John Wayne Profile and his films - LaNUBlog Gist: =>
I the year...
*. 1907: Born in Winterset, Iowa
*. 1939: layed the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach
*. 1940: Co-starred with Marlene Dietrich in Seven Sinners
*. 1968: Co-directed The Green Berets, which backed US involvement in Vietnam
*. 1969: Won an Oscar for his performance in True Grit
*. 1975: Co-starred with Katherine Hepburn in Rooster Cogburn
*. 1979 :Died of cancer
"If we could have brought out The Oregon Trail, it would have generated a million dollars in revenue," he said, standing in a room with klieg lights at the museum last summer.
As he spoke, a Comstock Cowboys CD played in the background. The music has simple chords with lonely-guy lyrics: "I rode in the deadwood one dark, stormy evening."
Sigman said he believed The Oregon Trail was misfiled and placed in the wrong canister.
The movie posters belong to private collectors
He picked up a rusted canister, a storage case for movie prints, that been lying on the floor. It was empty, except for a brochure from a 2003 film festival.
He said the canister with The Oregon Trail may be sitting in a warehouse somewhere. He has travelled to Latin America in search of the film and has spoken with film distributors in Europe and the UK.
"I looked all over the world for it," he said. "It is one of the treasures that everybody wants."
Should a print be found, it would not be the first time a lost film was rediscovered.
Another film from the 1930s featuring Wayne - a pre-censorship version of Baby Face - was missing until a curator found it at the US Library of Congress in 2004.
Too Much Johnson, a 1938 picture by Orson Welles, was discovered more recently in an Italian warehouse. The US premiere of the film will take place at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, on 16 October.
By 1935, when The Oregon Trail was shot, Wayne, then 28, had already appeared in dozens of films.
But his career prospects looked grim.
His 1930 star turn in Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail was artistically ambitious but flopped at the box office.
He spent the next several years appearing in poverty-row westerns, as the low-budget films were called. For a while he worked as a singing cowboy.
Early in their careers, Rutherford and Wayne portrayed a frontier romance in The Oregon Trail
Yet he was not a quitter. Courage, he once said, "is being scared to death but saddling up anyway".
After The Oregon Trail, he appeared in several more films before he was propelled to stardom as the Ringo Kid in John Ford's Stagecoach in 1939.
Wayne's earlier films are now prized by collectors and studied by fans and historians.
Wayne himself described the work in simple terms. As he said in a interview in 1964, the films tell "the story of the West - the story of a man fighting against the elements".
The most compelling characters, he said, were men of action.
"There's no nuance," he said in a interview in 1974.
"They drive ahead," Wayne said, "usually fighting something bigger than a petty little argument with someone."
A historian at the museum, Chris Langley, is using the movie stills to track down locations where the film was shot. In this way, he hopes to deepen the public's understanding of the movie - and of Wayne.
"They drive ahead," Wayne said, describing the characters he played in westerns like The Oregon Trail
One Saturday morning last summer, Langley tossed a manila folder into the front seat of his car and drove about 10 miles (16km) to the Alabama Hills, where The Oregon Trail was shot in December 1935.
Known as Hollywood's back lot, Alabama Hills was also the setting for Gunga Din, a 1939 movie based on a Rudyard Kipling poem, several Firestone tyre commercials, and Quentin Tarantino's recent Django Unchained.
Mt Whitney's 14,497ft (4,418m) peak loomed in the distance. Granite rocks were scattered across a lunar landscape.
Langley looked for places where The Oregon Trail was filmed
Grabbing the folder, Langley climbed out of the car.
"I thought if I were ever in trouble, I'd like John Wayne to ride up," he said. "It's like a father figure, but it's more than that."
It was a wet morning, with a sharp breeze that wrapped around your legs. Chunks of broken glass jutted from the dirt, and it was quiet. One could hear raindrops splash on dark leaves, and the place smelled like sage and Marlboro Lights.
"You're now leaning exactly where John Wayne is," said Langley. He held up a movie still. In the photograph Wayne leans against a rock. He wears a white jacket with fringe, cinched with a silver buckle.
Sperring is now in Lone Pine for the film festival at the weekend. He too spent time in Alabama Hills, visiting places where Wayne acted out scenes in The Oregon Trail and other films.
The Oregon Trail was shot in the Alabama Hills in December 1935
"I don't want to sound goofy, but it's almost like you feel their presence," Sperring said. "It's a good feeling."
*. 1907: Born in Winterset, Iowa
*. 1939: layed the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach
*. 1940: Co-starred with Marlene Dietrich in Seven Sinners
*. 1968: Co-directed The Green Berets, which backed US involvement in Vietnam
*. 1969: Won an Oscar for his performance in True Grit
*. 1975: Co-starred with Katherine Hepburn in Rooster Cogburn
*. 1979 :Died of cancer
"If we could have brought out The Oregon Trail, it would have generated a million dollars in revenue," he said, standing in a room with klieg lights at the museum last summer.
As he spoke, a Comstock Cowboys CD played in the background. The music has simple chords with lonely-guy lyrics: "I rode in the deadwood one dark, stormy evening."
Sigman said he believed The Oregon Trail was misfiled and placed in the wrong canister.
The movie posters belong to private collectors
He picked up a rusted canister, a storage case for movie prints, that been lying on the floor. It was empty, except for a brochure from a 2003 film festival.
He said the canister with The Oregon Trail may be sitting in a warehouse somewhere. He has travelled to Latin America in search of the film and has spoken with film distributors in Europe and the UK.
"I looked all over the world for it," he said. "It is one of the treasures that everybody wants."
Should a print be found, it would not be the first time a lost film was rediscovered.
Another film from the 1930s featuring Wayne - a pre-censorship version of Baby Face - was missing until a curator found it at the US Library of Congress in 2004.
Too Much Johnson, a 1938 picture by Orson Welles, was discovered more recently in an Italian warehouse. The US premiere of the film will take place at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, on 16 October.
By 1935, when The Oregon Trail was shot, Wayne, then 28, had already appeared in dozens of films.
But his career prospects looked grim.
His 1930 star turn in Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail was artistically ambitious but flopped at the box office.
He spent the next several years appearing in poverty-row westerns, as the low-budget films were called. For a while he worked as a singing cowboy.
Early in their careers, Rutherford and Wayne portrayed a frontier romance in The Oregon Trail
Yet he was not a quitter. Courage, he once said, "is being scared to death but saddling up anyway".
After The Oregon Trail, he appeared in several more films before he was propelled to stardom as the Ringo Kid in John Ford's Stagecoach in 1939.
Wayne's earlier films are now prized by collectors and studied by fans and historians.
Wayne himself described the work in simple terms. As he said in a interview in 1964, the films tell "the story of the West - the story of a man fighting against the elements".
The most compelling characters, he said, were men of action.
"There's no nuance," he said in a interview in 1974.
"They drive ahead," Wayne said, "usually fighting something bigger than a petty little argument with someone."
A historian at the museum, Chris Langley, is using the movie stills to track down locations where the film was shot. In this way, he hopes to deepen the public's understanding of the movie - and of Wayne.
"They drive ahead," Wayne said, describing the characters he played in westerns like The Oregon Trail
One Saturday morning last summer, Langley tossed a manila folder into the front seat of his car and drove about 10 miles (16km) to the Alabama Hills, where The Oregon Trail was shot in December 1935.
Known as Hollywood's back lot, Alabama Hills was also the setting for Gunga Din, a 1939 movie based on a Rudyard Kipling poem, several Firestone tyre commercials, and Quentin Tarantino's recent Django Unchained.
Mt Whitney's 14,497ft (4,418m) peak loomed in the distance. Granite rocks were scattered across a lunar landscape.
Langley looked for places where The Oregon Trail was filmed
Grabbing the folder, Langley climbed out of the car.
"I thought if I were ever in trouble, I'd like John Wayne to ride up," he said. "It's like a father figure, but it's more than that."
It was a wet morning, with a sharp breeze that wrapped around your legs. Chunks of broken glass jutted from the dirt, and it was quiet. One could hear raindrops splash on dark leaves, and the place smelled like sage and Marlboro Lights.
"You're now leaning exactly where John Wayne is," said Langley. He held up a movie still. In the photograph Wayne leans against a rock. He wears a white jacket with fringe, cinched with a silver buckle.
Sperring is now in Lone Pine for the film festival at the weekend. He too spent time in Alabama Hills, visiting places where Wayne acted out scenes in The Oregon Trail and other films.
The Oregon Trail was shot in the Alabama Hills in December 1935
"I don't want to sound goofy, but it's almost like you feel their presence," Sperring said. "It's a good feeling."
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