Joan Didion wrote about Wayne more than once; she was a true fan. Her review of The Alamo was spot on. What she really liked a out the film was Wayne. Which is fair enough, I guess, although she short changed Laurence Harvey and Richard Boone.
SFGate did a big Christmastime article on the Donner Party:
https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/What-happened-to-Donner-Party-survivors-16714121.php?IPID=SFGate-HP-Editors-Picks
Casey,
the article didn't mention Joan Didion, which prompted me to wonder how exactly is she a descendant of a Donner Party member. Per a 1979 New York Times profile,
https://www.nytimes.com/1979... more
Thanks, Dan — Casey Tefertiller,Mon Dec 27 2021 5:37
Another of Joan Didion's lodestars was Ernest Hemingway. Here's something she wrote about him in 1998:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/11/09/last-words-6
Two things you might not know about Joan Didion (three if we include the Donner Party), in the 1950s and 1960s she wrote for National Review and she was a John Wayne fan. Here is her review of The Al... more
Re: Joan Didion & The Alamo — Dan Brown,Sat Jan 01 0:35
Dan, thanks for posting her review. Joan confirmed her nearly life long love affair with John Wayne in the magazine article JOHN WAYNE: A LOVE STORY, which is reprinted in her book SLOUCHING TOWARDS B... more
Jerry,
Thanks. Joan Didion and John Wayne, quite a combo. Aside from being a cold-eyed observer of the human race, she had provocatively contrarian instincts. She once wrote for the New York Review ... more