John Wayne didn’t like horses

There’s a thorough review of a new biography of John Wayne in Salon. Its theme is the gap between Wayne’s image and the reality of his life. This is mostly in the service of making serious points about the cultural roots of American conservatism. However, the discrepancy that caught my eye was that:

the man who will forever be associated with  westerns didn’t like horses: “I don’t get on a horse unless they pay me.”