Anniversary For An Honest Couple

'American Gothic' Still Wildly Popular 75 Years Later

(CBS) 
"He said initially that he was looking for somebody else, and that she said, 'How about me,' and he said, 'Well, I suppose you'll do, and I'll have to make you more maidenly and uglier, but I can do it,'" Biel says.

As for the bespectacled man with the pitch fork, that was Dr. Byron McKeeby, Wood's dentist, who refused to pose for the painting.

Refused, that is, until as Biel says, "Wood reassured him that he wasn't making fun of him and that nobody would know it's him anyway, which of course turned out to be not true at all.

"Everybody recognized him, and articles talking about the painting at the time identified him, so his anonymity didn't last at all," Biel says.

Wood said little about the painting himself, especially after it took third-place in an exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago and the questions started flying.

It seemed to many of his longtime neighbors, that Wood's paint brush, had stabbed the heartland, right in the heart.

"There were a series of angry letters to the Des Moines Register by Iowa farmwives. And one women, Grant Wood said, threatened to bash his face in, she was so offended by the painting," Biel says.

Biel adds, laughing, "One woman said that woman's expression was so sour, it would turn milk to cheese."

Turns out the painting is just as easy to laugh at, as it is to yell at.

It has become the most parodied piece of artworks since the "Mona Lisa." There's "American Scream" there's the "Gothic Clampets," there's "American Ferrets," even "Disney Gothic."

"They're really stretching it, but I just get a chuckle out of it," Eldon, Iowa resident Jill Jones says.

Jones' gift shop in Eldon, where her couple-adorned knick-knacks, like ties and mugs sell like gothic hotcakes.

Then there's Price Slate, who tends to his "American Gothic" collection above a blacksmith's shop outside Cedar Rapids.

"Grant Wood was born Feb. 13th 1891, died Feb. 12th, 1943, buried in Riverside Cemetery in Anamosa," Price tells Cowan.

Over the course of 60 years -- almost as long as the painting has been around -- he's collected everything from an "American Gothic" whiskey bottle to a bar of "American Gothic" soap.

Nothing of his is for sale, but he still draws a crowd of the curious, which gets back to the painting's odd appeal.

Wood's studio still stands behind a funeral home in Cedar Rapids -- he actually painted above where the hearses used to park, but he wasn't the grim reaper by any means.

"Grant Wood was a great party guy, and a really fun guy, he loved practical jokes," says Terrence Pitts, executive director of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.

Wood not only painted in here, but partied in here and even hosted plays in this tiny apartment.

Apparently, he had a talent for space, not only on the canvas, but his living space too.

Pitts explains that Wood stored his bed, clothes and paint supplies in cabinets. Basically, Wood's apartment was a studio by day and a bedroom at night.

"It was a very ingenious use of space," Pitts says.

"American Gothic" was painted 75 years ago and people haven't stopped painting it since.

Artist Scott Tahkess is offering his own version in the form of a mural that reminds us all change, even for that old couple, is still possible.

"If you look them here in the car, what would they be doing today, ya know? The name of this is "American Traffic," Tahkess says.

Then there's Chris Warren's version: the couple in front of modern day Cedar Rapids instead of the lonesome farm house.

"It's the second-most recognizable painting after the 'Mona Lisa,' I don't know what the third and fourth are. Those are the little things Cedar Rapids gets so excited about," Warren says.

There are a host of others interpretations all around town, some Wood might not get in his day, but we do today, part of the lingering lore of a painting so many hated when it came out.

As for the man responsible, Wood is buried not far from where he was born, in an unassuming Iowa grave: a native son who painted a couple 75 years ago that looks as if their mouths are sealed, but have given the rest of us something to talk about for generations.