Introduction: Warrior Heroes and Sexual Conquerors

Abstract

J ohn wayne. For so many men that came of age during the Cold War era, he was, with Hollywood’s blessing, the epitome of the ideal self-made man who proved his masculinity with cool-headed courage under fire. More than anyone else, the “Duke” set male expectations for intrepid wartime behavior at the midpoint of the twentieth century – when the United States, fresh from a victorious “hot war,” faced a far vaguer cold one with indistinct combatants and fuzzy boundaries. Wayne’s breakthrough performance in Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) was a defining role for the actor, if not a generation of young men who felt they had missed out on their chance for heroism in World War II. Wayne’s Sergeant Stryker was tough, disciplined, a “clear-cut hero.” The imitation seemed so authentic that one young marine lieutenant heading to Vietnam in 1968 contrasted his own “self-doubt and insecurity” with the imagined bravery of the Hollywood star. The male ideal embodied by Wayne and created by Hollywood replicated itself in many facets of American popular culture during the Cold War, perhaps most pervasively on magazine racks across the country and in the post exchanges on military bases around the globe, nestled within the pages of men’s adventure magazines. These “macho pulps” trumpeted the exploits of larger-than-life, self-satisfied men, valiant on the battlefield and accomplished in the bedroom. These warrior heroes were physically fit, mentally strong, and resolutely heterosexual. At the same time, men’s adventure magazines alternatively portrayed women as threat or spoil, exotic temptresses who were as dangerous as they were desirous.