Saddle up, pilgrim: Newport celebrates John Wayne Day on Friday with exhibits, a park naming and a fundraising cruise

Friday is the 110th anniversary of John Wayne’s birth, and his adopted hometown, Newport Beach, is celebrating the late movie legend with a lineup of events.

Ensign View Park, 2501 Cliff Drive, will become John Wayne Park with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 3 p.m.

Exhibits at the Balboa Island Museum & Historical Society, 331 Marine Ave., and the Newport Beach Central Library, 1000 Avocado Ave., will debut collections of at-home and on-set images of the Duke, who lived in Newport Beach from the 1960s until his death in 1979. Both exhibits run through Labor Day weekend.

The Balboa Island exhibit also will offer ’70s-inspired shirts and hats for sale to benefit the museum and the locally based John Wayne Cancer Foundation.

Hornblower Cruises & Events will continue its series of themed dining cruises aboard Wayne’s yacht, Wild Goose, with a special cancer foundation fundraising cruise Friday. For $195, guests can cruise Newport Harbor, see a performance by country trio Runaway June (with Wayne’s granddaughter Jennifer on vocals), meet his personal skipper Bert Minshall and pose with a wax figure of Wayne as his “True Grit” character, Rooster Cogburn. The statue is on loan from Madame Tussauds in Hollywood.

The Newport Beach City Council declared the first John Wayne Day last year.

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