A curious item here, entitled ‘Navajo cowboys impersonating John Wayne: Roswell Angier’s best photograph’.
“… John Wayne. Navajo men of a certain age were absolutely fascinated by him. I later discovered that the source of this fascination was the movie The Hallelujah Trail, which was shot in the mid 1960s in locations around Gallup – even though Wayne is not in it. The film actually stars Burt Lancaster. But this detail did not seem to matter, and in the collective imagination of legions of Navajo males Wayne was forever associated with Gallup. And of course, in talking about Wayne, these guys would inevitably start to act out various fantasies of being powerful and masculine.“
