Assassination Attempt on John Wayne by Joseph Stalin – S2 E75

Assassination Attempt on John Wayne – S2 E75

Did you now that John Wayne had a bounty on his head? This episode of the Old Fashion Masonic Podcast will tell you the stories! John Wayne, aka, Marion Robert Morrison, starred in around 170 films and earned countless awards and nominations. In 1960, he got his Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

John Wayne was a member of the Glendale DeMolay chapter in California. Later in life, he followed in the footsteps of his father and became a Freemason in 1970. John Wayne’s Masonic lodge was Marion McDaniel Lodge No. 56 in Tucson, Arizona. Soon after earning his degrees, he became a member of the York Rite, joined Al Malaikah Shrine Temple in Los Angeles, as well as 32nd-degree Scottish Rite Freemasonry.

Stalin allegedly ordered the NKVD (Soviet secret police) to carry out the assassination. It's often regarded as more of a rumor or speculation based on Wayne's anti-communist stance during the Cold War era. The story gained traction in part due to Wayne's own retelling of an encounter with Soviet filmmakers where they mentioned Stalin's interest in eliminating him.

Stalin's rule was defined by a ruthless approach to maintaining control over the Soviet Union. He implemented policies that led to the forced collectivization of agriculture, causing widespread famine and the deaths of millions in the early 1930s. Additionally, his Great Purge in the late 1930s resulted in the elimination of perceived enemies through executions and labor camps.

As part of the anti-communist counter offensive, John Wayne worked for the OSS in a temporary capacity at one point during WWII, and afterward amid rising tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union became one of the most outspoken anti-communist voices in the country.

John Wayne’s vocal anti-communist stances combined with his cinematic stardom apparently got under the skin of Joseph Stalin, the Premier of the Soviet Union. So yeah, Joseph Stalin decided to try to assassinate John Wayne.

The first part of this story, in which Stalin made the threat, is mentioned in one of the biographies of Stalin. According to Michael Munn, the author of John Wayne - The Man Behind The Myth, Wayne himself once told Munn that his stuntman, Yakima Canutt, once literally saved his life. When Munn followed up with Canutt to ask what Wayne had meant, Canutt had a very interesting story: apparently, in 1949, the FBI caught wind of a Soviet plot to kill Wayne and came to LA to inform him.

When John Wayne was informed about the Soviet agents dispatched to kill him, rather than going into hiding, he hatched a plot with the FBI agents and his scriptwriter James Grant to kidnap the assassins instead before they had a chance to execute their plan (or Wayne, for that matter).

The (believed to be KGB) agents made their way to Wayne’s office under their prepared identities as FBI agents, but found Wayne and the real FBI waiting for them instead.

Wayne and the FBI then took the Soviet agents off to an abandoned beach and staged a classic intimidation technique on them: a mock execution.
It may seem harsh, but the agents themselves were trying to stage a real execution of Wayne instead.

Fair is fair, after all. At any rate, at this point, the assassins were handed over to the FBI and were apparently so intimidated both by Wayne and by the prospect of returning to the Soviet Union having failed that they turned informants for the FBI instead. Further proof?

Orson Wells, a fellow actor, did not like John Wayne.
Orson Welles apparently heard the story through his personal connections with Soviet filmmakers, coming originally from Sergei Gerasimov, who had apparently been the one to advise Stalin about the problems Wayne posed in the first place.

At the end of the day, though, Wayne survived the attempt.
Not to be deterred, apparently, Stalin tried to have Wayne assassinated again a few years later.

While working on Hondo in Mexico in 1953, there was another scuffle with a local communist cell, though it is unclear whether this time it was a leftover order from Stalin (who died early in 1953) or simply a local communist group acting on their own initiative.

John Wayne himself initially suspected Khrushchev, as Stalin’s replacement, of continuing the effort to bump him off, but was informed by Khrushchev himself in 1958 that he had actually rescinded Stalin’s order when he took over as Premier.
He’s a little more to the story!

⚠️ Disclaimer: The views expressed in this video do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Old Fashion Masonic Podcast, any Grand Lodge or Shrine Center, and we encourage viewers to conduct their research and form their conclusions based on reliable sources and personal beliefs.

Please check out The Weird History Channel as we used content from their Episode on Stalin versus John Wayne for this piece. Excerpts from the episode titled:

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