John Wayne Official Collector’s Edition: Life by Duke’s code

By Christen Smith

The latest edition of the collector’s magazine on news stands now. (Photo: Media Lab Books)
The story of the John Wayne Official Collector’s Edition begins in an unlikely place: the darkened living room of New York magazine publisher Tony Romando as he comforts his newborn baby.
“He has a sort of iconic status, where he has a certain code about him,” he told Guns.com last week about how the early morning revelation first came to him five years ago. “I think there are millions of men and women around the country who wake up and say, ‘what would John Wayne do today?’ They get a flat tire and they wonder how would John Wayne get himself out of this jam. Then it dawned on me, this is someone who is more than just someone’s favorite actor. He’s changed lives.”
So Romando said he called the one person he figured knew Duke best: his son, 56-year-old Ethan Wayne. Some 25 issues later, Romando describes the collaboration as integral to the magazine’s success in an industry where readership continually wanes.
“To be honest, we don’t make a move without him because no one can capture that essence of John Wayne better than he can,” he said. “No

Source: Guns.com