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John Wayne Birthday Celebration, May 27-28 2011

May 16

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Winterset, Iowa: Legions of John Wayne fans from throughout the United States and Europe will be gathering at Duke’s Iowa birthplace this spring for Winterset’s annual John Wayne Birthday Celebration. This year’s event salutes the epic films best known as director John Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy: Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande. For many, these stirring motion pictures represent John Wayne at his finest, a battle hardened leader of fighting men on America’s early western frontier.

Offering big screen presentations of these classic movies, the event will also feature an encampment of 19th century cavalrymen under the command of noted living historian Steve Alexander as Gen. George Armstrong Custer. Other attractions will include stagecoach rides, military brass band concerts, an old fashioned firemen’s breakfast (Saturday, May 28th) and many more activities to be announced.

A highlight of the weekend will be a fundraising dinner to benefit the planned John Wayne Birthplace Museum on Friday, May 27th. In addition to a cavalry-style meal and vintage military music performed by Capt. Brittles’ Brilliant Brass Band, guests will enjoy a lively auction of John Wayne and cavalry memorabilia hosted by the actor’s daughter, Aissa Wayne. Also on hand will be special guest of honor Claude Jarman, Jr. who received an Academy Award for his role as young Jody Baxter in The Yearling (1946) and later played John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara’s son, trooper Jefferson Yorke, in Rio Grande. (The first 500 to reserve the dinner will receive a DVD copy of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon compliments of Warner Bros. Home Video.)

Reservations are required for the dinner ($100 per person). Movies, concerts and cavalry encampment are free.

For more information, including lodging, contact the John Wayne Birthplace at 515-462-1044 or visit the website at www.johnwaynebirthplace.org/birthday

Proposal to twin Cong with John Wayne’s hometown

Apr 30

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MOVES are gathering pace to twin Cong, with the town of Winterset, Iowa, in the United States, where John Wayne was born.
The proposal is understood to have met with the approval of screen legend Maureen O’Hara who considered Wayne, whose nickname was ‘Duke’, her best friend.
She starred in a number of other movies with Duke’ including McLintock (1963), Rio Grande (1950) and The Wings of Eagles (1957), but The Quiet Man, shot here in 1952, was her favourite collaboration.

A special committee has been set up in Cong to erect a life-size statue of Wayne in the village and have it in place for celebrations to mark The Gathering in October.
Also, following approaches from civic leaders in Wayne’s birthplace, Winterset, where there is a John Wayne museum, there are plans for a formal twinning between the two locations.
Councillor Damian Ryan has a motion down for discussion at the Claremorris electoral area meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) asking Mayo County Council to make future financial provisions for the twinning. “Such links would boost tourism and cultural
links in south Mayo,” according to Councillor Ryan.
O’Hara and her family will be in Winterset later this month (May 24 and 25) for the annual John Wayne birthday celebrations and, in a public farewell to her legions of fans, will discuss her lifelong friendship with the iconic film star.

Source

‘Quiet Man’ star Maureen O’Hara to visit John Wayne’s birthplace for annual celebration

Apr 14

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Irish screen legend Maureen O’Hara,92, the flame-haired siren best known for her role opposite John Wayne in “The Quiet Man”, is joining the John Wayne Birthplace along with her family in Winterset, Iowa on May 24 & 25 for their annual John Wayne birthday celebration.

O’Hara recently moved to Boise, Idaho to live with her grandson after a major dispute over her care in Glengarriff, County Cork , in Ireland exploded between her family and her former caregiver.

O’Hara, who starred with Wayne in “Rio Grande”, “The Quiet Man”, “The Wings of Eagles”, “McLintock!” and “Big Jake”, considered Duke her best friend and, in this public farewell to her legions of fans, she’ll discuss their lifelong friendship.

According to John Wayne Birthplace, the two-day event will feature all aspects of Wayne’s film career including the U.S. Cavalry, cowboys, World War II and, of course, Ireland.

In tribute to Miss O’Hara this year’s dinner gala will reprise many of the highlights of last year’s Quiet Man celebration; music from that film classic performed by Irish songstress Catherine O’Connell, Chicago’s Shannon Rovers Pipes and Drums and world champion Irish dancers, the Fabulous McKay Sisters.

The dinner will be held in a comfortable, air-conditioned indoor venue. Dinner tickets also include the auction and all the proceeds benefit the John Wayne Birthplace. All of the films starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara’s will be shown during the weekend: McLintock! (2013 is its 50th Anniversary), Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952), The Wings of Eagles (1957), and Big Jake (1971).

Maureen O’Hara herself has recorded a personal greeting to the John Wayne Birthplace which will be screened during the John Wayne Birthday Celebration in Winterset on May 26th during the Midwest Premiere of the John Ford–Dreaming the Quiet Man documentary.

Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/ent/Quiet-Man-star-Maureen-OHara-to-visit-John-Waynes-birthplace-for-annual-celebration-186459271.html#ixzz2QUXRG0Ww

OSCARS A GOOD NIGHT FOR WESTERN FANS

Feb 25

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OSCARS A GOOD NIGHT FOR WESTERN FANS

hal needham
Hal Needham

Tonight’s Academy Awards were shared among an unusually wide number of films, the result of a year with so many exceptional films. The highlights for Western fans? DJANGO UNCHAINED won Best Original Screenplay — Quentin Tarantino, and Best Supporting Actor — Christoph Waltz. LINCOLN won Best Actor – Daniel Day-Lewis, and Best Production Design – Rick Carter and Jim Erickson. Also of particular delight to Western fans, stunt man and stunt coordinator Hal Needham was presented with an honorary Oscar for a splendid career. As writer C. Courtney Joyner noted on Facebook, “In a way, it meant that Andy McLaglen, Burt Kennedy, Henry Hathaway, Gordon Douglas, John Stugess and Peckinpah were all at tonight’s ceremony, thanks to Hal.”

via Henry’s Western Roundup

Western character actor Harry Carey Jr. dies at 91

Dec 28

Posted by Kevin in Costars, News | No Comments

Dobe, in Tombstone (1993) (photo: James Pepper)

Dobe, in Tombstone (1993) (photo: James Pepper)

LOS ANGELES — Harry Carey Jr., a character actor who starred in such Westerns as “3 Godfathers” and “Wagon Master,” has died. He was 91.

His daughter, Melinda Carey, said he died Thursday of natural causes surrounded by family at a hospice facility in Santa Barbara, Calif.

“He went out as gracefully as he came in,” she said Friday.

Carey’s career spanned more than 50 years and included such John Ford classics as “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” “The Searchers” and “The Long Gray Line.” Later in life, he appeared in the movies “Gremlins” and “Back to the Future Part III.”

His memoir, “Company of Heroes: My Life as an Actor in the John Ford Stock Company,” was published in 1994.

While he lacked the leading-man stature of longtime friend and co-star John Wayne, Carey’s boyish looks and horse-riding skills earned him roles in many of Ford’s films.

He and fellow character Ben Johnson famously learned to stand simultaneously on two galloping horses – a trick known as roman riding – for the 1950 film “Rio Grande” starring Wayne.

“My journey has been that of a character actor,” he wrote in his memoir. “I’ve worked with the great and the not-so-great. But mostly I’ve worked with men and women who loved their profession, and who like me, had kids to raise and houses to pay for.”

Carey was the son of silent-film Western star Harry Carey Sr. and actress Olive Carey. He was born on May 16, 1921, on his family’s ranch and graduated from Hollywood’s Black-Foxe Military Institute.

During World War II, he served in the Navy and worked with Ford on films for the Navy.

He is survived by his wife, a son, two daughters, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.