Duke on DVD: Chisum is one of ten John Wayne classics out on disc.
		Warner Bros.

Two of John Wayne's most beloved films, The High and the Mighty and Island in the Sky, arrive on DVD Tuesday, the first time the movies have been released on home video.

Few doubt the DVDs will be a hit among the generation of fans who flocked to theaters during the actor's 50-year film career.

But how the Duke fares among younger audiences is another matter. Maintaining the legacy of Wayne, who died of cancer in 1979 after winning a lone Oscar for True Grit, and other screen legends has become a pressing matter for home-video executives hoping to garner excitement among younger people who know more about Gary Coleman than Gary Cooper.

So studios are giving old films a modern-day marketing push. Paramount Home Entertainment, for instance, will put trailers for Wayne's Mighty on the DVD release of the Adam Sandler hit The Longest Yard, due Aug. 20.

Television ads for classic films coming out on DVD will have quick-cut edits and modern music soundtracks that are familiar to the MTV crowd.

"We want to reach the 18- to 24-year-olds," says Tom Lesinski, president of Paramount Home Entertainment. "They're a little tricky to reach, but retro has been in for a long time with cars and fashion. We want to do that with classic films."

Among the titles on the way:

•Garbo: The Signature Collection, a 10-disc, 10-film tribute to Greta Garbo, is due out Sept. 6.

• A Steve McQueen box set featuring Baby the Rain Must Fall and War Lover arrives Nov. 1.

• A Buster Keaton box set, including The General and Sherlock, Jr., is due in early 2006.

Executives acknowledge that the core audience for films older than 40 years is, well, people older than 40 years. "But a great movie is a great movie, regardless of how old it is," says George Feltenstein, senior vice president of catalog and marketing for Warner Home Video. "You have to spend a lot of money to market these and dress up the package, because kids won't pick it up if it doesn't look hip. But the kids are finding these movies and stars faster than you think."

While the baby-boom generation can make Wayne and other screen legends best sellers for now, Feltenstein says studios are focused on getting younger audiences.

"These are great actors and films that deserve to be preserved," he says. "But from a business point of view, eventually that older generation is going to die off. If you show the kids some of these movies, they'll become customers."

Wayne's legacy has been rejuvenated in a post-Sept. 11 era that embraces take-charge guys.

"The first responders of 9/11 — the cops, the firefighters, the soldiers — that was what John Wayne embodied," says James Olson, co-author of John Wayne: American. "He was a hero to the greatest generation because there was a moral clarity in his characters. He saw things in black and white, good and evil. That's why you're seeing his popularity surge."

Already, pre-orders of Wayne's DVDs on Amazon.com have pushed Mighty to the second best-selling DVD and Island to ninth. The Web site does not release specific sales figures.

Wayne's enduring clout extends to the small screen. Mighty and Island got their TV debuts July 16 and 17 on the American Movie Classics network. Mighty drew 3.3 million viewers, Island 3 million, making them the best-rated films in the network's 20-year history. With Mighty and Island, five of the network's 10 best-rated movies are Wayne's, says AMC's Tom Halleen.

Young audiences helped. According to AMC, roughly 600,000 viewers ages 18 to 49 tuned in to the films, a 43% increase over the network's average.

New appetite for heroes

Ed Fowler was one of those viewers. Fowler, 26, of Los Angeles, perused the Westerns section of a Hollywood Video store in Westwood, Calif., Sunday, looking for a John Wayne film his 57-year-old father, Earl, had not yet shown him.

"He got me hooked when I was 17," Fowler says. "We'd watch a new one every weekend. If I have a child, I'll do the same."

It's a ritual for many parents who grew up on Wayne's 150-plus films where he often played a cowboy or soldier, such as in 1949's Sands of Iwo Jima, 1956's The Searchers,and 1968's The Green Berets.

"He draws audiences from every decade," Halleen says. "There's no icon like him."

But why? By his own admission, Wayne was an actor of limited range, and many feel that his best-actor Oscar for 1969's True Grit was more a nod to his long career than to a virtuoso performance.

Karen Sharpe-Kramer, who starred as Nell Buck with Wayne in Mighty, says his legacy might be because of what he represented.

"He never jeopardized his moral beliefs by taking on a role," she says. "And he was a man's man, someone you felt safe with because you knew he would take charge. That's not so common these days."

Actors still cite him as an influence. John Schneider, star of TV's Smallville, has a portrait of Wayne over his pool table.

"John Wayne played a leader; a hero who you would follow," Schneider says. "He was somebody who would do what he considered the right thing, no matter what."

Another reason for the Duke's longevity, Olson says, is Wayne's underrated acting. "People think he couldn't act because he played very similar roles, either as a soldier or as a cowboy. But he was a very strong actor — within a narrow range."

Wayne routinely improvised on camera, Olson says. If an actor botched his lines, "he'd come up with dialogue that would save the scene. He worked hard at the craft and to create a singular image of himself." In doing so, "he has created a legacy that's far exceeded actors like Cary Grant or Gary Cooper. They disappeared, while he lived on."

But Charles Derry, a film professor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, says that legacies wax and wane over the years.

"It's relative to what the culture is experiencing," Derry says. "Doris Day was ridiculed in the 1970s for her eternal-virgin roles of the '60s. But in the '80s, she was recognized as a working woman. In the era of AIDS, she suddenly wasn't seen as so naive. Her legacy was revitalized, so I wouldn't assume that Gary Cooper's is dead — or that John Wayne's will go on forever."

That's good news for studios peddling stars of yesteryear.

"There are so many stars and films that hold up over time," says Marc Rashba, vice president of marketing for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. "We want to keep them current, not just for the collectors and aficionados, but any film fan."

Restoring an icon

Fans of Mighty and Island almost never got those films on DVD. Both films, directed by William Wellman, had fallen into disrepair. Some reels went missing. Others suffered water damage.

But Gretchen Wayne saved the day in a matter befitting her late father-in-law. Her late husband, Michael Wayne, the Duke's eldest son, had been working for years to restore films made by his father's company, Batjac Productions. When Michael died suddenly in 2003, Mighty and Island were left unfinished. "It would have been a shame to not restore them," Gretchen says. "Michael's father loved those movies. So did a lot of people."

Indeed, Mighty, released in 1954, was one of the top-grossing films of the year. It tells the story of an airplane pilot (Wayne) who guides a disabled airliner to safety on a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii. It received six Oscar nominations, including best director for Wellman. Mighty won an Academy Award for Dimitri Tiomkin's musical score.

In Island, released in 1953, Wayne also plays a pilot, this time stuck in the Arctic wilderness after his plane crash-lands.

While that film simply needed cleaning, Gretchen Wayne led a full-fledged rescue effort for Mighty. She found copies of the lost reels, had water damage repaired and had both movies digitally restored. "That's how Michael would have wanted it, and that's how his father would have wanted it," she says. "They loved movies and believed if you were going to do one, to do it right."

It's a mantra video executives promise to chant in their efforts to sell the legends, at least on the small screen, to younger audiences.

"Maybe a 13-year-old isn't ready for these movies," Lesinski says. "But a good movie is a good movie. If we can get a 20-year-old to see a classic John Wayne film, I think he'll say, 'Maybe Dad was right. This is a pretty good movie.' That's the secret to keeping icons alive."

Contributing: William Keck