When John Ford gave John Wayne his big break with 1939's "Stagecoach," it might have seemed to the masses as if the Duke had come out of nowhere. But Ford actually waited well over a decade to bring Wayne into the big leagues , during which time the young actor cut his teeth in dozens of movies, forging what is in retrospect an impressively prolific pre-fame career in Hollywood.

After "Stagecoach" Wayne, whose real name was Marion Robert Morrison, remained indebted to Ford and always spoke highly of the director despite their often contentious on-set relationship. But the director was not, in fact, the first filmmaker to give Wayne a leading role in a big feature that had the potential to make his career. That honor fell to Raoul Walsh, who cast Wayne in his 1930 widescreen epic "The

See Full Page