John Wayne Birthplace & Museum

06/15/2025

In 1936, just on the cusp of superstardom, John Wayne was starring in a host of films, lots of them Westerns. On June 15, Winds of the Wasteland was released. Directed by Mack V. Wright, who worked with Duke six times between 1931 and 1936. Winds of the Wasteland was their final film together. John Wayne plays one of a pair of Pony Express riders made redundant by the arrival of the telegraph, just before the outbreak of the American Civil War. Through an overly complicated plot, Duke and his partner are enticed into agreeing to a race to see who can deliver mail the fastest and win a $25000 government contract. Starring alongside Duke was Sam Flint, who was also featured in the John Wayne movie The New Frontier. Winds of the Wasteland also featured an early appearance by B-Movie legend Jom Hall, star, director, and cinematographer of such films as The Beach Girls and the Monster, The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, and Survival of Spaceship Earth. This is one of those nearly forgotten John Wayne films that deserve a rewatch.

06/14/2025

It’s June 14th, and it’s Flag Day again. Today, we honor the flag that has accompanied Americans across the globe in war and in peace. Flag Day was first proposed during the American Civil War, but it was not until 1949 that Flag Day was officially established by Congress 1949. It is fitting that in 1949, John Wayne starred in a film that depicted perhaps the most famous photograph ever of the American flag. There are a multitude of images of the flag throughout American history. Francis Scott Key was perhaps the first to conjure up the image of the flag as a symbol of hope. Over the next two centuries, images of the flag continued to inspire, even atop the rubble on 9/11. But, if you had to choose one image of the American flag and all that encompasses it would have to be its raising of Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945. In 1949, the same year that Flag Day became official, John Wayne released The Sands of Iwo Jima, which recreated that heroic feat, and even featured three of the original Marines from that day, Ira Hayes, John Bradley, and Rene Gagnon. Take some time today and remember the people who have given their all under cover of the American flag, those working at war and those working at peace. Happy Flag Day.

06/13/2025

06/12/2025

John Ford and John Wayne have done more to keep the glory of the US Cavalry than maybe any other two people in cinematic history. Although it is not part of the famous Cavalry Trilogy, The Horse Soldiers holds a special place in the hearts of John Wayne fans. The Horse Soldiers was released on June 12, 1959, and co-starred the incomparable William Holden, among others. Set behind enemy lines during the American Civil War, the plot involves a plan to disrupt Confederate rail lines and a supply depot for Vicksburg. The film is loosely based on a novel of the same name, Grierson's Raid, and the Battle of Newton's Station in Mississippi during the Civil War. The production ran way over budget, and reportedly, John Wayne and William Holden fought incessantly. John Ford was not known for being receptive to the opinions and suggestions of his actors; legend has it that on The Horse Soldiers, one of his actors objected to the script and won. Althea Gibson, Wimbledon and U.S. National tennis champion, played Lukey, the enslaved companion to Constance Tower. In the original script, Lukey’s lines were written in a dialect that Gibson found objectionable. She refused to deliver the lines unless they were changed, and in a singular victory, Ford agreed to make changes in the script. Although a commercial failure at the time, The Horse Soldiers has gone on to take its rightful place in the pantheon of cavalry films.

06/07/2025

Before the age of home media, you had to wait for John Wayne movies to be rereleased in the theater, or more likely, you could catch them on TV, maybe the movie of the week or a great Sunday afternoon show in UHF. Then came the real revolution, the VCR. Although none of John Wayne’s films were among the first three American films released on VHS (although all three had war as a central plot, MASH, The Sound of Music, and Patton), you can bet that a slew of John Wayne movies were not far behind.

Sure, we are long past VCRs being the height of home entertainment, but they are still one of the best ways to watch a movie. Not only do they look great, but they always include cool coming attractions and theatrical trailers. If you miss those days, it’s not too late. Head to the nearest resale shop, and you can likely find a nice VCR and a stack of tapes. You can be home and pretending it’s 1981 all day long.

If you still have some of your precious John Wayne VHS tapes, it’s time to watch them again. Take a photo if you can and post it in the comments.

06/04/2025

Few actors can claim to have killed John Wayne in a John Wayne movie, and maybe none did it in such an underhanded and cowardly way as Bruce Dern in The Cowboys. As Long Hair, Dern plays the epitome of a psycho bad guy. Although The Cowboys was his first starring role, it was his second role in a John Wayne film, having a small role in 1967's War Wagon.

When Dern got the role of Long Hair, his agent told him that John Wayne was going to die in a movie, and he was going to do the deed. His dirty deed in The Cowboys led to a career of villains and years of hatred from John Wayne fans. Reportedly, Dern was told by Duke that "When this picture comes out, and audiences see you kill me, they’re going to hate you for this." Dern claims to have gotten hate mail for years.

Dern’s career has survived his John Wayne moment. Bruce Dern has gone on to star in numerous Westerns, including Django Unchained, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and All the Pretty Horses. He has been nominated for two Academy Awards and even won the Bronze Wrangler for The Cowboys from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

Happy Birthday to one of the best John Wayne villains ever.

05/31/2025

Just a few months before the Japanese surrendered to the Allies in August of 1945, John Wayne released one of his best war films that recounted the 1942 battle for the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines.

In Back to Bataan, John Wayne stars as Colonel Joseph Madden, who is ordered behind enemy lines to organize local resistance to Japanese aggression. The mission is complicated by the romance and espionage surrounding Captain Andrés Bonifacio, played by Anthony Quinn in one of his only roles opposite Duke—the other being Tycoon in 1947.

The film also starred renowned tough guy Lawrence Tierney, who got a second shot at fame late in life playing mobster Joe Cabot in Reservoir Dogs, where he famously gave the other crooks their color codenames—and no one gets to be Mr. Black.

The film begins with the 1945 Allied capture of the Cabanatuan Japanese prisoner-of-war camp and ends with a montage of the real POWs who were rescued.

Production of the film was complicated by how quickly events in the Pacific were changing, including the invasion of the Philippines, which happened part of the way through filming and led to rewrites—a rare example of a war film being made while the war was still ongoing.

In an odd twist, much of the soundtrack recycled sections of RKO’s King Kong score by Max Steiner, who also composed the iconic soundtrack for The Searchers.

05/27/2025

New York City in 1908 was about as different from Winterset, Iowa as you could get. The population of New York City was approaching five million, while Winterset was approaching three thousand. New York had skyscrapers and Broadway, but Winterset had the Iowa Theater.

As different as these places were, two men, one born in NYC and the other in Winterset, born one year and one day apart, would make movie history together in Hollywood.

Frank Nugent was born on May 27, 1908, in New York City, where he studied to be a journalist and movie reviewer. He even praised John Ford for Stagecoach in 1939: “In one superbly expansive gesture ... John Ford has swept aside ten years of artifice and talkie compromise and has made a motion picture that sings a song of camera.”

In 1948, John Ford invited Nugent to work on his picture, Fort Apache. This began a long and successful collaboration with John Ford and the star of his stock company, John Wayne.

Over the next decades, Nugent wrote eleven films for John Ford and John Wayne including She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man, and the one that would make him a legend, The Searchers. Nugent based his screenplay on a 1954 novel about a man who goes searching for his kidnapped niece.

Nugent’s final film for Ford and Wayne was the 1963 blockbuster, Donovan’s Reef. The source material for the story came from an idea submitted by author James Michener (author of over 40 books, including the inspiration for the musical South Pacific).

Frank Nugent’s screenplay for The Searchers is taught in screenwriting classes around the world and was voted one of the 101 Best Screenplays of all time by the Writers Guild of America.

05/26/2025

Is there a more auspicious day than May 26? So many momentous things happened on that day, it defies reason.

In 1864, Montana (where The Cowboys would be filmed) was organized as a United States territory. In 1897, Bram Stoker’s horror novel Dracula went on sale in London (where Brannigan was filmed). In 1940, the British began to evacuate their troops from Dunkirk, France. In 1966, Guyana gained its independence.

These events—grand and important, to say the least—all pale in comparison to May 26, 1907, when, in the little town of Winterset, Iowa, with a population of less than three thousand, Marion Morrison was born at 224 South Second Street.

Marion would only live in Winterset for a few years before his parents made the fortuitous decision to move to California, settling in Glendale in 1916, just a few miles from what was already a buzzing hub of the movie industry. Over the next 70 years, beginning in that little house on Isabel Street, Marion Morrison would evolve from a star student and athlete into one of the greatest stars the movies have ever seen—and bear one of the most recognizable names in twentieth-century history: John Wayne.

Lots of actors get memorialized on their birthday, but few have a giant birthday party in their hometown with special films, celebrities, authors, and music. So even if you didn’t make it to Winterset, Iowa, for this year’s John Wayne Birthplace & Museum John Wayne Birthday Celebration, you can still take some time to celebrate Duke. Watch some of his movies, grab a biography, or dive into a few interviews on YouTube.

Make it a John Wayne kind of day. Happy birthday, Duke.

(And don’t forget—May 26, 1998, also marked the first ever I’m Sorry Day in Australia. But that contradicts one of Duke’s greatest lines: “Never apologize, mister, it’s a sign of weakness.”)

Happy birthday to Iowa’s favorite son.

05/24/2025

If you're in town for the John Wayne Birthday Celebration, don’t miss a big screen showing of Chisum starring John Wayne.

Catch this Western classic at The Iowa today at 2:00 p.m.

The Iowa Theater is just steps from the John Wayne Birthplace & Museum on the west side of Winterset’s courthouse square—an easy walk from downtown festivities.

05/21/2025

The John Wayne Birthday Celebration is almost here!

Join us this Friday and Saturday, May 23–24, in Winterset, Iowa, for a weekend full of films, special guests, live music, and Western fun as we mark ten years of the John Wayne Birthplace Museum.

Whether you're here for the full weekend or just stopping by for a few events, don’t miss a thing—check the full schedule at www.johnwaynebirthplace.museum and make your plans now.

See you in Winterset!

05/19/2025

Start your Saturday of the John Wayne Birthday Celebration with a run (or a walk) through historic Winterset!

The annual Rotary John Wayne 5K Run/Walk kicks off at 9 a.m. on Saturday, May 24, right outside the John Wayne Birthplace & Museum. It’s a fun, family-friendly way to honor our hometown hero and see the sights.

Register now at: https://secure.getmeregistered.com/get_information.php?event_id=MTc0MDY3OTQ5NTc4MTiPBOyDznnOwjg8

Spots are filling fast—don’t miss it!