On my last visit to Culver City, I paid a visit to the historic Colonnade Entrance to the original Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, on Washington Boulevard. Incredibly, it still looks like in the Golden Age of Hollywood, when John Wayne walked through this portal to make They Were Expandable and other MGM classics.
I have put more pics on my location website, check out the Studio Backlot section: Duke Locations Studio Backlots
On my recent visit to the Bay Area, I finally managed to get to China Camp, the historic Chinese village which was the principal location of John Wayne's Blood Alley. I'm happy to report, the buildings and the wonderful pier are still standing, and if you take a hike up the hill in the back of the camp, where Batjac put up its "Chinese Wall", you'll still find the fortifications for this backdrop.
I also found the place near San Rafael where they shot the "ship graveyard" scenes. Find out more on the California page of my location website, including directions:
On my recent visit to Oregon, I seeked out several Rooster Cogburn locations that were never described in detail. Here's a screenshot of the title sequence, with beautiful Mount Bachelor providing the scenic background... and the photo I took 50 years later:
It's Spark's Lake, seen from the shores at Ray Atkenson's Trailhead. rooster10.jpgIMG_3237.jpg
On my recent visit to Red Rock Canyon IMG_8856.jpg3.pngPark, I was able to find this location from LAWLESS FRONTIER. When you come up Hagen Canyon, it's just a bit off to the right of the marked path. This 1934 western had an unusual chase scene here: John Wayne follows the bad guy by foot, because of the extreme heat they cannot run. The chase ends at a poisened waterhole which the production company put there.
Find more info on Red Rock Canyon on my Locations Website: https://www.duke-locations.com/us-filming-sites/california/
The tunnel entrance actually had a certain length, to combine studio sets of the tunnel with shots filmed towards the real background of the Alabama Hills. The photo was taken from the exact same angle. The road with the tracks is actually a dead end, bulldozed by the production to the stone wall, to give the impression that John Wayne can ride a railroad car in and out of the tunnel.
That's the exact location where they put the construction crew camp. The production designers had a number of movie classics to their credit, among them King Kong and Mary Poppins.
On my recent stay in Lone Pine, I revisited the "Tycoon" location, a terrain called Ruiz Hills. I find it fascinating to still find plaster of the huge tunnel entrance the RKO production designers created, and it never fails to amaze me that some 75+ years after the making, you'll still find the iron hooks on both sides of the fake tunnel entrance, that held the huge construction up. Some durable production design!
10 years back, I was able to find the exact location of "King of the Pecos" in the Alabama Hills: a little canyon close to what is called "The Lone Ranger Canyon" was the setting for a little cat and mouse game John Wayne and the baddie played before their final showdown.
When I recently tracked back to Lone Pine and revisited that spot (it has since been used by Tarantino for a campfire scene in "Django"), I noticed another thing: it's the same little canyon they used for the ambush scene in "Westward Ho!"
It's not that it would be a problem in the Alabama Hills to find another canyon! But I find it interesting to point out how Republic worked as a film factory with an assembly line for westerns. Even though the films were made by different directors (Kane and Bradbury) and not in the same year (1935 and 1936), they still came back to the same place.
Even more stunning is the fact that 20 years after this B-movie shoot-out, Anthony Mann picked the exact same spot to build the ghost town for Gary Cooper's showdown in "Man of the West" - and that same year, William Wyler came back with Gregory Peck for "The Big Country" and re-used the structures to locate the Hennessy Ranch in "Blanco Canyon". So, if you watch carefully, in both films you will see the "Pals of the Saddle" location in the background...
Find more locations on Duke-locations.com
...and then trade shots, sitting up in the rocks to the right, with the bad guys in the wagons down below.
Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune hide behind this rock to free John Wayne who's lying tied up in this wagon...
The interesting thing to find was they chose all locations within a very small perimeter - in B-movie mode, they actually just turned the camera around to shoot in another direction. That's how one can find all these locations in the same spot in Hagen Canyon. That's where the 3 Mesquiteers run up a boulder, to ambush the bad guys from above...
I've recently been able to conduct another location search in Red Rock Canyon State Park and could pin down the locations of "Pals of the Saddle": that's on the far end of Hagen Canyon, the spot where they also took this publicity photo.
CinemaRetro is a US/UK movie magazine with a worldwide readership. I highly recommend it, as it covers the great movie era of the 60s and 70s. For its newest issue, I had the pleasure to contribute a story about "The Longest Day Locations". It's not just about the making of this epic but also about finding and revisiting the original filming sites in France. I hope you enjoy it!
Thanks so much for the kind words, Mark!
Feeling mighty proud that the editors of the "Official John Wayne Collectors Magazine" asked me to create an article called "Leaving his Mark". This is about Americana, the places that were special as a movie location because of their importance in history. John-Wayne-Mag.pdf
Available here:
And another thing about movie locations:
The 17 dolphins probably didn't care much about the fact but they landed on a spot pretty close to where Robert Mitchum stormed Omaha Beach in "The Longest Day". The massive stranding two days ago occured at the Ile de Ré on the French west coast.
Hi Mark
The Hercules statue is firmly fixed and still in the same place as in the days of filming.
I'd like to encourage other Wayne enthusiasts to post their pictures (and selfies!) of movie locations here. That could encourage others to make the pilgrimage. Even more important: this could help to take better care of film-used structures.
Let me start this off with this location I recently discovered in Madrid's Retiro Park. I visited the capital of Spain several years back, and like always when you explore an original movie site you wander around till you find the principal locations (Retiro is huge, it takes all day!) It's only when you get the chance to come back that you'll set your goal to finding smaller things like that one here:
This is actually from a tiny moment in "Circus World" - a cutaway when Matt Masters chases after the stagecoach in the middle of Retiro Park. Supposedly French gendarmes run after the coach (in actuality, running in the wrong direction). It took me a while to locate the statue that's in this shot: it's "Hércules y el Léon de Nemea", on the Fernan Nunez Parkway.
Yup, that's yours truly admiring Hercules after a long walk.
Thanks so much, Mark! Don't worry about the review -- I kinda like this funny one, in "Library Journal" - if you don't mind the "geeks" 
“Schaefli has gifted the geekiest of John Wayne geeks with this unique travelogue-cum-biography and gossip tabloid narrative hybrid that comprehensively covers practically every significant location that the actor ever visited…Schaefli assiduously follows Wayne’s travel[s]…Juxtaposed with the globe-trotting is an impressive glut of stories and filmland gossip that will entertain the most devoted Wayne fans. …a dead-on, obligatory purchase for the John Wayne completist.”―Library Journal
