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From the Archives

Tour John Wayne's House in California

Aissa Wayne, the third of the actor John Wayne’s four daughters, recalls life at the family’s house in the San Fernando Valley

ByAissa Wayne

September 22, 2016

This article originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of Architectural Digest.

It's 1960. I am four years old. "Hello, The House!" I hear the sound resonating from outside in—it's my dad. I can hear his big voice bellow through the tall front doors of our home, filling the two-story foyer and traveling up the wide circular stair-way that leads up to my room on the second floor. I hear it again: "Hell-OOO...TheHouse!" And then a clatter follows as the double front doors open with such force that they bang the inside walls behind them, bouncing back like hollow-slatted half-doors that had just been kicked open in a western saloon. A familiar surge of warm energy tumbles in with the sound, buoyantly flooding the space inside our home. It's my dad's magnanimous presence and love. "He's home!" is all I can think as I come flying down the long stairway that hugs the curved walls of our foyer.

These are my first memories. They are easy to remember. Our property covered five and a half acres set on a large hill. The main house was a sweeping Ranch home that sat at the top of the property, looking down over the expansive grounds that led to our poolhouse, which was securely nestled into the lower side of the hill. The bottom part of the property was a flat parcel where the pool and a racehorse track lay. The land was located deep in the San Fernando Valley, far enough away from Hollywood to be a family home, yet close enough that my dad could drive to the studios. The grounds were surrounded by tall block walls with only one entrance leading through an electronic gate. Those were the walls that kept us safe and apart from the world outside.

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John Wayne in front of the Ranch-style main house in the early 1960s.

我们花了很多时间在台球室,这是built in the 1950s, later than the main house. It consisted of a single great room that included the kitchen and bar area, with baths and bedrooms behind the black lava-rock wall that contrasted with the shiny marble floors. Floor-to-ceiling plates of glass faced the pool. Midcentury rattan chairs on sturdy bamboo frames were covered in winter-white leather to offset the dark walls and a gold-flecked chocolate-brown sofa. My father loved Asian art and furniture, which he would mix in with other styles. Whether a room was decorated in early American or Modern, there would always be a piece, here or there, inspired by the Orient. On their many travels, my parents collected works of art from all over the world.

When we had guests during the day, my parents always entertained in the poolhouse. A flight of flagstone steps led down to it from the main house. I used to love to roll down the grassy area adjacent to the stairway, landing at the bottom. It was a child's playground that didn't need monkey bars.

In the evening, parties were held in the main house, to which my dad had added a home theater. My parents would host a dinner for friends like Jeanne and Dean Martin, the director Andy McLaglen and his wife, John Ford and family, and then they would retire to the "projection room," as they called it, to watch the latest pictures or one of my dad's not-yet-released films for critique. I was usually allowed to stay up for the first 15 minutes of the show.

My dad had a huge soft spot for animals, children and the needy, and he was extremely generous. For birthday parties my parents would arrange for a cotton candy machine, ponies, carnival rides and even a baby elephant one year. Dad loved to watch the kids get a kick out of it all; it pleased him to see happy children. He was the first one awake on Christmas mornings because he took such pleasure in seeing children open their gifts. I remember he would pace the hallways at 4:00 a.m., and I thought it was Santa—but it was my dad waiting for daylight so we could open our presents.

The four dogs were always in his lap or on the bed. One of them was allowed to sit in a dining chair when my dad ate breakfast, and he would share his bacon with him! Funny, isn't it? For a tough cowboy, he was the biggest mush-ball you ever came across.

After dinner most evenings that he was home, my dad and I used to walk down our long driveway to the bottom of the property and turn around and stroll back up to the house when we had "walked off" the dinner we'd just eaten. We carried wooden walking sticks with serpents carved into them. In Africa they are used to ward off snakes, and we took them on our night walks in case we encountered any snakes of our own—though we never had to use them that way. They were purchased when my dad madeHatari!in 1962. I still have them.