1910, Doc had managed to save enough money for a down payment on his own drugstore in nearby Earlham, where they moved as soon as his pharmacy was ready to open for business. Doc hired one pharmacist, business boomed, and soon enough he could afford to hire a second, and contractors to build a two-story Victorian house not too far from the store. On Sundays, his day off, he proudly drove Mary and the baby around town in their new fancy one-horse carriage, pulled by Sadie, the family’s beloved steed.
    Everybody in town knew and liked Doc. They affectionately called him the town philosopher, for his broad smile and good nature. However, despite the outward appearances of affluence and harmony, the relationship between Doc and Mary had been a rocky one even before they tied the knot, and now Mary’s material demands didn’t help any; still, Doc worked hard to provide for his family. He lavished expensive gifts on Mary, believing he could afford it because business was good at the pharmacy. He didn’t know much about running a retail operation. To Doc, cash flow meant success. And whenever he was flush with it, he was an easy touch for every sob story that came through the front door. As young Marion later remembered, “He couldn’t pay his bills because he hated to press his customers to pay their bills.”
    Mary announced she was pregnant again, but despite her “condition,” she