Anniversary For An Honest Couple

It's as if they've been standing in our front yard for the last three quarters of a century, looking back at us with that piercing expression in front of a house with an expression just as telling.

Grant Wood's "American Gothic" has become one of America's most recognizable paintings.

That doesn't mean it's the most loved. It's not the most critically acclaimed, but it is one of the most talked about, especially in the Midwest, CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan reports.

It's been 75 years since "American Gothic" was painted in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and then whisked away to Chicago. But now the couple is coming back for a visit.

And few can wait to welcome them home. Just ask Helen and Don Glausson.

For 20 years they've been dressing the part of that mystery couple and like almost everyone in this tiny town of Eldon, Iowa, they have a connection to the painting, and it's painter.

Helen's grandparents were quite literally living in the painting's backdrop; that simple house with that famous window, when Wood knocked at the door.

"He came to my grandparents and asked if he could come back and sketch the house," Helen says. "So my mother and her sisters decided they should wash the curtains and got them back up before Grant Wood came back and lo and behold, when the picture came out, the lace curtains aren't in the window."

Tourists come to check even to this day. The house hasn't changed a bit, except now there are lace curtains in the window.

So what it is that keeps this couple's still life, still thriving?

Most agree it's the intrigue behind the odd pair; their unspoken secret, their hidden drama.

"There's something not quite right here, maybe something's going on behind the curtain, maybe their relationship is a little bit weird, that maybe there is something creepy about this," says author Steven Biel.

Biel's new book details how "American Gothic" both tempted and teased a part of the country not used to being in the spotlight.

The woman, many mid-westerners thought, was far too young to be a wife of a man old enough to be her father, which raises a host of questions about who they really were.

Truth is, what became one of America's most famous front porches, Wood actually found by accident, just by driving by. And that now famous couple, man/woman, husband/wife, father/daughter, nobody's really sure just what their relationship was, well, they were never here together, not even once.

"They were never here. They weren't here at the time he painted it. They weren't photographed together until Wood died in 1942, and there was a retrospective at the Art Institute, and then they posed for a photograph next to he painting," Biel explains.

So who where they, really? Well, the woman, believe it or not, was Wood's sister, Nan.

"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.