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John Wayne didn’t serve in World War II, but Duke sought to make up for it by starring in many patriotic military movies for the rest of his life, including one set during D-Day.
One of these shot shortly after the conflict was 1949’s Sands of Iwo Jima; a film that followed a group of US Marines from training to fighting the Japanese.
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in the early months of 1945 that lasted five weeks and saw some of the bloodiest fighting of the Pacific War. Around 18,000 Japanese of the 21,000 stationed there and almost 7000 Americans were killed.
The Oscar-nominated classic is streaming for free on Channel 4 for the next couple of days before leaving the service.
So if you’re in the UK it’s available just for the rest of this weekend. Check out some fascinating trivia from the film below.
Wayne actually turned down Sands of Iwo Jima at first since he was already 42 and felt he was to old for the part of Sgt John M Stryker.
At one point Kirk Douglas was under consideration for the role before director Allan Dwan realised he could get Duke.
After the film’s success, including Wayne’s first Best Actor Oscar nomination, he was invited to mark his fist and footprints in the pavement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
Black sand from Iwo Jima was flown over to Los Angeles especially to be mixed into the cement. It’s there to this day.
Sands of Iwo Jima recreates the iconic flag-raising photograph from the battle, with the three surviving men who did it making a cameo in this scene when instructed to hoist the Stars and Stripes by Wayne.
In fact. the flag used in this scene was the actual one raised on Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945, on loan from the US Marine Corps Museum.
