A new book reports that Stalin put a price on the head of John Wayne:
Joseph Stalin ordered the KGB to assassinate John Wayne because he considered his anti-communist rhetoric a threat to the Soviet Union, according to a new biography of the film star based on interviews with Wayne's close associates and the movie legend Orson Welles.
Stalin apparently learned of Wayne's popularity from the Russian filmmaker Sergei Gerasimov, who attended a peace conference in New York in 1949. Michael Munn, a film historian and author of John Wayne - The Man Behind The Myth, said Gerasimov told Stalin of Wayne's fervent anti-communist beliefs
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"Yakima told me that the FBI had discovered there were agents sent to Hollywood to kill John Wayne," said Mr Munn. "He said the FBI had come to tell John about the plot. John told the FBI to let the men show up and he would deal with them."
(
Link via 'The Corner')
