Crosscut Now
Feb. 2, 2021 - The Palouse cowboy who inspired John Wayne
2/2/2021 | 1m 15sVideo has Closed Captions
A cowboy from Palouse taught John Wayne how to be John Wayne.
Hollywood’s greatest Western stuntman was a rodeo champion from Washington state.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Crosscut Now is a local public television program presented by Cascade PBS
Crosscut Now
Feb. 2, 2021 - The Palouse cowboy who inspired John Wayne
2/2/2021 | 1m 15sVideo has Closed Captions
Hollywood’s greatest Western stuntman was a rodeo champion from Washington state.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(upbeat music) - I'm Starla Sampaco in the "Crosscut" KCTS 9 newsroom.
The actor, John Wayne came to personify the Old West.
He was the archetypal tough guy cowboy.
But he wasn't a cowboy, he learned how to walk and talk and ride from a real cowboy from Palouse, named Yakima Canutt.
As Mossback's Northwest host Knute Berger relates, Canutt was a rodeo star in Whitman County by his teens.
Later, he went to Hollywood as a stuntman in the early action Westerns.
He could leap frog on a horse, fall off one and he taught others like John Wayne how to do it.
In John Ford's classic movie "Stagecoach", he performed a famous stunt under the runaway horses and coach.
He designed stunts and doubled for Charlton Heston in the famous "Ben-Hur" chariot race and many others.
One of his last stunts was to send a train off a trestle near Lewiston, Idaho, in the 1975 movie, "Breakheart Pass".
Yakima Canutt was the cowboy that changed Hollywood forever.
And he was a son of the Palouse.
I'm Starla Sampaco.
Find more episodes of Mossback's Northwest everyday on crosscut.com (upbeat music)
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