John Wayne was so ill on The Shootist the film was almost entirely cancelled | Films | Entertainment
Back in 1964, John Wayne had a cancerous lung and a few ribs removed, leaving him stricken with health problems for the rest of his life.Duke would struggle tenaciously through physical scenes in his movies, secretly relying on an oxygen mask that he was desperate to hide from the public, so as not to taint his strong cinematic image.Pushing on to make a string of movies over the next decade, including his Oscar win for True Grit, the Western legend's final film, The Shootist, hit cinemas in 1976, just three years before he died.It’s commonly believed that Wayne was living with the stomach cancer that killed him in 1979, when playing a cowboy living with the disease in The Shootist. However, this was not the case, as Duke had been cancer-free since 1969.According to Scott Ryman’s John W...
