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John Wayne’s ‘The Cowboys’ rides into Las Vegas – My Blog

It shocked her, to see her father take a bullet on the big screen.And in the back, no less.

Marisa Wayne was around 10 years old when she first watched “The Cowboys,” that seminal, coming-of-age Western starring her father, the cowboy-of-all-cowboys, John Wayne.Wayne’s daughter watched the film with her dad by her side — and yet still it rattled her.“I mean, it was just so traumatic,” she recalled. “I’m sitting in the same room with my dad next to me, and I know he’s an actor, but I just was a mess.”
Her disbelief was understandable: John Wayne was seldom ever shot and killed in his movies, all 169 of them.He was a paragon of toughness, Kevlar personified
But “The Cowboys” was different: Filmed when its leading man was in his mid-60s, it follows Wayne-portrayed rancher Wil Anderson as he recruits a gang of schoolboys to help him on a cattle drive after his usual ranch hands abandon him to try their luck in the gold rush.While still exuding the gruff gravitas of a man seemingly fashioned from rawhide and barbed wire as much as flesh and bone, Wayne also displays a fatherly side in “The Cowboys.”Tender, he’s not.Caring, he is, and it manifests itself in one of Wayne’s most distinctly human roles — as such, “The Cowboys” lives on as a fan favorite of Wayne’s alongside genre-defining classics such as “The Searchers,” “Stagecoach” and “True Grit.”Released in 1972, “The Cowboys” turned 50 this year.

Marisa Wayne and some of the film’s cast members are celebrating the occasion by appearing at The Cowboy Channel’s Cowboy Christmas event at the Las Vegas Convention Center during the National Finals Rodeo festivities. In addition to a display of rare memorabilia from “The Cowboys,” including The Duke’s costume from the film, there will be daily signings from numerous actors in the movie from noon-2 p.m. Fans can meet the cast members at the Dawg House Saloon inside Resorts World from 10-11 a.m. daily.She is also promoting a pair of new books about her father: “DUKE: The Official John Wayne Movie Book” and “John Wayne: The Official Cocktail Book.”For his daughter — who remembers being on set with her dad as a kid alongside Ron Howard, Jimmy Stewart and Lauren Bacall for “The Shootist” and Katherine Hepburn for “Rooster Cogburn,” to name but a few — “The Cowboys” still stands out in her father’s expansive filmography because that’s who she sees in the film: not Wil Anderson, not cinema’s most famous cowboy, but her father.“I see him in a lot of the characters, in a lot of the films,” she said, “but ‘The Cowboys’ is really special, because he has all those young boys that he’s responsible for.“He’s just very protective,” she continued, “But it’s also, ‘You’ve got to grow up. And grow up right.’”From cowboys to menHe was a teenager acting in his first film. And yet four days into “The Cowboys” shoot, Robert Carradine summoned the nerve to give John Wayne some advice on how his character Slim Honeycutt should be addressed, deviating from the script a bit.Whoops!“He didn’t respond well,” Carradine said with a chuckle. “He chewed me out to the magnitude of reducing me to tears. It didn’t go well at all.“I’m sure in his mind he’s probably going, ‘What in the hell is this 17-year-old kid who’s never been in a movie doing, telling me how he thinks I should do my line?” he continued. “I mean, he must have been completely flabbergasted.”And yet, the Duke ended up doing what Carradine suggested, tweaking the dialogue a tad.This was the kind of man he was on camera and off: steely and no-nonsense, but fair.As Carradine relates, for the many of the 11 young men who composed “The Cowboys” in the film, the shoot was a trial by fire.About half of them were actual cowboys; the rest were actors who had to learn how to handle a horse.“The riding component of the film was a major undertaking,” Carradine explained of the training required for the movie. “It was two-and-a-half months every day — seven days a week — four hours on school days, eight hours on Saturday and five hours on Sunday.
“At the end of two-and-a-half months, I’m proud to say you couldn’t really tell the difference between the cast that were real cowboys and the cast that were actors,” he added. “I mean, we could sit a horse.”All these years later, Carradine still takes clear pride in the authenticity the crew brought to the movie as a result.“That’s one of the things that kind of bothers me about current Westerns: These actors that don’t know how to ride, and it really shows,” Carradine said. “It hurts the production of the film, because you can see that they’re not really horsemen — when they’re playing horsemen.”For four-and-a-half months in the spring and summer of 1971, Carradine and company would film in New Mexico, Colorado and Los Angeles, working with one of Hollwood’s biggest stars — literally and figuratively.“Once we got on location and we were in the presence of Mr. Wayne,” Carradine recalled, “his charisma, his physical presence, it was pretty overwhelming.”A controversial classicIt’s one of the more iconic scenes in a film full of them, a young man locking horns with an old cuss.On his first major motion picture shoot, child actor Sean Kelly was playing “Stuttering” Bob Wilson, a precocious kid with a speech impediment.Early in the film, Wilson stands up to Anderson after he tells him to either stop stuttering or hit the bricks, unleashing a slew of profanities on the boulder-sized cowboy.“I was 4’11,” ” Kelly recalled. “John Wayne was 6’4” and and literally 3-feet-wide from shoulder-to-shoulder. The man was a presence — a really big guy.“The whole thing is stand your ground,” he continued. “I was a kid who was basically talking to a father figure or someone who was really coming down on me, trying to defend my position. There is that quality — I think it’s a relatability — everybody can feel that in their spirit.”This relatability lies at the heart of the film’s staying power.“I think it has that timelessness because everyone identifies with some part of these characters,” Kelly said, “whether it’s my character standing up to Duke Wayne and swearing at him or anybody else’s character — they all have these moments where they have to be real, they have to be present.”With its “Bonanza” meets “Bad News Bears” appeal, “The Cowboys” was a big hit upon its release in January 1972, earning $19 million at the box office, which translates to nearly $140 million in today’s dollars.Yet “The Cowboys” wasn’t without controversy, with some detractors taking issue with John Wayne’s tough love approach — i.e. yelling at a kid to remedy a stammer — and the movie’s violent climax, where Anderson’s young charges kill the rustlers who killed him.“Some of the critics took exception to the fact that we wiped out all those guys,” Carradine remembered.Still, “The Cowboys” feels true to its era, not so much glorifying violence as acknowledging the realities of the time in which it’s set.In a pivotal scene, Anderson is confronted by ex-con Asa Watts, aka Long Hair, played by Bruce Dern, who wants Anderson to hire him and his fresh-out-of-jail buddies for the cattle drive.Anderson refuses.“You’re a hard man,” Watts tells him with eyes radiating murder.Anderson wastes little time firing back, mouth in place of six-shooter.“It’s a hard life.”

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MILEY CYRUS STUNNED IN A VERY CHIC GUCCI DRESS WITH A DARING LEG SLIT THAT WENT ALL THE WAY TO HER WAIST DURING HER GRAMMY ACCEPTANCE SPEECH AND APPARENTLY SHE ‘WASN’T WEARING ANY UɴᴅᴇƦᴡᴇᴀƦ’

Miley Cyrus had the crowd roaring when she closed out her Grammys acceptance speech with a cheeky remark about ‘forgetting’ her underwear.
She did so while rocking a very racy Gucci dress with a daring leg slit that climbed to her waist.But now the singer, 31 — who is now a two-time Grammy winner — is insisting that it was only a joke.Miley took to X (formerly Twitter) on Monday to write: ‘PS I was only kidding…. I had on matching custom @gucci panties [HEART-EMOJI]’She then thanked Gucci’s creative director Sabato De Sarno for the ‘head to toe chocolate custom couture’ that’s earned her a ton of attention online.In the same X post, Miley fawned over Mariah Carey, Meryl Streep and Mark Ronson — the trio of stars who presented her with her first-ever Grammys on Sunday night.

Miley Cyrus had the crowd roaring when she closed out her Grammys acceptance speech with a cheeky remark about ‘forgetting’ her underwear – and now she’s clarifying that it was just a joke.

Miley took to X (formerly Twitter) on Monday to write: ‘PS I was only kidding…. I had on matching custom @gucci panties’

While accepting the Record Of The Year trophy, Miley rocked a very racy Gucci dress with a daring leg slit that climbed to her waistShe included photos from the show that showed Meryl handing Miley her Record Of The Year trophy as well as Miley hugging her team, who joined her on stage.

She wrote that the third photo in her post ‘sums up’ her relationship with her Flowers co-writer Michael Pollack and producers Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson ‘perfectly.’The image showed Miley in front of the mic accepting their award while Pollack, Harpoon and Johnson stood idly behind her.‘You 3 wanting me to do all the talking until I start talking….’ she teased.Miley was one of the biggest winners of the night as she earned the coveted Record Of The Year and Best Pop Solo Performance for her hit track Flowers.Along with setting social media ablaze with her underwear joke, Miley also got fans talking about her father Billy Ray Cyrus, who she left out of her Record Of The Year acceptance speech.”This award is amazing,’ she began. ‘But I really hope that it doesn’t change anything because my life was beautiful yesterday. Not everyone in the world will get a Grammy, but everyone in this world is spectacular…

‘So please don’t think that this is important, even though it’s very important, right guys? ‘[I want to thank] everyone that’s standing on this stage right now Tom, Tyler, Michael and Greg.

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Woman Who Claimed To ‘Marry Her Stepdad’ Clears The Air On Their Relationship

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Woman Who Claimed to Marry Her Stepfather Clears the Air on Their Relationship

The internet thrives on shocking stories, but one recent claim left social media users in disbelief. A woman allegedly married her stepfather, sparking outrage, curiosity, and a flood of reactions online. Now, she’s speaking out to set the record straight and clarify the truth behind her controversial statement.

The story first gained traction when a video went viral, showing the woman with her stepfather, leading to accusations of an inappropriate relationship. The online frenzy was fueled by speculation, memes, and heated debates about family boundaries. For weeks, critics and supporters alike dissected the story, with some condemning the alleged union and others calling it a matter of personal freedom.

In a recent interview, the woman addressed the situation head-on, debunking the rumors that she married her stepdad. She explained that her initial claim was misunderstood, blown out of proportion, and taken out of context. According to her, the relationship has been misrepresented, and while they do share a close bond, it is far from what people assumed.

“It’s crazy how quickly the internet twists things. People love drama, but this isn’t what they think it is,” she said. She revealed that her stepfather has been a supportive figure in her life, and their connection is built on mutual respect and care—not romance.

Despite her clarification, the backlash hasn’t entirely subsided. Critics question why she made the claim in the first place, while some accuse her of seeking attention. Others, however, have come to her defense, emphasizing the importance of verifying facts before jumping to conclusions.

Psychologists have weighed in on the situation, highlighting how social media amplifies controversies without context. “In today’s digital age, a misunderstood statement can snowball into a viral sensation within hours,” said one expert.

The woman admits that she didn’t anticipate the uproar her comments would create but hopes that her explanation will put the matter to rest. “I want people to stop judging without knowing the full story,” she added.

The saga serves as a reminder of how quickly stories can spiral out of control online. It also raises questions about privacy and the consequences of sharing personal details in the public eye.

As the dust begins to settle, one thing is clear: the internet never forgets. Whether this will be a lesson learned or just another fleeting viral moment remains to be seen.

What’s your take on this bizarre story? Was it just a misunderstanding, or is there more to it? Share your thoughts below!

 

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Michael Bublé breaks down in tears over son Noah’s health issues

Michael Bublé Breaks Down in Tears Over Son Noah’s Health Issues

Michael Bublé, the beloved Canadian crooner known for his smooth voice and charming stage presence, recently opened up about one of the most challenging chapters of his life. In an emotional interview, Bublé shared his heartache over his son Noah’s battle with liver cancer, a health struggle that shook his family to its core.

Bublé, who is known for keeping his personal life relatively private, revealed the toll that Noah’s illness took on him, his wife, Luisana Lopilato, and their entire family. Noah, now 10, was diagnosed with hepatoblastoma, a rare form of liver cancer, in 2016 when he was just three years old. The news was devastating, forcing the singer to put his flourishing career on hold to focus entirely on his son’s treatment and recovery.

In the candid conversation, Bublé broke down in tears while recounting the moment he first learned of Noah’s diagnosis. “I felt like my world had ended,” he admitted. “As a parent, you think you can protect your kids from anything, but something like this… it changes everything.”

The Grammy-winning artist described the sleepless nights and the rollercoaster of emotions that accompanied Noah’s treatment, which included surgery and chemotherapy. Bublé and Lopilato stayed by their son’s side every step of the way, drawing strength from their love for their family and their faith.

Bublé credits his son’s resilience and the support of loved ones for helping them endure the ordeal. He also expressed gratitude for the medical team that treated Noah, calling them “angels” for their dedication and care.

Thankfully, after months of treatment, Noah went into remission, a moment Bublé described as “the greatest miracle of my life.” While the experience left emotional scars, it also deepened Bublé’s appreciation for life and the things that truly matter.

The ordeal profoundly impacted the way Bublé approaches his music and career. He admitted that he once prioritized professional success but now places his family above all else. “Fame and fortune mean nothing compared to the health and happiness of my children,” he said.

Today, Noah is a thriving and happy young boy, and Bublé continues to use his platform to raise awareness about pediatric cancer. He hopes his story will inspire other families facing similar struggles to stay hopeful and strong.

Michael Bublé’s vulnerability in sharing his family’s journey has endeared him even more to his fans, reminding the world that behind the music is a devoted father who would do anything for his children.

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