What John Wayne's Story Can Help Us Understand About Lung and Stomach Cancer

What the reporting of the time recorded

Variety's obituary, published after John Wayne died at UCLA Medical Center in June 1979 at age 72, lays out a sequence rather than a single illness.

In 1965 he had surgery for lung cancer. On January 12, 1979, he was operated on for what was expected to be a routine gall bladder removal. Variety reported that doctors found malignant tissue during that operation and removed his stomach, in surgery lasting nine and a half hours.

He entered hospital again on May 3, 1979, and doctors removed an intestinal obstruction. Variety reported that they found more cancerous tissue during that operation — the second time that year. He then agreed to chemotherapy and an experimental treatment.

That last detail is worth reading carefully. Variety reported that doctors were unable to build his strength enough to begin those treatments. They were consented to, not delivered. His last public appearance had been at the Academy Awards on April 9, 1979.

We report what was published at the time. We add nothing to it.

Two separate diseases

A cancer in the lung and a cancer in the stomach fourteen years apart are two different diagnoses. One does not cause the other.

This matters because of how cancer is named. A cancer keeps the name of the place it began. If lung cancer spreads to the stomach, it is still lung cancer under a microscope and is treated as lung cancer. A genuinely new cancer in a new organ is a second primary cancer, with its own biology and its own treatment.

The published record does not describe which of those applied here, and we will not guess.

Lung cancer, then and now

NCI divides lung cancer into two main groups: non-small cell lung cancer, which is the large majority, and small cell lung cancer, which grows faster and is handled differently. Smoking causes most lung cancers, though people who never smoked can develop it too.

Surgery in 1965 meant something narrower than it does now. Today treatment can involve surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, targeted drugs matched to specific gene changes in the tumor, and immunotherapy — often in combination. Testing the tumor for those gene changes is now routine.

The numbers still reflect how late this cancer is usually caught. SEER records five-year relative survival of 65.5% when lung cancer is found while confined to the lung, 38.2% once it has reached nearby lymph nodes, and 10.5% after it has spread further. Only about 24% are found at that first stage. Across all stages the figure is 29.5%.

Those are population averages for people diagnosed between 2016 and 2022. They describe a group, not a person, and they lag behind the newest treatments.

Stomach cancer

Stomach cancer begins in the tissues of the stomach wall. It is much less common in the United States than lung cancer — the American Cancer Society projection carried by SEER puts it at 31,510 new cases in 2026 against 229,410 for lung and bronchus.

It shares lung cancer's core difficulty: early stomach cancer rarely causes symptoms that anyone would act on. Indigestion, mild nausea, and feeling full quickly are easy to attribute to something else. About 32% are found while still local, where five-year relative survival is 78.1%. That drops to 39.0% for regional disease and 8.1% for distant disease, with an overall figure of 39.8%.

Wayne's cancer was found during surgery for an unrelated problem. That is not a screening strategy, but it is a common way stomach cancer surfaces. Our stomach cancer page covers diagnosis and staging in more depth.

Who should be screened for lung cancer

There is a real screening test for lung cancer, and clear criteria for it. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends annual low-dose CT scanning for adults who meet all of these:

• Aged 50 to 80.
• A 20 pack-year smoking history. One pack-year means a pack a day for a year, so 20 pack-years could be a pack a day for 20 years or two packs a day for 10.
• Currently smoking, or having quit within the past 15 years.

Screening stops after 15 smoke-free years, or if another health problem would make lung surgery unwise. There is no equivalent screening program for stomach cancer in the United States for people at average risk. Our lung cancer page explains what a scan can and cannot settle.

Symptoms that warrant an appointment

For the lungs, book a visit if you have:

• A cough lasting more than three weeks, or a long-standing cough that changes.
• Coughing up blood, even once.
• Breathlessness, chest pain, or a hoarse voice that persists beyond three weeks.
• Repeated chest infections.

For the stomach:

• Indigestion or heartburn that is new, persistent, and not settled by usual remedies.
• Difficulty swallowing, or food feeling stuck.
• Feeling full after small amounts of food.
• Vomiting blood, or black tarry stools — these need urgent care, not an appointment next month.
• Unexplained weight loss.

Quitting smoking remains the single strongest thing anyone can do about lung cancer risk, and it lowers risk at any age. Our cancer prevention overview sets out what the evidence supports.

What this story cannot tell you

• The published reporting does not name a stage, a cell type, or a spread pattern for either cancer. No survival figure applies to him.
• Nor does it establish a cause. Contemporary claims about what caused his cancers are speculation, and we do not repeat them.
• This is medicine from 1965 and 1979. Diagnosis, staging, and treatment have all changed since, so his course says little about what a similar diagnosis would mean today.
• A treatment that is agreed to is not a treatment that was given. In this case it was not.
• One person's history is not a prediction and not medical advice.

Sources

• Variety, "John Wayne, 72, Dies of Cancer," 1979: https://variety.com/1979/film/news/john-wayne-72-dies-of-cancer-1201343873/
• SEER Cancer Stat Facts, Lung and Bronchus Cancer: https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/lungb.html
• SEER Cancer Stat Facts, Stomach Cancer: https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/stomach.html
• U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, Lung Cancer: Screening, final recommendation statement: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/lung-cancer-screening
• National Cancer Institute, Lung Cancer Screening (PDQ), patient version: https://www.cancer.gov/types/lung/patient/lung-screening-pdq

How this page was made

An AI-assisted editorial system helped prepare this page. No named medical reviewer has reviewed it unless one is listed.

The National Cancer Information Foundation publishes Cancer Explained. It is not a diagnostic service, does not recommend treatments, and is not for emergencies.

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