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"Superman: The Movie" Anniversary Trivia - Patrick Wayne Cast as Man of Steel
by Neil Cole
In honor of the 40th anniversary of "Superman: The Movie", we will be posting weekly bits of little known trivia about the 1978 blockbuster film.
This week's trivia is in regard to actor Patrick Wayne who actually screen tested and was cast in the role of Superman/Clark Kent in "Superman - The Movie" before having to drop out when his father, John Wayne, was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
Wayne was born "Patrick John Morrison" on July 15, 1939 in Los Angeles, California. He is one of John Wayne's four children by his first wife, Patrick took his father's stage surname Wayne. He made a total of nine movies with his father John Wayne: Rio Grande (1950); The Quiet Man (1952); The Searchers (1956); The Alamo (1960); The Comancheros (1961); Donovan's Reef (1963); McLintock! (1963); The Green Berets (1968); Big Jake (1971).
Patrick made his film debut at age 11 in his father's Rio Grande (1950). He followed that with films directed by family friend and iconic director John Ford: The Quiet Man (1952), The Sun Shines Bright (1953), The Long Gray Line (1955), Mister Roberts (1955), and The Searchers (1956).
From 1957-1958, Wayne, at the age of eighteen, appeared as Walter on the CBS sitcom, Mr. Adams and Eve, starring Howard Duff and Ida Lupino as a fictitious acting couple living in Beverly Hills. Other television work includes baseball teleplay Rookie of the Year (1955), directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, and Flashing Spikes (1962), a baseball television anthology installment directed by John Ford and starring James Stewart, with John Wayne in an extended cameo role. Patrick Wayne plays similar roles in both shows as baseball players.
Following high school, Patrick attended Loyola Marymount University, where he was a member of Alpha Delta Gamma Fraternity, and graduated in 1961. During this time, he went out on his own to star in his own film The Young Land (1959). He supported his father in The Alamo (1960), Donovan's Reef (1963), McLintock! (also 1963), and The Green Berets (1968). Others included a role in Ford's sprawling epic Cheyenne Autumn (1964), a role as James Stewart's son in Shenandoah (1965), An Eye for an Eye (1966), The Deserter (1971) and a lead role in "The Bears And I" for Walt Disney (1974).
In 1966, at the age of twenty-seven, Wayne co-starred with Ron Hayes and Chill Wills in the 17-episode ABC comedy western series The Rounders, based on the 1965 Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda film of the same name The Rounders.
Following work on his father's Big Jake, Patrick earned recognition in the sci-fi genre. His career peaked in the late 1970s in the popular matinée fantasy Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), then The People That Time Forgot (1977). Wayne also screen tested for the title role of Superman. He co-starred as a romantic love interest to Shirley Jones in another brief TV series, Shirley (1979). He was the host of the The Monte Carlo Show in 1980, and occasionally worked on game shows and syndicated variety series.
He had many appearances on popular TV shows of the 1970s and '80s, including Fantasy Island (1978), Murder, She Wrote (1984), Charlie's Angels (1976), Sledge Hammer! (1986) and The Love Boat. Wayne appeared in the movie Young Guns as Pat Garrett. He also did a comic turn in the Western spoof Rustler's Rhapsody (1985) starring Tom Berenger.
Wayne served as the host of the 1990 revival of the game show Tic-Tac-Dough.
In 2003, Patrick became chairman of the John Wayne Cancer Institute.
