Joseph Stalin tried to have John Wayne murdered by KGB agents however unlikely that sounds there are multiple reports and accounts from both sides of the Cold War that can confirm the cowboy murdering plot that exists in an actuality from Stalin's perspective he had pretty good reason for wanting the American Western icon out of the picture it has been said many times that America's greatest export is culture well that may not exactly be true when looking at an accountant spreadsheet there's little room to argue that American pop culture specifically American movies influence and end up representing
how America is viewed by other countries around the globe even though Stalin was the iron-fisted communist ruler of the Soviet Union he loved the cinema so much so that he had a private theater in each of his residences during his lengthy time in power and he'd watched films whenever he could squeeze it in between plotting global domination and murdering hundreds of thousands of his own citizens that being said a great deal of the American cinema Stalin would have been watching in the 1940s and into the early 50s however ironically would have been American westerns which
were in their heyday during that exact time period of course no classic American Western star was more popular or more prevalent than the Duke himself John Wayne not only was John Wayne the quintessential image of the American cowboy on screen something that Stalin would surely despise but John Wayne and his personal life was basically that same cowboy and was outspoken about his hatred for not only communism but any sort of leftist talk whatsoever these personal politics would of course play some squarely at odds with Joseph Stalin it's unclear if Stalin ever sat down to specifically
watch a film starring John Wayne but what was reported to John Wayne biographer Michael Munn is that the Russian filmmaker Sergei grossome ah've who attended a peace conference in New York in 1949 where John Wayne was also present is the one who initially told Stalin about Wayne's popularity and his decidedly anti-communist beliefs it was this report from the Russian filmmaker that made Stalin decide to have John Wayne killed his extreme popularity combined with his anti-communist sentiment was dangerous to Stalin's cause who reported all this to Michael Munn Orson Welles knowing that you're right to be
skeptical that any of this actually happened considering that this is Orson Welles French Champagne there's always been celebrated for its excellence there is a California champagne but for my song inspired by that same French excellence however Michael Mon stated quote mr. Welles was a great storyteller but he had no particular admiration for John Wayne he also said that Welles had offered the story without prompting and that his sources were excellent so Orson Welles wasn't just making this up this really happened so how did Orson Welles hear about the plot to kill John Wayne according to
him a prominent Russian filmmaker Alexei Kapler who himself was in prison for an affair with Stalin 16 year old daughter Svetlana had told another Russian filmmaker sergei bondarchuk about Stalin's ordered to kill john wayne bondage chuck was skeptical at first because it's not every day you hear about a plot from a world leader to kill a Hollywood star even in Soviet Russia but after Grasim I've confirmed the story Bandhu Chuck told Orson Welles John Wayne had previously gotten himself into hot water for his openly anti-communist views because there were a lot of people in Hollywood
at the time who were either card-carrying Reds or at the very least or sympathetic to the Communist view of the world Wayne had been threatened by anonymous letters to tone down his anti-communist rhetoric to which John Wayne went on record with the response quote no goddamn commies gonna frighten me that's all well and good and likely exactly what you hoped John Wayne would say but things escalated beyond anonymous letters and chests puffing when word came down that Joseph Stalin himself wanted Wayne dead soon enough Orson Welles wasn't the only American who knew about the plot
to kill John Wayne luckily the FBI caught wind of it as well as it's reported by yakima canutt john wayne stunt-double and close friend the FBI came to set one day to inform John Wayne about Stalin's plot to have him murdered and according to Yakima quote John Wayne told the FBI to let the men show up and he would deal with them which again is just perfect not to be outdone by some commie John Wayne hatched a little plot of his with scriptwriter and frequent collaborator Jimmy grant to abduct his would-be assassins when they came
to kill him drive them to the beach and staged a mock execution to frighten them well no one can confirm that that ever happened what can be confirmed is this after getting word that two KGB agents posing as FBI agents were going to come to the movie studio where Wayne was shooting a movie in an attempt to kidnap and murder him the FBI John Wayne and a few other actors and stunt performers on the movie devised a plan then when the KGB agents did show up to kill John Wayne entering Wayne's office just as the
FBI suspected they would the actual FBI agents who were hidden in a room next door burst in and arrested the Soviet agents the Soviets were so terrified of being sent back to Russia and reporting to Stalin that they had failed that they willingly agreed to provide intelligence to the United States and work cooperatively with the FBI from that point forward though the story is incredible at best and unbelievable at worst there is still further proof that Stalin tried to execute John Wayne only to have it for today if bi and the all-american cowboy himself Joseph
Stalin died in 1953 years later when Wayne met Stalin successor Nikita Khrushchev in a private meeting he reportedly asked Khrushchev point-blank whether or not the KGB hitmen sent to kill him were in fact acting on direct orders from Joseph Stalin to which Khrushchev replied that was the decision of Stalin in his last mad years i rescinded the order though he was now apparently safe from soviet agents john wayne wasn't out of the woods just yet with communists in general while john wayne was visiting troops in Vietnam in 1966 enemy snipers fired at him and tried
to kill him one of those snipers was captured and told the powers-that-be that there was a price on John's head and he had orders to kill him from China's communist leader Mao Zedong in the end John Wayne versus the commies is the great American Western we never got to see and the one we never knew we needed thanks for watching this video be sure to like this video and subscribe to this channel for more of history's weirdness that you won't find in your textbooks all those textbooks that you had to give back no one has
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