Makin' Movies

This is the main street of old Kernville in the early 1900's when they started making movies there.

Here's John Wayne hanging onto the back of the stage coach and the most famous stuntman of all, Yakima Canutt, driving the coach.

Phil Silvers wasn't quite as successful in a car as Wayne was in the stagecoach.  Silvers was one of a gazillion stars in the 1963 movie, "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."

I'm thinkin' John Wayne wasn't too happy about the government flooding his favorite old West movie town/set.

But the museum in new Kernville honored Wayne's memory by preserving the actual stagecoach used in the 1938 movie "Stagecoach."  It was originally what they called a mud coach carrying folks between Caliente and the Kern River Valley from the 1850's to 1914.  How many of YOUR automobiles are workhorse enough to operate for 64 years - and still be sturdy enough to be used in the movies - and look like this at 163-years-old???

Granpa is about the same size as John Wayne.  Can you imagine him hangin' off the back of this baby as some stuntman drives a team of horses hell-bent-for-leather across the Kern River??