John Wayne inspiration for Buddy Holly hit song covered by The Beatles

Back in 1956, John Wayne starred in his most iconic collaboration with John Ford. The Searchers was shot in the filmmaker’s favoured location of Monument Valley in the Navajo Native American territory on the Arizona/Utah state line and the movie became a Hollywood classic. The story followed Duke playing a Civil War veteran who spends years searching for his abducted niece, who was played by Natalie Wood. In June of that year, a pre-fame Buddy Holly went to see The Searchers with his older brother Larry, Jerry Allison and Sony Curtis. And as they watched, there was one line of dialogue the leading man kept on saying.

The John Wayne estate added: “The 1957 recording was certified gold (for over a million US sales) by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1969. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.

“It was placed in the National Recording Registry, a list of sound recordings that ‘are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States’, in 2005.”