John Wayne: Beyond the Screen at His Birthplace
➡️ Help history. 2 minutes for 7 questions 🫡
We visited the John Wayne Hometown Museum in Winterset, Iowa! We will talk about the highlights of John Wayne's iconic career, particularly in Western and military movies, and discuss his impact on American film history. We reflect on the museum's extensive collection of artifacts, including movie posters, costumes, and personal items, which provide an immersive journey through John Wayne's life and movie career. We also touch on the museum's tribute to John Wayne's involvement with the armed forces and his dedication to portraying the military in a positive light.
🚕 Google Map to John Wayne Birthplace Museum (Winterset, IA)
-------------------------------------------------------
⬇️ Help us keep the show going and explore history with us! ⬇️
🧳 Plus...get free travel resources in your inbox.
-------------------------------------------------------
📧 contact: talkwithhistory@gmail.com
Talk with History is a global Top 40 History podcast on Feedspot!
Transcript
Some words can give you a feeling that make your heart warm.
Speaker A:Republic is one of those words.
Speaker A:Merrill, you and your brother stand clear.
Speaker A:I got no interest in you today.
Speaker A:Stand clear and you won't get hurt telling the truth.
Speaker A:Mr. McLintock, we wasn't doing nothing.
Speaker A:Well, that's not important right now, James.
Speaker A:Good morning, Daddy.
Speaker B:It's been some time since I've seen you.
Speaker A:Ten years, I think.
Speaker A:When I quit.
Speaker A:Quit?
Speaker A:Go on back to the bottle.
Speaker A:Get Dr. One thing, though.
Speaker A:Somebody throws a dollar in a spittoon, don't expect me to do something about it.
Speaker A:Just get down on your knees and go after it.
Speaker A:That's my stake valance.
Speaker A:You heard him.
Speaker A:Dude, did you hear that?
Speaker A:I sent you libert.
Speaker B:Welcome to Talk with History.
Speaker B:I'm your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian, Jen.
Speaker C:Hello.
Speaker B:On this podcast, we give you insights to our history Inspired World Travels YouTube channel Journey and examine history through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers, and the history lovers out there.
Speaker B:Jen, we have another comment on something that somebody learned on an episode in Spotify.
Speaker C:That's cool.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So someone commented on Spotify on the Lincoln Presidential Museum episode.
Speaker B:They said, I learned that I need to visit that museum.
Speaker B:That is 100% true.
Speaker B:This is.
Speaker B:Can't really tell what the name is.
Speaker B:It looks like an abbreviation.
Speaker B:The facility seemed.
Speaker B:Seems so historically immersive.
Speaker B:I love both Talk with History and Walk with History.
Speaker B:Thank you so much for your content.
Speaker B:Well, thank you so much.
Speaker B:I'm just gonna say Daegudiva.
Speaker B:Dagadiva.
Speaker B:That's what the Spotify name is, but that's awesome.
Speaker C:Well, that's the whole point.
Speaker B:That's the whole point.
Speaker B:We're hoping to teach you something and prompt you to go out and visit that location.
Speaker B:That is literally our goal for Walk with History and Talk with History.
Speaker C:That is.
Speaker C:That is it in a nutshell.
Speaker C:We also had something else happen to us on the road.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:So for our Talk With History listeners, you guys will enjoy this.
Speaker C:So we have painted the back of our car Walk with history and YouTube and talk with History podcast.
Speaker C:And we also put our Venmo on there in case anyone wants to help us out for gas money or coffee or things like that.
Speaker C:And we were driving to our.
Speaker C:To our historic location over the weekend, and I was beside a trucker.
Speaker C:I was in the passenger seat.
Speaker C:Scott was driving and he held up his phone, and on his phone I could see he was listening to the.
Speaker B:Talk with History podcast, like, pointing at his phone.
Speaker B:He was pointing at his phone like Waving.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Being very dangerous on the road and pointing at his phone and showing me that he was listening to the Talk with History podcast.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So that, that was neat.
Speaker B:Cause I was driving and Jen was like, ah, a trucker just like showed, showed me his phone what he was looking at.
Speaker B:And I was like, oh no, where is this going?
Speaker B:And he said, no, no, no, no.
Speaker B:It was our podcast.
Speaker B:He showed us our podcast cover that he was listening.
Speaker B:So actually, you know, if that gentleman's listening, you know, thank you for, you know, seeing that on the car and for, for showing us that you're supporting the podcast by listening.
Speaker B:As you heard from the intro, we're going to talk about John Wayne's birthplace, actually his hometown museum.
Speaker B:We're going to talk about his actual birthplace next week.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker B:For next week's episode.
Speaker B:But one thing I did want to say that we got kind of a neat story from one of our YouTube comments because this is the video that just posted last Wednesday on Walk with History Channel.
Speaker B:This is actually from my daddy's green eyes.
Speaker B:And she said the Green Berets.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So a lot of, we got a lot of comments on favorite movies and we're going to talk about John Wayne's movie career a little bit tonight.
Speaker B:And the Green Berets, at least a lot of it was filmed in Fort Benning, Georgia, she said, where my husband's father was stationed at the time.
Speaker B:John Wayne played football with some of the men there, including my father in law.
Speaker B:This is my daddy's green eyes commenting.
Speaker B:And on that day, my husband, who was two years old at the time, was on base.
Speaker B:John Wayne held him for a while.
Speaker B:We are both huge John Wayne fans and he sure wishes he could remember his time in the Duke's arms.
Speaker B:Thank you for taking us to this museum.
Speaker B:What a great place to visit.
Speaker B:I just thought that was so cool.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because it's, it's always neat to kind of interact with someone who's either knew the person or had an experience with some that someone that we've covered on the channel.
Speaker C:Sure.
Speaker C:And I, you know, I think that's so endearing.
Speaker C:We have a lot of John Wayne to cover.
Speaker C:So it's not going to be all in this episode.
Speaker C:We're going to also talk about movies.
Speaker C:Scott has finished my top 10.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker C:And he has ranked his top 10.
Speaker C:And we will go more into depth into those.
Speaker C:Today will just be an overview of his birthplace museum and so the location of his museum in Winterset, Iowa.
Speaker C:And basically like an overture of his movie career.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So this is the tail end of our Reston road trip.
Speaker B:One of the places that we wanted to stop by, and we're very glad we did.
Speaker B:This is Winterset, Iowa.
Speaker B:So, Jen, tell us about not so much Winterset, Iowa, but why this museum is there.
Speaker C:Sure.
Speaker C:And I'll be honest, I probably would not have stopped in Iowa for anything.
Speaker C:We were driving back from South Dakota our way to Ohio, and it's on the way, but there's, there's no reason to stop in Iowa except for this for me.
Speaker C:So Winterset, Iowa, is where John Wayne was born.
Speaker B:And John Wayne was born Marian Morris.
Speaker C: ,: Speaker B:And so we'll talk about his actual birthplace and a little bit more about his life and family next week on next week's episodes.
Speaker B:But we were there because they had a great.
Speaker B:Everybody kind of knows the Fort Worth museum is probably the bigger one.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker B:But this one was absolutely amazing.
Speaker C:So this museum claims to have the largest diversified collection of artifacts of John Wayne.
Speaker C:So diversified, I think it means more than just movie props because they have a bunch of posters.
Speaker C:They have a bunch of different things people wore.
Speaker B:They had art.
Speaker C:They had art.
Speaker C:They had a big replica of the Alamo when he was the director of the movie.
Speaker B:I mean, they had other things, you know, items from the movie.
Speaker B:And we'll talk kind of more about items that are, that you see throughout the museum.
Speaker C:And they have some really great stuff in the gift shop.
Speaker C:So if you're interested in that as well.
Speaker C:But I thought it was just a really great museum to John Wayne.
Speaker C:It has a big statue of him out in front.
Speaker C:It lists his movies on tiles around the statue.
Speaker C:It's, it's named John Wayne drive, so it's 205 South John Wayne Drive.
Speaker C:So they really embrace their hometown hero.
Speaker B:Well, because, and the funny part was it's, it's, it's easy to get to.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It's easy to look up.
Speaker C:It's off the interstate.
Speaker B:It's off.
Speaker B:It's off the interstate, but it's a little ways off the interstate.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it's kind of out in the middle of Iowa in the corn fields and the farmland.
Speaker B:And it was very much like you could kind of picture this small town feel like kind of had that.
Speaker B:Because you were, I wouldn't say completely off the beaten path, but you weren't near any major metropolitan area.
Speaker B:No major national park.
Speaker B:Like this town is kind of is known for this.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And unbeknownst to us, this town is also Known for the Bridges of Madison County.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker C:Because we got there and we, we saw they had like movie stuff of the Bridges of Madison County.
Speaker C:And I'm like, what county are we in?
Speaker C:And they're like, madison County.
Speaker C:And I'm like, is this like where the Bridges of Madison county was from?
Speaker C:And they're like, yeah, it was filmed here.
Speaker C:It's based here.
Speaker C:I'm like, oh my gosh.
Speaker C:So that's also.
Speaker C:And I like that movie.
Speaker C:That's a Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep movie.
Speaker C:And that's also.
Speaker C:It was filmed there on location.
Speaker C:They have eight covered bridges.
Speaker C:And that's also kind of the.
Speaker B:Another draw.
Speaker C:Another draw of the area.
Speaker B:So let's walk us kind of through the different sections of this, this John Wayne museum.
Speaker C:Sure.
Speaker C:So you walk straight into the gift shop basically, and they give you a movie and the movie is part of your ticket.
Speaker C:And the movie just goes over John Wayne's.
Speaker C:It's an overture of John Wayne's life and of him being born there.
Speaker C:Now, again, his name is Marion Robert Morrison.
Speaker C:And that will be his name all the way up until his movie career.
Speaker C:He starts as a B actor in, in westerns.
Speaker C:And even then he's not really listed on the credits.
Speaker C:And when he's first listed on credits, it's just Duke Morrison.
Speaker C:And we'll talk more about where the Duke comes from.
Speaker C:His dog growing up was named Duke Y.
Speaker C:But it was actually the producers, when he starts to get more mainstream, they sit down and they name him and they, of course they were going to call him Duke Wayne but they thought it wasn't understood, you know, and people wouldn't really gravitate towards it.
Speaker C:So someone just said produce, said, let's just do John.
Speaker C:So then John Wayne, it was born.
Speaker C:He didn't even pick it.
Speaker C:So you walk in, you do the gift shop.
Speaker C:They have a lot of great movie posts, a lot of great memorabilia there.
Speaker C:And then over to the movie, and then across from the movie, there's basically two big rooms and they are just immersive of everything from his career.
Speaker C:And it kind of walks you through him.
Speaker C:He went to usc, his family eventually moved to California.
Speaker C:He goes to USC on a football scholarship.
Speaker C:He gets injured and starts working at the movies there because that's.
Speaker C:It was a job industry.
Speaker C:I mean, your great grandfather worked in the movie industry.
Speaker B:USC is right smack there next to Hollywood.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker C:You know, and so he.
Speaker B:It's very easy transition for someone that was tall and good looking and, you know, athletic.
Speaker C:Well, and I Think he started basically as a hand, as a stagehand.
Speaker C:Like he just was moving stuff around.
Speaker C:I mean big guy, right?
Speaker C:He's six, three, six, four and a half.
Speaker C:But.
Speaker C:And so he's moving stuff around and someone spots him.
Speaker C:Much, much like the Harrison Ford story, right?
Speaker C:Someone spots him and they're making these B level westerns and they just kind of throw him in these westerns.
Speaker C:And that's where he kind of gets his start.
Speaker B:And he's, he said that was like in the 20s.
Speaker C:The 20s starts in the 20s.
Speaker B: f I remember correctly was in: Speaker C:1930, The big trail.
Speaker C:That's his first leading role.
Speaker C:And again, so these, these B westerns, he's just having these little bit parts and stuff.
Speaker C:But yeah, that's when he gets his first big role.
Speaker C: But it really isn't until: Speaker C:It's when he does that role, I think he plays the Ringo Kid or something.
Speaker C:I think it's Ringo Kid.
Speaker C:He plays.
Speaker C:Yeah, I think he actually plays like a bad guy.
Speaker C:But he's like.
Speaker C:He is a cowboy who stopped in the stagecoach and he kind of is almost like an anti hero even then.
Speaker C:But he has this great close up and I even think Martin Scorsese is like that close up is just what draws you into him because he has a movie star look.
Speaker B:He totally does.
Speaker B:And it was really, I had never really kind of looked into kind of the younger John Wayne.
Speaker B:But you look at him, you know, I think I show a clip somewhere.
Speaker B: xt week's video of him in the: Speaker B:And he's, he's so young and he says he's skinny, right?
Speaker B:But he's a built skinny and he's just a tall presence.
Speaker B:He's just a, he's a big man.
Speaker B:Yeah, but he, he's a handsome man.
Speaker B:Especially when he's young.
Speaker B:He's got that thin kind of movie star look face.
Speaker B:And even as he ages throughout his career, when a lot of the rest of us kind of know him a lot better, I mean he, he ages pretty well and I can absolutely see why someone would be like, hey, you come over here and let me have you start standing in as a B movie, you know, this role and that role.
Speaker B:And then he kind of just naturally grows into that.
Speaker C:Yeah, I. John Wayne in.
Speaker C:Through his film career, he'll make 179 films and for three decades, he's a top box office draw.
Speaker C:So think for 30 years, you put John Wayne on in your movie, you're going to sell a ton of tickets.
Speaker B:And that was the cool thing about this museum, is that it really takes you from the beginning, right?
Speaker B:So if you kind of go in the gift shop, hang a right, you're going to go right into the beginning of his movie career.
Speaker B:And it does a great job of saying, here's John wayne in the 30s and here's him in the 40s and the 50s and the 60s.
Speaker B:And they have all this memorabilia and movie posters on the wall.
Speaker B:And not just American movie posters, but movie posters from overseas in different languages.
Speaker B:It was really neat to see that too.
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker C:Do they just have like a plethora?
Speaker C:That's why I can see why it's diversity, diversity of artifacts.
Speaker C:Because they have the jacket he wore in the Searchers, he had the shirt he wore in the man who Shot Liberty Valance.
Speaker C:They have the eye patch he wore in True Grit.
Speaker C:They have the brochure from the Oscars when he won the Oscar for True Grit.
Speaker C:But what I really loved about it is it really shows the growth of his movie career.
Speaker C:It shows.
Speaker C:And I was reading, like, what do people say about John Wayne's acting?
Speaker C:And Siskel and Ebert said of John Wayne, he's the kind of person who you didn't know if he was acting when he was making a movie.
Speaker C:Is this him or is he playing a part?
Speaker C:And he really was a lot of those.
Speaker C:He.
Speaker C:He said he learned as an actor to be a reactor, not an actor.
Speaker C:And so he was really trying to be in the moment when someone was saying lines to him.
Speaker C:How would you react to that?
Speaker C:How would you answer that?
Speaker C:How would you respond to that?
Speaker C:And he also credits himself with fight scenes with the heavy.
Speaker C:So the heavy is usually the bad guy or the, the, the antagonist to the protagonist.
Speaker C:And so the heavy would always fight dirty.
Speaker C:But John Wayne said he brought the fighting dirty to the good guy.
Speaker C:So the good guy would always be clean cut and never doing anything dirty, and the bad guy would fight all dirty.
Speaker C:And John Wayne said when he was learning and acting, he would have to throw everything in the kitchen sink at him too, to pull off the stunt, to pull off the scene.
Speaker C:And so he thought, well, why wouldn't the good guy also throw a chair?
Speaker C:Why wouldn't the good guy also try to push him out of the way?
Speaker B:Oh, interesting.
Speaker C:So he said he brought that to acting where the good guy was also going to do all the same kind of scrappy kind of fighting.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I didn't realize that because he really was one of those characters in the early kind of.
Speaker B:I wouldn't call.
Speaker B:I don't know if it's considered the golden age of cinema, but he really helped shape what your hero.
Speaker B:I'll call it the stereotypical hero kind of embodied.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker B:In.
Speaker B:Partly because, just like you said, you didn't know.
Speaker B:And that's kind of some of the.
Speaker B:The aura around John Wayne is, you know, a lot of the good characteristics of his characters, he seemed to also embody outside, you know, of the movie set.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker B:And people, or at least people put that on him.
Speaker B:And I think he kind of embraced it for the most part.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:I think he found that important, too.
Speaker C:I know.
Speaker C:And we will go more into his life in the next podcast.
Speaker C:This is his movie career, but I know it really bothered him that he never served in the military.
Speaker C:And so he was really proud to make all the military movies, and we talk about that as well.
Speaker C:And he really wanted to.
Speaker C:To show a positivity to the armed forces.
Speaker C:And he tried to serve in the military, and he actually tried.
Speaker C:John Ford had left to go work in the Navy.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker C:And work for the oss.
Speaker C:And so John Wayne had tried to enlist that way, but he couldn't because he was too old.
Speaker C:He actually was too old in Pearl harbor heaven.
Speaker C:He was 34.
Speaker B:I didn't realize that.
Speaker C:And that was why he wasn't able to join the military.
Speaker C:But he tries.
Speaker C:And John Ford actually gave him, like, a couple missions and he did them.
Speaker C:So he gets, like, honorary member.
Speaker C:But I like that he always wanted to show the positivity of that.
Speaker C:And I know we talk about Green Berets.
Speaker C:No one really wanted to make a movie about the military during Vietnam.
Speaker C:And he stepped up and did it.
Speaker C:And a lot of.
Speaker C:And he was older to make that movie.
Speaker C:But he wanted to portray the military, the army, in a positive light.
Speaker C:And he know.
Speaker C:He knew he had a lot of star power at the time.
Speaker C:So for me, I just.
Speaker C:I really wanted to show that.
Speaker C:And they had.
Speaker C:They really do a good job of honoring his military acting career.
Speaker B:Yeah, they have.
Speaker B:They have a whole section.
Speaker B:So if you're walking into the museum.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:First off, if you're ever in the Iowa area, which I don't know, I'm not sure much what's out there, and not knocking on Iowa itself, I just don't know much about the state.
Speaker B:But if you do decide to go visit you would walk in, hang a right, you're in the big kind of.
Speaker B:This is the primary room where most of the displays are.
Speaker B:And it's taking you through his career throughout the decades.
Speaker B:It kind of loops all the way around.
Speaker B:Then you're getting over to things like True Grit and then they start having different sections.
Speaker B:And so they got a military section about some of the military movies that he made.
Speaker B:And so some of the naval roles that he played in the army role that he played and, and showing.
Speaker B:I mean, they have like some of his, his costumes.
Speaker B:You know, they have a lot of kind of actual, actual movie things that he wore and items from all these different movies.
Speaker B:And so there's a whole military section there.
Speaker B:It's actually right next to like a whole display of kind of tribute shotguns and all that stuff, which I thought was really neat.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker B:So some of them were kind of.
Speaker B:Not all of them are actually from the movie.
Speaker B:Some of them were actually tribute, you know, kind of made to look like whatever revolver he had in some western or something like that.
Speaker C:That was neat.
Speaker C:So, you know, you think of John Wayne, he has played these larger than life figures.
Speaker C:But the thing is, like John Wayne has aged.
Speaker C:And a lot of those military movies he's playing, he's a lot older than the rank he's portraying.
Speaker C:But I do like they.
Speaker C:They do a.
Speaker C:They have the carriage for the quiet man there.
Speaker B:That was cool.
Speaker C:So we talk about that because we've both been to Kong.
Speaker B:That's in the other wing of the museum.
Speaker C:And because they.
Speaker C:They're bigger, that's.
Speaker C:That needed an area for bigger items.
Speaker C:And so we talk about Maureen o'.
Speaker C:Hara because John Wayne has had a lot of great co stars.
Speaker C:Jimmy Stewart, Maureen o', Hara, Lee Marvin, Dean Martin, Ron Howard, end of his life, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Hepburn, like he is.
Speaker C:He is able to hold his own as a leading man with all of these A list actors.
Speaker C:And so Maureen O', Hara, of course, he's been in a couple movies.
Speaker B:McClintock, very well known.
Speaker B:Those two.
Speaker B:Those two together.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:And so we had gone to Kong and we put in some pictures of.
Speaker C:We stayed in Ashford Castle and we walked through there.
Speaker B:2010.
Speaker B: Yeah,: Speaker B:We went to Kong.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker B:And so it's funny, I was actually looking at some of those pictures of, of that was right when I. I gotten out of the Navy before I came back in.
Speaker B: And that was: Speaker B:But some of those places down in Kong.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So in Kong, if you're listening, if you've ever seen The Quiet man, you know, this little Irish based movie.
Speaker B:Yeah, a little bit different for him.
Speaker B:Not your typical Western, but one of our favorites.
Speaker B:And the, the downtown area of Kong, I mean they had actually filmed that area and they had recently redone.
Speaker B: of the plaques was like from: Speaker B:They only finished kind of dressing it up, you know, just before we got there.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was really neat.
Speaker C: And that movie was filmed in: Speaker C:And John Ford, Best Picture, I mean, it's a great movie.
Speaker C:But the Searchers, they have a lot of stuff there for the Searchers.
Speaker B:They have like a whole corner of like what a set would look like and like him on set, lighting and.
Speaker C:Because they talk a lot about John Ford and his cinematography and.
Speaker C:And the Searchers is probably my idea.
Speaker C:And not just Quiet man, which has great cinematography, also John Ford, but the Searchers has great, you know, the settings of Monument Valley and then the man who Shot Liberty Balance with Jimmy Stewart, True Grit is when he wins his Best actor award.
Speaker C:But they also go into like the Shootist because that's also with Jimmy Stewart, that's his last movie with Ron Howard.
Speaker C:And then you're going to get a bunch of the different scripts.
Speaker C:Any little kind of memorabilia they have from those bigger movies.
Speaker C:She Wore Yellow Ribbon, the Cowboys.
Speaker C:I think they had a shirt from the Cowboys, but they have all these little pieces that you can walk around and go, oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker B:One of the things that you pointed out very briefly in the video that I thought was really cool was a painting by Andy Warhol.
Speaker C:Yes, I love that.
Speaker B:That was really cool.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So Andy Warhol has done a, one of those overlap screen art portraits of John Wayne as a cowboy.
Speaker B:I mean, I was kind of surprised, like, was it a print?
Speaker B:I. I imagine it had to be a print because I was like an Andy Warhol.
Speaker B:They're not going to be hanging out there in the museum.
Speaker C:No, an original Andy Warhol that probably.
Speaker C:What's $150,000?
Speaker C:It's probably in the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
Speaker C:But no, you can buy a print.
Speaker C:They were selling them in the gift shop.
Speaker C:And I do love it.
Speaker C:I probably won't get it at one point, but they have a real life kind of replica of the Alamo.
Speaker C:So when John Wayne directed the Alamo and he did get an Oscar nomination.
Speaker B:For it, was that.
Speaker B:So was that the only movie that he had actually directed?
Speaker B:Yeah, I remember and I put it up as a little kind of pop up note that the.
Speaker B:He want, I guess he wanted to direct this movie about the Alamo.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker B:But the movie studios would only agree to fund it if he starred in it.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:And he plays Davy Crockett.
Speaker B:He plays Davy Crockett.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so he's not really playing, you know, his.
Speaker B:His typical character.
Speaker B:But I can see how a movie studio be like, yeah, we'll let you direct something, but you need to be the starring role.
Speaker B:Because he's just this massive.
Speaker C:He's a massive draw.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Now, don't get me wrong.
Speaker C:John Wayne played some characters that he didn't quite fit.
Speaker C:He played Genghis Khan in a movie.
Speaker C:Didn't quite fit that.
Speaker C:He played the Greatest story Ever Told.
Speaker C:He plays a centurion who.
Speaker C:With Jesus.
Speaker C:Kind of odd, like, oh, that's John Wayne.
Speaker C:What?
Speaker C:That's weird.
Speaker C:But I don't even think he might.
Speaker C:I think he might have one line and he's out of the movie.
Speaker C:But.
Speaker C:But he is a box office draw.
Speaker C:But he also has a Persona that people are used to seeing him in.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:And it's usually very.
Speaker C:A Western or military, I would say even Quiet man, he fits that Persona.
Speaker C:But it's a leading man who is almost like a broken man.
Speaker C:Maybe coming back up into his own and playing something off character like that was always not.
Speaker C:Didn't quite fit for him.
Speaker C:But we talk about him winning the Oscar for True Grit, which I don't think is his best performance.
Speaker C:I do like him as Rooster Cogburn, but I really love him and the Searchers.
Speaker C:And he receives his Oscar from Barbra Streisand.
Speaker C:And when he leans over to take it from her, he says, beginner's luck.
Speaker B:Because he'd been in the industry already for 30 plus years and she just.
Speaker C:Thought it was like the cutest thing.
Speaker C:And he actually cries.
Speaker C:He's wiped the tear away when he thanks the audience.
Speaker B:Didn't he also say, well, he was on stage.
Speaker B:He's like, if I'd have known that this was gonna happen, I would have put that eye patch on sooner.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:Cause he didn't wanna wear it.
Speaker C:That was one of the biggest things when he was making the movie.
Speaker C:He didn't wanna wear the eyepatch.
Speaker B:Oh, really?
Speaker C:And actually, we've talked about this before.
Speaker C:The eyepatch is actually see through.
Speaker C:It's actually like a gauze that you could actually see through.
Speaker C:And if you look at it, it's there in the museum.
Speaker C:If you look at it, you can kind of see where it's not quite a full eye patch, like a leather eye patch.
Speaker C:So it made it easier probably for him to act.
Speaker C:But yeah, it was.
Speaker C:I really enjoyed those.
Speaker C:Those.
Speaker C:Those are basically the big two rooms with a lot of the.
Speaker B:The other room that didn't have as much of the movie posters again was kind of like there was like a quiet man section, Alamo section.
Speaker B:And then they actually had a bunch of kind of personal life type stuff.
Speaker B:They had like one of his cars.
Speaker C:One of his cars.
Speaker C:Is there a lot of his fan mail?
Speaker B:His fan mail, which.
Speaker B:That was really cool to see.
Speaker B:And we show that pretty well in the video of all these letters that were written to him.
Speaker B:And it was neat to see someone's.
Speaker B:Someone's handwriting that says John Wayne, movie star, Hollywood, Los Angeles.
Speaker B:It was really neat to see that because you could tell that probably was an adult, wasn't an adult that wrote that particular letter that I showed in the video.
Speaker B:He was probably, you know, a child or someone younger.
Speaker B:But then they showed like a bunch of his like leisure wear that he would normally wear, you know, out on his boat.
Speaker C:Well, and you have to think we're going to talk more about this in his lifestyle.
Speaker C:But John Wayne is a big family man, has seven children and he's a big proponent around Hollywood.
Speaker C:He's going to give a lot of his wealth away.
Speaker C:So you think of the John Wayne Cancer Research Foundation.
Speaker C:Think about, he started the tennis club in Newport Beach.
Speaker C:It's still there today.
Speaker C:He liked to boat.
Speaker B:So he's actually got an airport named after him.
Speaker C:He has an airport named after him, Los Angeles area.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:So he, he was very much giving back to everybody.
Speaker C:And from what I've heard about him, if you approached him, he was very open to signing autographs and meeting.
Speaker C:He was very, he loved his fans.
Speaker C:So even to have all that fan mail is understandable because he did love his fans.
Speaker C:He loved interacting with his fans.
Speaker C:He just loved that connection he had to people.
Speaker C:And like, I feel it.
Speaker C:I, John, I probably only lived for two years during John Wayne's life, but I feel connection to John Wayne.
Speaker C:Like, I like watching his movies and I feel like I'm watching my dad on screen.
Speaker C:So I can see how people would feel this connection to him and want to watch him.
Speaker C:But yeah, I really.
Speaker C:We talk about his movie career.
Speaker C:I still watch new movies of his even today.
Speaker C:I went to the Turner Classic Movie weekend and I saw she Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
Speaker C:I had never seen that before.
Speaker C:And so there's still new movies of John Wayne I'm discovering, but we're going to talk about our favorites.
Speaker C:And on another podcast that's coming up.
Speaker B:In a future episode.
Speaker C:If you have favorites of John Wayne, please let us know or movies you want us to watch or review, please let us know us know.
Speaker C:But yeah, I'm it was a really great museum.
Speaker C:If you're a John Wayne fan, you have to get there.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's definitely worth worth the effort if you were in that neck of the woods.
Speaker B:Absolutely worth taking a day to get out to to Winterset, Iowa to visit, you know, this John Wayne Museum.
Speaker B:And I think it actually opened up around the same time as as the Fort Worth Museum.
Speaker B:So thank you for allowing us to be your guides on a journey through the enduring legacy of John Wayne's illustrious movie career.
Speaker B:All from the heart of Winterset, Iowa.
Speaker B:John Wayne Birthplace Museum is more than just a tribute to a cinematic icon.
Speaker B:It's a journey through the themes that resonated throughout his career, the very themes that helped shape the landscape of American film history.
Speaker B:As you walk through the museum, you can see the rugged individualism, the unwavering determination, and the unyielding sense of justice that John Wayne brought to life in his characters.
Speaker B:His films were more than just entertainment.
Speaker B:They were a reflection of the American spirit.
Speaker B:And those themes from his film still resonate with us today.
Speaker B:So thank you for listening to the Talk with History podcast and please reach out to us at our website, talkwithhistory.com but more importantly, if you know someone else that might enjoy this podcast, especially your fellow John Wayne fans out there, please share it with them.
Speaker B:We rely on you, our community, to grow, and we appreciate you all every day.
Speaker B:We'll talk to you next time.
Speaker C:Thank you.
