But Wayne didn’t have the defining experience of most adult American men of the 1940s — though he played uniformed men in several movies, off-screen Wayne didn’t enlist to serve in World War II. We’ll talk about the motivations Wayne had to stay home, from his relatively late-blooming stardom to his affairs with Marlene Dietrich and the prostitute he ultimately married; Wayne’s relationship with decorated veteran Ford and their uneasy collaboration on the film They Were Expendable; and the connection between Wayne’s lack of military service and his later right-wing activism. I chose Eliot's book specifically because there was a Daily Mail story last year which used it to back up claims that Wayne avoided the war because he was so in love with Marlene Dietrich.