In the 50's, General Douglas MacArthur told John Wayne, "Young man, you represent the cavalry officer better than any man who wears a uniform." That is quite a compliment considering that Douglas MacArthur grew up in cavalry forts in the American West in the years following the Civil War. His father had won the Medal of Honor as a officer in the Union Army during the Civil War and was stationed out west after the war. Thus, MacArthur knew of what he spoke having experienced it first hand. MacArthur loved John Ford Westerns. In his early days as a director Ford met and was friends of those who had lived through the wild west. For example one of Ford's acquaintances was Wyatt Earp.
In 1964, William F. Buckley had this to say about Douglas MacArthuer:
"MacArthur was the last of the great Americans. it isn't at all certain that America is capable of producing another man of MacArthur's cast. Such men spring from the loins of nations in whose blood courage runs: and we are grown anemic. That is why so many have spoken of an age that would die with MacArthur. An age when, occasionally, heroes arose, acknowledging as their imperative the Duty, Honor, and Country which MacArthur cherished, but which the nation that rejected him has no stomach for, preferring the adulterated substitutes of the Age of Modulation, approved by the Pure Food and Drug Act and adorned by the seal of Good Housekeeping magazine.
MacArther and Wayne were anything but anemic!
