Film traces the career of the actor who embodied classic American values like no other - in his film and television roles as well as in his private life. In a career spanning more than 50 years, he became an icon of the western. The documentary follows Wayne from his first steps in the film business, when he was still honing his image as an upright hero, through his great successes to the end of his career, when even the US Congress bowed to his lifetime achievement and awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal. His colleague Maureen O'Hara, who stood in front of the camera with him in Rio Grande (1950), said that the medal should bear the following engraving to do justice to Duke: "John Wayne - American".