On June 11, 1979, John Wayne, famous for starring in countless westerns, died at age 72 after battling cancer for more than a
decade.

The actor was born Marion Morrison on May 26, 1907, in Winterset,
Iowa, and moved as a child to Glendale, California. A football star
at Glendale High School, he attended the University of Southern California on a scholarship but dropped out after two years.

After finding work as a movie studio laborer, Wayne befriended
director John Ford, then a rising talent. His first acting jobs were
bit parts in which he was credited as Duke Morrison, a childhood nickname derived from the name of his beloved pet dog.

Wayne’s first starring role came in 1930 with The Big Trail, a film
directed by Raoul Walsh.

Best known to his many fans for one of his most memorable
screen incarnations—San Francisco Police Inspector “Dirty”
Harry Callahan—the actor and Oscar-winning filmmaker Clint
Eastwood is born on May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, California.

With his father, Eastwood wandered the West Coast as a boy
during the Depression. Then, after four years in the Army
Special Services, Eastwood went to Hollywood, where he got
his start in a string of B-movies.

For eight years, Eastwood played Rowdy Yates in the popular
TV Western series Rawhide, before emerging as a leading man
in a string of low-budget “spaghetti” Westerns directed by
Sergio Leone: Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More
(1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).

John Wayne, an actor who came to epitomize the American
West,was born in Winterset, Iowa.

Born Marion Robert Morrison, Wayne’s family moved to
Glendale, California, when he was six years old. As a teen,
he rose at four in the morning to deliver newspapers, and
after school he played football and made deliveries for local
stores.

When he graduated from high school, he hoped to attend the
U.S. Naval Academy. However, after the school rejected him,
he accepted a full scholarship to play football at the University
of Southern California in Los Angeles.

In the summer of 1926, Wayne’s football coach found him a job
as an assistant prop man on the set of a movie directed by John
Ford. Ford started to use Wayne as an extra, and he eventually
began to trust him with some larger roles.

1954

1969

Wayne won the Academy Award for Best
Actor and the Golden Globe Award for
Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama,
his only competitive win for either
institution.

On May 16, 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences handed out its first awards, at a dinner party for
around 250 people held in the Blossom Room of the
Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California.

The brainchild of Louis B. Mayer, head of the powerful MGM
film studio, the Academy was organized in May 1927 as a
non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and
improvement of the film industry.

Its first president and the host of the May 1929 ceremony was
the actor Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Unlike today, the winners
of the first Oscars—as the coveted gold-plated statuettes
later became known—were announced before the awards
ceremony itself.

The first official Best Picture winner was Wings, directed by
William Wellman. The most expensive movie of its time, with
a budget of $2 million.
   

Oscar-winning actor known for playing intense, often violent
characters in "The Godfather," "Dog Day Afternoon" and
"Serpico" is 85 today.

Pacino has won and been nominated for many awards during
his acting career, including nine Oscar nominations. He won
a Best Actor award for “Scent of a Woman” in 1992.

1992