Fans Gathers To Honor Original TRUE GRIT

On the eve of the new TRUE GRIT release, more than 500 True Grit fanatics in Fort Smith, Ark., where the story is set, gathered at the actual Judge Parker’s Gallows to turn each man, woman and child into Rooster Cogburn, the Deputy U.S. Marshal made famous first by John Wayne and now by Jeff Bridges. A crowd donned in eye patches, Marshals’ badges and dozens of homemade costumes shouted out Rooster’s famous lines from his climactic showdown with Lucky Ned Pepper (See video on YouTube):

LINES:

Ned Pepper: What’s your intention? Do you think one on four is a dogfall?

Rooster Cogburn (CROWD): I mean to kill you in one minute, Ned. Or see you hanged in Fort Smith at Judge Parker’s convenience. Which will you have?

Ned Pepper: I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man.

Rooster Cogburn (CROWD): Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!

The event was part of True Gritapalooza, a grassroots social media campaign organized by the Fort Smith Convention & Visitors Bureau to celebrate the connection of this beloved western to Fort Smith’s history. Fort Smith in 2007 was selected as the future site for the $50 million U.S. Marshals Museum. Founded in 1789 by George Washington in Senate Bill #1, the U.S. Marshals Service has never had a truly national museum suitable for showcasing its remarkable stories of heroism and conflict. True Grit’s fictional Marshal Rooster Cogburn was located in Fort Smith for the same reason the U.S. Marshals Museum will be–Fort Smith is where some of the most fascinating and most dangerous Wild West history took place. More Marshals and Deputy Marshals are buried in and near Fort Smith than anywhere else in the country. The story of True Grit may be fictional, but it is rooted in actual memoirs of high adventure on Fort Smith’s wild frontier.

The Fort Smith National Historic Site, where this “Roosters by the Dozen” Gritapalooza event took place, will celebrate its 50th Anniversary as part of the National Parks Service in 2011. A full week of celebrations at the National Park, some of them tying into True Grit, is planned for Summer 2011. The site contains the gallows, Judge Parker’s Courtroom; the infamous “Hell on the Border” jail; multimillion-dollar Visitors Center exhibits chronicling Fort Smith’s military, Civil War, Native American, and Federal Court/Marshals history; a Trail of Tears Overlook; and the remains of the First Fort Smith.