Anti-Duke

I was talking to my mother a few days ago lamenting that I feel like I am creating gaps in movie education by my dislike of westerns and war movies. My mom suggested a few westerns that I might like including Big Country (with my beloved Gregory Peck), Shane (with Alan Ladd who I also like), and Stagecoach with John Wayne. I have an intense dislike of John Wayne. I don't think that he was that great of actor and it seems like most of his success was due to his friendship with John Houston. With that I mind the first western I decided to watch was High Noon with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. And I decided to read a little about it on Wikipedia and apparently John Wayne (and Howard Hawks) hated it and thought it was Unamerican (in fact Howard Hawks claimed that he made Rio Bravo in response to High Noon) because Will spends time asking for help defending the town (and it sounds like Hawks didn't like that the only one to help Will was his Quaker wife, so maybe Hawks hated Quakers?). And ironically, the Soviet Union didn't like High Noon either because the focus was too much on the individual.  The screenwriter (Carl Foreman who also wrote one of the few war movies I enjoy : The Guns of Navarone) was blacklisted and left the country. John Wayne was involved in getting Carl Foreman blacklisted and claimed he had no regrets about it (Foreman refused to name names at a House Unamerican Activities Committee hearing). So now I feel like I have an additional reason to not like John Wayne.