John Wayne Birthplace & Museum

10/24/2026

If Merian Caldwell Cooper had never entered John Wayne’s career, his life story would still read like an adventure novel. The fact that he lived the life of a film character, and helped create some of the greatest films of any generation, is a story that could only be set in America. Merian Caldwell Cooper. Before coming to the film business, Cooper had already had enough adventure for several lives. As a young man, he won an appointment to the US Naval Academy but was expelled for "hell raising and for championing air power". In 1916 he vascillated between working as a journalist and the Georgia Air National Guard, learning to fly. In 1917, not long after the US entry into WWI, Cooper deployed to France with the 201st Squadron. After an accident that resulted in him having to learn to fly all over again, he trained as a bomber pilot. One crash left him presumed dead, and his family received a death notification; instead, he was captured by German troops. Later he flew with American volunteers in the Polish Air Force.

After the war, he worked for the New York Times, met Emperor Haile Selassie I, worked for the American Geographical Society, was a member of the board of directors of Pan American Airways, and helped to write the script for King Kong. All of this before working with John Wayne and John Ford.

He even re-enlisted in the US Air Forces at the outset of WWII and served in where he worked in India and helped plan the Dolittle Raid. He became a Brigadier General and was present on the USS Missouri for the surrender of Japan.

In 1946, Cooper and John Ford formed Argosy Productions. Cooper went on to produce, among other classic movies, Fort Apache, 3 Godfathers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, and The Searchers, his final film

Merian Caldwell Cooper was born on October 24, 1893. Today is the birthday of a true American Original who spent his best years helping make the best westerns ever put on film.

Happy Birthday Merian Caldwell Cooper

10/21/2026

The life and legacy of John Wayne. A life well lived!

10/18/2026

October is National Popcorn Poppin’ Month, and there is no better pairing, no more perfect companion to popcorn than a great film. According to legend, the first recorded instance of popcorn being sold at a movie theater was at the Nickelodeon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1895 (it would be almost half a century before John Wayne would make a movie called Pittsburgh, but I don’t think popcorn plays a part). For most of early cinema history, most theaters had a “no eating” rule. It was not until the 1920s that popcorn became a theater staple; meaning that when Marion Robert Morrison went to see his first movie, possibly at the Iowa Theater in Winterset, Iowa, just down the street from the John Wayne Birthplace Museum, he likely had some popcorn.

More than a century later, popcorn is still the movie snack of choice and the perfect match for a great John Wayne film. If you haven’t had them together in a while, grab some popcorn and find a John Wayne movie; I think you will see why they are both still around.

Happy National Popcorn Poppin’ Month

10/15/2026

Mervyn LeRoy is not a name that immediately evokes visions of John Wayne films. Although he is an acclaimed director and producer, he doesn't share the same history with Duke that people like Howard Hawks and John Ford do. There are only a few years when John Wayne released only one film. It seems like two was typically his minimum. One of those years that Duke released a single movie was 1946 with Without Reservations, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, born October 15, 1900, in San Francisco to a wealthy family.

In 1914, LeRoy entered show business as a Charlie Chaplin impersonator. Over the next twenty years, LeRoy moved from acting on stage to acting in the film business and finally moving behind the camera, hand-tinting film and occasionally returning to acting, including a bit part in Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 epic The Ten Commandments. Eventually, LeRoy moved to directing and made classics such as Little Caesar and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. In 1939, he produced The Wizard of Oz.

LeRoy returned to directing, and in 1946 his first collaboration with John Wayne was released: the comedy Without Reservations, co-starring Claudette Colbert and featuring music by Roy Webb, who was a composer on The Fighting Seabees. John Wayne stars as a Marine travelling cross-country who, unknowingly, falls for a celebrity writer and commences to criticize her best-selling book. Without Reservations was a hit for RKO. John Wayne went on to become the biggest film star in the world, and Mervyn LeRoy kept directing, including the Academy Award-nominated Quo Vadis (1951), and he won the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award in 1976.

Mervyn LeRoy had one more opportunity to work with John Wayne in 1968, when he was brought on to assist Duke in directing The Green Berets. He worked on the film for five and a half months but wouldn’t allow his name to be added to the credits, admitting that it was Duke’s vision, and he was just there to help an old friend. LeRoy retired after the film wrapped, and The Green Berets was his final directing job.

Although their paths only crossed twice, Mervyn LeRoy holds an important place in the John Wayne universe.

10/14/2026

John Wayne. Legend. Hero. American.

10/13/2026

10/10/2026

John Wayne spent a lot of his career hunting for something: cattle, gold, bandits, his own grandson. But maybe the greatest heist in John Wayne history is the search for his own footprints.

On October 1, 1955, Blood Alley opened in theaters around the country. Duke played a ship's captain caught up in the struggle for freedom in the Pacific. Just after its opening, on October 3, two women approached Grauman’s Chinese Theater and noticed that Duke’s footprints were loose and decided to take them home as a souvenir. In the process, the two thieves, Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz not only break the prints, but they are observed committing the crime and described as a "dishwater blonde" and a "frowsy redhead."

On October 10, in episode 2 of season 5 of I Love Lucy, Lucy comes face to face with her hero John Wayne. In an unusual two-part episode, “Lucy Visits Grauman’s” and “Lucy and John Wayne,” Lucille Ball has to try and trick Duke into making a new pair of footprints to avoid jail for herself and scandal for Ricky.

As has been said over and over on this page, John Wayne never got the chance to do enough comedy, and this episode is another example. The scene between Duke and the inimitable Lucy are TV gold. This episode is also another example of John Wayne’s business acumen, since you can see a Blood Alley poster in his hotel room, free advertising and a chance to trade lines with the queen of TV comedy.

When Duke finally comes face to face with Lucy, she realizes she has curlers in her hair and fixes the situation by putting her purse on her head, to which Duke responds, “Does she always wear a pocketbook on her head? I’m afraid I owe Bill Holden an apology.” In the course of the scene, Lucy mentions his new movie, Blood Alley and The High and the Mighty: “When you were up in that plane in The High and the Mighty when your motor conked out, my motor conked out.”

Like most entertainment from the golden age of film and television, the episode holds up brilliantly. Today is a good day to return and check it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntgD4-zK0GQ

10/08/2026

1942 was a busy year for John Wayne. Duke released seven movies over the course of twelve months. Only two were war movies: Reunion in France with Joan Crawford and one of the defining movies of his career, Flying Tigers. Production of the film started soon after the US entered WWII. Republic Pictures brought on Kenneth Gamet (Pittsburg, Flying leathernecks and a bunch of Nancy Drew movies) to write the script. With John Wayne attached to star, the film was a guaranteed hit. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American public was eager for films that could raise the spirits of a nation on a war footing.

The most difficult, and essential, part of Flying Tigers was going to be the depiction of aerial combat, a staple of action movies since the earliest days of cinema. As the nation was at war, the use of military aircraft was not an option. Republic Pictures came up with some novel ideas to complete the sequences. Some combat was filmed with miniatures created by Howard and Ted Lydecker, the special effects wizards at Republic Pictures. Their combat sequences were so good that they were nominated for an Academy Award, but lost to another John Wayne film, Reap the Wild Wind.

Aside from miniatures, the production approached Curtiss-Wright about using some planes waiting to be delivered to the military. The planes were repainted with the iconic Flying Tigers grinning teeth, and the company test pilot stood in for John Wayne. Other combat sequences used real footage taken from captured Japanese propaganda films.

When the film was released October 8, 1942, it was a hit and became the first Republic feature to make more than one million dollars.

It would be another year before Duke made another war picture. In 1943, he only made two films, and neither took him into battle. In 1944, Duke began a string of films honoring the heroism of the American military in WWII that would last more than a decade. In 1944, he made The Fighting Seabees, and in 1945, They Were Expendable and Back to Bataan.

10/07/2026

Becoming “The Duke”!

Learn more about John Wayne’s incredible life and legacy right here at his birthplace in Winterset, Iowa! We can’t wait for you to visit the John Wayne Birthplace and Museum!

10/05/2026

October 4 - 10 is the 2026 Banned Books Week. While John Wayne never made a movie based on a banned book, one of his movies was met with a temporary ban, not for drinking, smoking, or even violence, but for national security reasons.

On November 10, 1939, John Wayne made Allegheny Uprisingset in the southwestern Pennsylvania region in the 1760s. James Smith (John Wayne) plays an explorer struggling with British officials and Native American raiders.

Its release in the UK came in the midst of the Battle of Britain, and the nation's censors felt that the negative portrayal of the British military in Colonial America was a detriment to the war effort. By all reports, British opinions changed when America entered the war after the Bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Allegheny Uprising wasn't the only American film banned by the UK censors. John Ford's "Drums Along the Mohawk" was also banned for a time for the same reason.

These are not the only two films to ever be banned, but the only time Duke stepped in front of the censors.