Mark your calendars! True Grit is making a return to theaters for two dates in May 2019.

Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the classic Western that won John Wayne his first and only Oscar®. The legendary movie star gives his most iconic performance as Rooster Cogburn, a drunken, uncouth and totally fearless one-eyed U.S. Marshall hired by a headstrong young girl (Kim Darby) to find the man who murdered her father. When Cogburn's employer insists on accompanying the older gunfighter, sparks… [Read More]

All right, pilgrim, Hollywood may have been where Western movie icon John Wayne made his fame and fortune, but he clearly also left a mark – and perhaps a piece of his heart – in Arizona.

The bigger than life celluloid cowboy's love affair with our state dates back to 1930 and “The Big Trail,” which was filmed near Yuma. He starred in or directed in dozens of movies filmed in Arizona including the classics “Stagecoach (1939),” “Angel and the Badman (1947),” and “Red River… [Read More]

2019 marks the 50th anniversary of True Grit, the movie that earned John Wayne his only Academy Award. The famous director Henry Hathaway brought a cast and crew to Ridgway and Ouray County in the summer of 1968 to film much of the movie, which was released in 1969. The first annual Ridgway Old West Fest, organized by the Ridgway Western Heritage Society and scheduled for October 11-13, 2019, will celebrate Ridgway's brief transformation into Fort Smith, Arkansas, half a century ago.

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In an age in which pop culture icons seemingly have the shelf life of a loaf of bread, John Wayne is very much the exception.

The legendary Western film star died nearly 40 years ago but remains a formidable presence in American life, serving as the embodiment of masculine individualism. Farmington Museum curator Jeffrey Richardson, who has delivered presentations on a wide variety of Western subjects all around the country during his career, said every time he talks about Wayne, he usually… [Read More]

The painting graced the cover of Country Gentleman magazine in the summer of 1976, commissioned by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center to celebrate Wayne’s induction into the Hall of Great Western Performers.

While best known for his animated pictures of everyday life in America, Norman Rockwell also had an enduring connection with Hollywood. He painted a number of movie illustrations and posters, including the 1966 remake of Stagecoach - the original 1939 film that… [Read More]

In the popular imagination of John “Duke” Wayne, there’s a soft side to him that goes unpraised: the delicious romantic, the cool hipster or relaxed compadre who doesn’t want to get in anyone’s way. We tend to think of Wayne as a prowling neon sign of America, an uncomplicated cliche: a hard, indestructible cowboy, more mythic than mortal (think of that unbearably hammy Rooster Cogburn in “True Grit”), a self-appointed symbol for “justice” in a West that, in the pervasive… [Read More]

In 1970 the publicity machine was knocking itself dead, extolling Howard Hawks's "Rio Lobo" even before it was finished. Much was made of Hawks being reunited with saddle pard John Wayne, with whom he made classics such as "Red River" and "Rio Bravo," among other films.

Journalist George Plimpton (who scored a cameo) did a TV documentary on "Rio Lobo" and Hawks, thus pushing expectations even closer to the stratosphere. Sadly, "Rio Lobo" was a huge disappointment, even to hardcore Wayne and… [Read More]

Now there are two places in Newport Beach to see John Wayne’s yacht.

Wild Goose, the late actor’s 136-foot World War II minesweeper turned pleasure craft, now sits in miniature inside a case at the Lido House hotel.

The roughly 5-foot-long illuminated model is a statement piece in the hotel’s lobby, showing the boat in fine detail down to the outboard motor of its tender, the stripes on its life rings, and a green card table, a nod to one of Wayne’s pastimes.

Lido House owner Bob Olson, who… [Read More]

“Mad Anthony” Wayne raised a militia unit at the beginning of the Revolutionary War and participated in the invasion of Canada. He fought in the Battle of Trois-Rivières, and led forces at Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence. “Mad Anthony” Wayne fought at Brandywine in 1777, then harassed British General Howe as his troops marched towards Pennsylvania. He fought at Germantown, and quartered the winter at Valley Forge.

In 1778, Wayne attacked at the Battle of Monmouth, and in 1779, he led a… [Read More]

The two military bad-ass actors were featured in a 1992 Coors Light commercial.

R. Lee Ermey and John Wayne once shared some screen time together — kind of.

The two military bad-ass actors were featured in a 1992 Coors Light commercial.

Now, Wayne died in 1979, but footage of him was repurposed to make it look like he was in the commercial, which was a big deal at the time as the tech was relatively new, especially for a TV spot.

In the commercial, Ermey — who died Sunday at the age of 74… [Read More]