One of my favorite stories I’ve worked on since arriving in Sunflower County about five years ago was a magazine piece I did on Luster Bayless’ costume collection that was once housed in a Ruleville museum.
The Ruleville native Bayless and his United American Costume Co. out in Hollywood has been responsible for some of the most iconic western attire in cinema history.
Most notably, Bayless was John Wayne’s exclusive costume maker for the latter part of The Duke’s career.
There were reports out this week that Bayless passed away, although we could find little on the internet about his passing other than social media posts.
When you talk movie icons, there are few that eclipse John Wayne, and a big part of The Duke’s legacy were the coats, hats and yes, even an eyepatch, he wore in his films.
The man behind all of that was Bayless, who was not only an employee of Wayne’s, but he was also a close friend of the actor.
“He was a straight shooter,” Bayless said of Wayne when I talked to him for our 2017 article.
Bayless said the exact same thing about Sam Elliot, whom he has costumed for numerous roles.
Bayless told me that Elliot was the closest actor, personality wise, to Wayne after the latter’s passing in the late 1970s.
Bayless was a no-nonsense kind of guy.
He recounted a story to me about playing football in high school and undergoing surgery for appendicitis without his parents even knowing about it.
He later hitchhiked to California and went to work for Walt Disney, the man himself.
He actually married the daughter of Disney’s secretary. The two wed during their lunchbreak one day.
He said he told the priest to hurry up because he had to get back to work.
For years, Bayless had a hidden treasure in Ruleville. The space, which was known as the Hollywood Movie Costume Museum, contained some of the most notable apparel in movie history, along with more modern costumes from films like Django Unchained.
Bayless had the actual sheriff’s uniform worn by Gary Cooper in High Noon.
He had most of Wayne’s coats, hats and the famous eyepatch from True Grit.
He had apparel worn by Ronald Reagan and Steve McQueen.
Bayless told me that he did the costume work for one of McQueen’s last movies, Tom Horn.
The movie was shot during the final months of McQueen’s life, and he died of cancer in Mexico shortly after its release.
Bayless said that his job was to keep McQueen warm during the shooting because he was so sickly.
The last time I saw Bayless was in 2019 during the Great Ruleville Roast. He seemed frustrated that many of the festival goers were not coming into the museum.
“They don’t know what the hell I have in here,” he told me.
I took another tour, and I made my wife go in too.
We paid the $10 per head donation, which Bayless always noted went to the Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Foundation.
Some time between the fall of 2019 and the start of the pandemic, the museum’s pieces were moved from the Ruleville location.
That’s a big loss for Sunflower County, but losing Bayless himself is an even greater loss. He was one of the few men who was still around who had direct insights into some of Hollywood’s best actors and films.
