John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director and naval officer. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. He was the recipient of six
Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
including a record four wins for
Best Director. Ford made frequent use of
location shooting
Location shooting is the shooting of a film or television production in a real-world setting rather than a sound stage or backlot. The location may be interior or exterior.
The filming location may be the same in which the story is set (for ex ...
and
wide shot
In photography, filmmaking and video production, a wide shot (sometimes referred to as a full shot or long shot) is a shot that typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surro ...
s, in which his characters were framed against a vast, harsh, and rugged natural terrain.
In a career of more than 50 years, Ford directed more than 140 films (although most of his
silent films are now
lost). He is renowned both for
Westerns
The Western is a genre set in the American frontier and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada. It is commonly referred ...
such as ''
Stagecoach'' (1939), ''
The Searchers'' (1956), and ''
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
''The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'' () is a 1962 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and James Stewart. The screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck was adapted from a 1953 short story written by ...
'' (1962) and adaptations of classic 20th century American novels such as ''
The Grapes of Wrath'' (1940). Ford's work was held in high regard by his colleagues, with
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...
,
Orson Welles and
Ingmar Bergman among those who named him one of the greatest directors of all time.
Early life
Ford was born John Martin "Jack"
Feeney (though he later often gave his given names as Seán Aloysius, sometimes with surname O'Feeny or Ó Fearna; an
Irish language
Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was ...
equivalent of Feeney) in
Cape Elizabeth, Maine, to John Augustine Feeney and Barbara "Abbey" Curran, on February 1, 1894, (though he occasionally said 1895 and that date is erroneously inscribed on his tombstone).
His father, John Augustine, was born in
Spiddal
Spiddal ( ga, An Spidéal , meaning 'the hospital') is a village on the shore of Galway Bay in County Galway, Ireland. It is west of Galway city, on the R336 road. It is on the eastern side of the county's Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking area) an ...
,
County Galway, Ireland, in 1854.
Barbara Curran was born in the
Aran Islands
The Aran Islands ( ; gle, Oileáin Árann, ) or The Arans (''na hÁrainneacha'' ) are a group of three islands at the mouth of Galway Bay, off the west coast of Ireland, with a total area around . They constitute the historic barony of Aran i ...
, in the town of
Kilronan on the island of
Inishmore
Inishmore ( ga, Árainn , or ) is the largest of the Aran Islands in Galway Bay, off the west coast of Ireland. With an area of and a population of 762 (as of 2016), it is the second-largest island off the Irish coast (after Achill) a ...
(Inis Mór).
John A. Feeney's grandmother, Barbara Morris, was said to be a member of an impoverished branch of a family of the
Irish nobility
The Irish nobility could be described as including persons who do, or historically did, fall into one or more of the following categories of nobility:
* Gaelic nobility of Ireland descendants in the male line of at least one historical grade o ...
, the Morrises of Spiddal (headed at present by
Lord Killanin).
John Augustine and Barbara Curran arrived in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
and
Portland respectively in May and June 1872. They filed their intentions to marry on July 31, 1875, and became American citizens five years later on September 11, 1880.
The John Augustine Feeney family resided on Sheridan Street, in the Irish neighborhood of
Munjoy Hill in Portland, Maine, and his father worked a variety of odd jobs to support the family – farming, fishing, a laborer for the gas company, saloon keeping, and an alderman.
John and Barbara had eleven children: Mamie (Mary Agnes), born 1876; Delia (Edith), 1878–1881; Patrick;
Francis Ford, 1881–1953; Bridget, 1883–1884; Barbara, born and died 1888; Edward, born 1889; Josephine, born 1891; Hannah (Joanna), born and died 1892; John Martin, 1894–1973; and Daniel, born and died 1896 (or 1898).
Feeney attended
Portland High School, Portland, Maine
Portland High School is a public high school established in 1821 in Portland, Maine (Cumberland County), United States, which educates grades 9–12. The school is part of the Portland Public Schools district, and is one of three high schools ...
, where he played
fullback and defensive tackle. He earned the nickname "Bull" because, it is said, of the way he would lower his helmet and charge the line. A Portland pub is named Bull Feeney's in his honor. He later moved to California and in 1914 began working in film production as well as acting for his older brother
Francis, adopting "Jack Ford" as a professional name. In addition to credited roles, he appeared uncredited as a
Klansman in
D. W. Griffith's
1915
Events
Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix.
January
* January – British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor publishes his observations on "The Influence of Local Atmospheric Cooling on Astronomical Refraction".
* January ...
''
The Birth of a Nation''.
He married Mary McBride Smith on July 3, 1920, and they had two children. His daughter Barbara was married to singer and actor
Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis (born Curtis Wain Gates; July 2, 1916 – April 28, 1991) was an American singer and actor best known for his role as Festus Haggen on the CBS western television series ''Gunsmoke''. Although he appeared on ''Gunsmoke'' earl ...
from 1952 to 1964. The marriage between Ford and Smith lasted for life despite various issues, one being that Ford was Catholic while she was a non-Catholic divorcée. What difficulty was caused by this is unclear as the level of Ford's commitment to the Catholic faith is disputed. Another strain was Ford's many extramarital relationships.
Directing career
![John Ford 1915](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/John_Ford_1915.png)
Ford began his career in film after moving to California in July 1914. He followed in the footsteps of his multi-talented older brother Francis Ford, twelve years his senior, who had left home years earlier and had worked in
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
before becoming a movie actor. Francis played in hundreds of silent pictures for filmmakers such as
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...
,
Georges Méliès and
Thomas Ince, eventually progressing to become a prominent
Hollywood actor-writer-director with his own production company (101 Bison) at
Universal.
Ford started out in his brother's films as an assistant, handyman, stuntman and occasional actor, frequently doubling for his brother, whom he closely resembled. Francis gave his younger brother his first acting role in ''
The Mysterious Rose
''The Mysterious Rose'' is a 1914 American silent film directed by Francis Ford and written by Grace Cunard.
Cast
* Grace Cunard as Lady Raffles
* Francis Ford as Detective Phil Kelly
* Jack Ford as Dopey
* Harry Schumm as District Attorney' ...
'' (November 1914). Despite an often combative relationship, within three years Jack had progressed to become Francis' chief assistant and often worked as his cameraman. By the time Jack Ford was given his first break as a director, Francis' profile was declining and he ceased working as a director soon after.
One notable feature of Ford's films is that he used a 'stock company' of actors, far more so than many directors. Many famous stars appeared in at least two or more Ford films, including
Harry Carey Sr., (the star of 25 Ford silent films),
Will Rogers,
John Wayne,
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor. He had a career that spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. He cultivated an everyman screen image in several films considered to be classics.
Born and ra ...
,
Maureen O'Hara,
James Stewart,
Woody Strode
Woodrow Wilson Woolwine Strode (July 25, 1914 – December 31, 1994) was an American athlete and actor. He was a decathlete and football star who was one of the first Black American players in the National Football League in the postwar era. Aft ...
,
Richard Widmark
Richard Weedt Widmark (December 26, 1914March 24, 2008) was an American film, stage, and television actor and producer.
He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film, ''Kiss of Death'' (1947) ...
,
Victor McLaglen
Victor Andrew de Bier Everleigh McLaglen (10 December 1886 – 7 November 1959) was a British boxer-turned-Hollywood actor.Obituary ''Variety'', 11 November 1959, page 79. He was known as a character actor, particularly in Westerns, and made sev ...
,
Vera Miles and
Jeffrey Hunter. Many of his supporting actors appeared in multiple Ford films, often over a period of several decades, including
Ben Johnson Ben, Benjamin or Benny Johnson may refer to:
In sports Association football
* Ben Johnson (footballer, born 2000), English footballer
* Ben Johnson (soccer) (born 1977), American soccer player
Other codes of football
*Ben Johnson (Australian foot ...
,
Chill Wills,
Andy Devine
Andrew Vabre Devine (October 7, 1905 – February 18, 1977) was an American character actor known for his distinctive raspy, crackly voice and roles in Western films, including his role as Cookie, the sidekick of Roy Rogers in 10 feature fil ...
,
Ward Bond,
Grant Withers
Granville Gustavus Withers (January 17, 1905 – March 27, 1959) was an American film actor who acted under the screen name Grant Withers. With early beginnings in the silent era, Withers moved into sound films, establishing himself with a lis ...
,
Mae Marsh
Mae Marsh (born Mary Wayne Marsh; November 9, 1894U.S. Census records for 1900, El Paso, Texas, Sheet No. 6 – February 13, 1968) was an American film actress with a career spanning over 50 years.
Early life
Mae Marsh was born Mary Wayne M ...
,
Anna Lee
Anna Lee, MBE (born Joan Boniface Winnifrith; 2 January 1913 – 14 May 2004) was a British actress, labelled by studios "The British Bombshell".
Early life
Anna Lee was born Joan Boniface Winnifrith in Ightham, (pronounced 'Item'), Kent, th ...
,
Harry Carey Jr.,
Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis (born Curtis Wain Gates; July 2, 1916 – April 28, 1991) was an American singer and actor best known for his role as Festus Haggen on the CBS western television series ''Gunsmoke''. Although he appeared on ''Gunsmoke'' earl ...
, Frank Baker,
Dolores del Río,
Pedro Armendáriz
Pedro Gregorio Armendáriz Hastings (May 9, 1912 – June 18, 1963) was a Mexican film actor who made films in both Mexico and the United States. With Dolores del Río and María Félix, he was one of the best-known Latin American movie stars ...
,
Hank Worden,
John Qualen
John Qualen (born Johan Mandt Kvalen, December 8, 1899 – September 12, 1987) was an American character actor of Norwegian heritage who specialized in Scandinavian roles.
Early years
Qualen was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, the son ...
,
Barry Fitzgerald,
Arthur Shields
Arthur Shields (15 February 1896 – 27 April 1970) was an Irish actor on television, stage and film.
Early years
Born into an Irish Protestant family in Portobello, Dublin, Shields started acting in the Abbey Theatre when he was 17 years old ...
,
John Carradine
John Carradine ( ; born Richmond Reed Carradine; February 5, 1906 – November 27, 1988) was an American actor, considered one of the greatest character actors in American cinema. He was a member of Cecil B. DeMille's stock company and later ...
,
O. Z. Whitehead and
Carleton Young
Captain Carleton Scott Young (October 21, 1905 – November 7, 1994) was an American character actor who was known for his deep voice.
Early years
Born in Fulton, Oswego, New York, Young was the second and only surviving child of Sta ...
. Core members of this extended 'troupe', including Ward Bond, John Carradine, Harry Carey Jr., Mae Marsh, Frank Baker, and Ben Johnson, were informally known as the
John Ford Stock Company.
Likewise, Ford enjoyed extended working relationships with his production team, and many of his crew worked with him for decades. He made numerous films with the same major collaborators, including producer and business partner
Merian C. Cooper, scriptwriters
Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Hunter Johnson (December 5, 1897 – March 25, 1977) was an American screenwriter, film director, producer, and playwright. As a filmmaker, he wrote the screenplays to more than fifty films in a career that spanned from 1927 to 1967. He ...
,
Dudley Nichols
Dudley Nichols (April 6, 1895 – January 4, 1960) was an American screenwriter and film director. He was the first person to decline an Academy Award, as part of a boycott to gain recognition for the Screen Writers Guild; he would later accept ...
and
Frank S. Nugent, and cinematographers
Ben F. Reynolds,
John W. Brown and
George Schneiderman (who between them shot most of Ford's silent films),
Joseph H. August
Joseph is a common male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef (יוֹסֵף). "Joseph" is used, along with "Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the mo ...
,
Gregg Toland,
Winton Hoch,
Charles Lawton Jr.,
Bert Glennon
Bert Lawrence Glennon (November 19, 1893 – June 29, 1967) was an American cinematographer and film director. He directed ''Syncopation'' (1929), the first film released by RKO Radio Pictures.
Biography
Glennon was born in Anaconda, Mont ...
,
Archie Stout and
William H. Clothier. Most of Ford's postwar films were edited by
Jack Murray until the latter's 1961 death.
Otho Lovering
Otho Lovering (December 1, 1892 – October 25, 1968) was an American filmmaker with about eighty editing credits on feature films and television programs.
Biography
Born in 1892, he was the son of Frank Lovering, a stenographer, and Georgie Lov ...
, who had first worked with Ford on ''
Stagecoach'' (1939), became Ford's principal editor after Murray's death.
Silent era
During his first decade as a director Ford worked on dozens of features (including many westerns) but only ten of the more than sixty silent films he made between 1917 and 1928 still survive in their entirety. However, prints of several Ford 'silents' previously thought lost have been rediscovered in foreign film archives over recent years—in 2009 a trove of 75 Hollywood silent films was rediscovered in the
New Zealand Film Archive, among which was the only surviving print of Ford's 1927 silent comedy ''
Upstream''. The print was restored in New Zealand by the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion ...
before being returned to America, where it was given a "repremiere" at the
Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills on August 31, 2010, featuring a newly commissioned score by
Michael Mortilla.
Throughout his career, Ford was one of the busiest directors in Hollywood, but he was extraordinarily productive in his first few years as a director—he made ten films in 1917, eight in 1918 and fifteen in 1919—and he directed a total of 62 shorts and features between 1917 and 1928, although he was not given a screen credit in most of his earliest films.
There is some uncertainty about the identity of Ford's first film as director—film writer Ephraim Katz notes that Ford might have directed the four-part film ''
Lucille the Waitress'' as early as 1914—but most sources cite his directorial début as the silent two-reeler ''
The Tornado'', released in March 1917. According to Ford's own story, he was given the job by Universal boss
Carl Laemmle
Carl Laemmle (; born Karl Lämmle; January 17, 1867 – September 24, 1939) was a film producer and the co-founder and, until 1934, owner of Universal Pictures. He produced or worked on over 400 films.
Regarded as one of the most important o ...
who supposedly said, "Give Jack Ford the job—he yells good". ''The Tornado'' was quickly followed by a string of two-reeler and three-reeler "quickies"—''
The Trail of Hate'', ''
The Scrapper'', ''
The Soul Herder'' and ''
Cheyenne's Pal''; these were made over the space of a few months and each typically shot in just two or three days; all are now presumed lost. ''The Soul Herder'' is also notable as the beginning of Ford's four-year, 25-film association with veteran writer-actor
Harry Carey, who (with Ford's brother Francis) was a strong early influence on the young director, as well as being one of the major influences on the screen persona of Ford's protege
John Wayne. Carey's son
Harry "Dobe" Carey Jr., who also became an actor, was one of Ford's closest friends in later years and featured in many of his most celebrated westerns.
Ford's first feature-length production was ''
Straight Shooting
''Straight Shooting'' is a 1917 American silent Western film directed by John Ford and featuring Harry Carey. Prints of this film survive in the International Museum of Photography and Film at George Eastman House. Like many American films of ...
'' (August 1917), which is also his earliest complete surviving film as director, and one of only two survivors from his twenty-five film collaboration with Harry Carey. In making the film Ford and Carey ignored studio orders and turned in five reels instead of two, and it was only through the intervention of Carl Laemmle that the film escaped being cut for its first release, although it was subsequently edited down to two reels for re-release in the late 1920s. Ford's last film of 1917, ''
Bucking Broadway'', was long thought to have been lost, but in 2002 the only known surviving print was discovered in the archives of the French National Center for Cinematography
and it has since been restored and digitized.
Ford directed around thirty-six films over three years for Universal before moving to the
William Fox studio in 1920; his first film for them was ''
Just Pals'' (1920). His 1923 feature ''Cameo Kirby'', starring screen idol
John Gilbert—another of the few surviving Ford silents—marked his first directing credit under the name "John Ford", rather than "Jack Ford", as he had previously been credited.
Ford's first major success as a director was the historical drama ''
The Iron Horse'' (1924), an epic account of the building of the
First transcontinental railroad. It was a large, long and difficult production, filmed on location in the
Sierra Nevada. The logistics were enormous—two entire towns were constructed, there were 5000 extras, 100 cooks, 2000 rail layers, a cavalry regiment, 800 Indians, 1300 buffaloes, 2000 horses, 10,000 cattle and 50,000 properties, including the original stagecoach used by
Horace Greeley,
Wild Bill Hickok
James Butler Hickok (May 27, 1837August 2, 1876), better known as "Wild Bill" Hickok, was a folk hero of the American Old West known for his life on the frontier as a soldier, scout, lawman, gambler, showman, and actor, and for his involvement ...
's
derringer
A derringer is a small handgun that is neither a revolver nor a semi/ fully automatic pistol. It is not to be confused with mini-revolvers or pocket pistols, although some later derringers were manufactured with the pepperbox configuration. ...
pistol and replicas of the "
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth t ...
" and "
119
119 may refer to:
* 119 (number), a natural number
* 119 (emergency telephone number)
* AD 119, a year in the 2nd century AD
* 119 BC, a year in the 2nd century BC
* 119 (album), 2012
* 119 (NCT song)
*119 (Show Me the Money song)
* 119 (film), a ...
" locomotives that met at
Promontory Summit
Promontory is an area of high ground in Box Elder County, Utah, United States, 32 mi (51 km) west of Brigham City and 66 mi (106 km) northwest of Salt Lake City. Rising to an elevation of 4,902 feet (1,494 m) above sea ...
when the two ends of the line were joined on 10 May 1869.
[Gallagher, 1986, p. 31]
Ford's brother Eddie was a crew member and they fought constantly; on one occasion Eddie reportedly "went after the old man with a pick handle". There was only a short synopsis written when filming began and Ford wrote and shot the film day by day. Production fell behind schedule, delayed by constant bad weather and the intense cold, and Fox executives repeatedly demanded results, but Ford would either tear up the telegrams or hold them up and have stunt gunman
Edward "Pardner" Jones shoot holes through the sender's name. Despite the pressure to halt the production, studio boss
William Fox finally backed Ford and allowed him to finish the picture and his gamble paid off handsomely—''The Iron Horse'' became one of the top-grossing films of the decade, taking over US$2 million worldwide, against a budget of $280,000.
Ford made a wide range of films in this period, and he became well known for his Western and "frontier" pictures, but the genre rapidly lost its appeal for major studios in the late 1920s. Ford's last silent Western was ''
3 Bad Men
''3 Bad Men'' is a 1926 American silent Western film directed by John Ford. Bob Mastrangelo has called it "One of John Ford's greatest silent epics." The film possibly inspired the title for Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film ''Three Bad Men in a Hidde ...
'' (1926), set during the
Dakota land rush and filmed at
Jackson Hole
Jackson Hole (originally called Jackson's Hole by mountain men) is a valley between the Gros Ventre and Teton mountain ranges in the U.S. state of Wyoming, near the border with Idaho, in Teton County, one of the richest counties in the Unit ...
, Wyoming and in the
Mojave Desert. It would be thirteen years before he made his next Western, ''Stagecoach'', in 1939.
During the 1920s, Ford also served as president of the
Motion Picture Directors Association The Motion Picture Directors Association (MPDA) was an American non-profit fraternal organization formed by 26 film directors on June 18, 1915, in Los Angeles, California. The organization selected a headquarters to be built there in 1921.
Its ar ...
, a forerunner to today's
Directors Guild of America.
Talkies: 1928–1939
Ford was one of the pioneer directors of sound films; he shot Fox's first song sung on screen, for his film ''
Mother Machree'' (1928) of which only four of the original seven reels survive; this film is also notable as the first Ford film to feature the young
John Wayne (as an uncredited extra) and he appeared as an extra in several of Ford's films over the next two years. Moreover, ''
Hangman's House'' (1928) is notable as it features John Wayne's first confirmed onscreen appearance in a Ford film, playing an excitable spectator during the horse race sequence
Just before the studio converted to talkies, Fox gave a contract to the German director
F. W. Murnau, and his film ''
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans'' (1927), still highly regarded by critics, had a powerful effect on Ford. Murnau's influence can be seen in many of Ford's films of the late 1920s and early 1930s— ''
Four Sons'' (1928), was filmed on some of the lavish sets left over from Murnau's production.
In November that year, Ford directed Fox's first all-talking dramatic
featurette ''
Napoleon's Barber'' (1928), a 3-reeler which is now considered a lost film. ''Napoleon's Barber'' was followed by his final two silent features ''
Riley the Cop'' (1928) and ''
Strong Boy
''Strong Boy'' is a 1929 American silent comedy film directed by John Ford which had a synchronized music track. The film, which was Ford's last silent film, is now considered to be lost. A trailer for the film was discovered in the New Zealan ...
'' (1929), starring
Victor McLaglen
Victor Andrew de Bier Everleigh McLaglen (10 December 1886 – 7 November 1959) was a British boxer-turned-Hollywood actor.Obituary ''Variety'', 11 November 1959, page 79. He was known as a character actor, particularly in Westerns, and made sev ...
; which were both released with synchronised music scores and sound effects, the latter is now lost (although Tag Gallagher's book records that the only surviving copy of ''Strong Boy'', a 35 mm nitrate print, was rumored to be held in a private collection in Australia). ''
The Black Watch'' (1929), a colonial army adventure set in the
Khyber Pass starring Victor McLaglen and
Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy (born Myrna Adele Williams; August 2, 1905 – December 14, 1993) was an American film, television and stage actress. Trained as a dancer, Loy devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. ...
is Ford's first all-talking feature; it was remade in 1954 by
Henry King as ''
King of the Khyber Rifles''.
Ford's output was fairly constant from 1928 to the start of World War II; he made five features in 1928 and then made either two or three films every year from 1929 to 1942, inclusive. Three films were released in 1929—''
Strong Boy
''Strong Boy'' is a 1929 American silent comedy film directed by John Ford which had a synchronized music track. The film, which was Ford's last silent film, is now considered to be lost. A trailer for the film was discovered in the New Zealan ...
'', ''
The Black Watch'' and ''
Salute
A salute is usually a formal hand gesture or other action used to display respect in military situations. Salutes are primarily associated with the military and law enforcement, but many civilian organizations, such as Girl Guides, Boy Sco ...
''. His three films of 1930 were ''
Men Without Women'', ''
Born Reckless'' and ''
Up the River
''Up the River'' is a 1930 American pre-Code comedy film directed by John Ford, and starring Claire Luce, Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart. The plot concerns escaped convicts, as well as a female convict. It was the feature film debut role of ...
'', which is notable as the debut film for both
Spencer Tracy and
Humphrey Bogart, who were both signed to Fox on Ford's recommendation (but subsequently dropped). Ford's films in 1931 were ''
Seas Beneath'', ''
The Brat
''The Brat'' is a 1931 American Pre-Code comedy film directed by John Ford, starring Sally O'Neil, and featuring Virginia Cherrill. The film is based on the 1917 play by Maude Fulton. A previous silent film had been made in 1919 with Alla Nazim ...
'' and ''
Arrowsmith''; the last-named, adapted from the
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was ...
novel and starring
Ronald Colman and
Helen Hayes, marked Ford's first
Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
recognition, with five nominations including Best Picture.
Ford's legendary efficiency and his ability to craft films combining artfulness with strong commercial appeal won him increasing renown. By 1940 he was acknowledged as one of the world's foremost movie directors. His growing prestige was reflected in his remuneration—in 1920, when he moved to Fox, he was paid $300–600 per week. As his career took off in the mid-Twenties his annual income significantly increased. He earned nearly $134,000 in 1929, and made over $100,000 per annum ''every year'' from 1934 to 1941, earning a staggering $220,068 in 1938—more than double the salary of the U.S. president at that time (although this was still less than half the income of
Carole Lombard, Hollywood's highest-paid star of the 1930s, who was earning around $500,000 per year at the time).
With film production affected by the Depression, Ford made two films each in 1932 and 1933—''
Air Mail'' (made for Universal) with a young
Ralph Bellamy
Ralph Rexford Bellamy (June 17, 1904 – November 29, 1991) was an American actor whose career spanned 65 years on stage, film, and television. During his career, he played leading roles as well as supporting roles, garnering acclaim and ...
and ''
Flesh
Flesh is any aggregation of soft tissues of an organism. Various multicellular organisms have soft tissues that may be called "flesh". In mammals, including humans, ''flesh'' encompasses muscles, fats and other loose connective tissues, but ...
'' (for MGM) with
Wallace Beery
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery (April 1, 1885 – April 15, 1949) was an American film and stage actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in '' Min and Bill'' (1930) opposite Marie Dressler, as General Director Preysing in '' Grand Hotel'' ( ...
. In 1933, he returned to Fox for ''
Pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, aft ...
'' and ''
Doctor Bull'', the first of his three films with
Will Rogers.
The World War I desert drama ''
The Lost Patrol
The Lost Patrol is an American rock band whose music falls into the categories of experimental, gothic, post-punk, dark wave, ethereal wave, folk, alternative country, shoegazing, Spaghetti Western and " surf-a-billy". The band uses electric gu ...
'' (1934), based on the book ''Patrol'' by
Philip MacDonald, was a superior remake of the 1929 silent film ''
Lost Patrol''. It starred
Victor McLaglen
Victor Andrew de Bier Everleigh McLaglen (10 December 1886 – 7 November 1959) was a British boxer-turned-Hollywood actor.Obituary ''Variety'', 11 November 1959, page 79. He was known as a character actor, particularly in Westerns, and made sev ...
as The Sergeant—the role played by his brother
Cyril McLaglen
Cyril McLaglen (1899–1987) was a British actor who appeared in a variety of films between 1920 and 1951. He was born in London in 1899 and made his film debut in the 1920 film ''The Call of the Road''. He was the younger brother of the acto ...
in the earlier version—with
Boris Karloff,
Wallace Ford
Wallace Ford (born Samuel Grundy Jones; 12 February 1898 – 11 June 1966) was an English-born naturalized American vaudevillian, stage performer and screen actor. Usually playing wise-cracking characters, he combined a tough but friendly-fac ...
,
Alan Hale and
Reginald Denny (who went on to found a company that made radio-controlled target aircraft during World War II). It was one of Ford's first big hits of the sound era—it was rated by both the
National Board of Review
The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures is a non-profit organization of New York City area film enthusiasts. Its awards, which are announced in early December, are considered an early harbinger of the film awards season that culminat ...
and ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' as one of the Top 10 films of that year and won an Oscar nomination for its stirring
Max Steiner score. It was followed later that year by ''
The World Moves On
''The World Moves On'' is a 1934 American drama film directed by John Ford and starring Madeleine Carroll and Franchot Tone. It was the first Hollywood code approved film.
Plot
The story opens in the year 1825, when two families, cotton merch ...
'' with
Madeleine Carroll and
Franchot Tone
Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone (February 27, 1905 – September 18, 1968) was an American actor, producer, and director of stage, film and television. He was a leading man in the 1930s and early 1940s, and at the height of his career was known ...
, and the highly successful ''
Judge Priest
''Judge Priest'' is a 1934 American comedy film starring Will Rogers. The film was directed by John Ford, produced by Sol M. Wurtzel in association with Fox Film, and based on humorist Irvin S. Cobb's character Judge Priest. The picture is set i ...
'', his second film with Will Rogers, which became one of the top-grossing films of the year.
Ford's first film of 1935 (made for
Columbia) was the mistaken-identity comedy ''
The Whole Town's Talking
''The Whole Town's Talking'' (released in the UK as ''Passport to Fame'') is a 1935 American comedy film starring Edward G. Robinson as a law-abiding man who bears a striking resemblance to a killer, with Jean Arthur as his love interest. It w ...
'' with
Edward G. Robinson and
Jean Arthur
Jean Arthur (born Gladys Georgianna Greene; October 17, 1900 – June 19, 1991) was an American Broadway and film actress whose career began in silent films in the early 1920s and lasted until the early 1950s.
Arthur had feature roles in three F ...
, released in the UK as ''Passport to Fame'', and it drew critical praise. ''
Steamboat Round The Bend'' was his third and final film with Will Rogers; it is probable they would have continued working together, but their collaboration was cut short by Rogers' untimely death in a plane crash in May 1935, which devastated Ford.
Ford confirmed his position in the top rank of American directors with the
Murnau-influenced
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various paramilitary organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Organisations by this name have been dedicated to irredentism through Irish republicanism, the belief th ...
drama ''
The Informer'' (1935), starring Victor McLaglen. It earned great critical praise, was nominated for Best Picture, won Ford his first
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
for Best Director, and was hailed at the time as one of the best films ever made, although its reputation has diminished considerably compared to other contenders like ''
Citizen Kane'', or Ford's own later ''
The Searchers'' (1956).
The politically charged ''
The Prisoner of Shark Island'' (1936)—which marked the debut with Ford of long-serving "Stock Company" player
John Carradine
John Carradine ( ; born Richmond Reed Carradine; February 5, 1906 – November 27, 1988) was an American actor, considered one of the greatest character actors in American cinema. He was a member of Cecil B. DeMille's stock company and later ...
—explored the little-known story of
Samuel Mudd, a physician who was caught up in the
Abraham Lincoln assassination
On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth, while attending the play '' Our American Cousin'' at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Shot in the he ...
conspiracy and consigned to an offshore prison for treating the injured
John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American stage actor who assassinated United States President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. A member of the prominent 19th-century Booth ...
. Other films of this period include the South Seas melodrama ''
The Hurricane'' (1937) and the lighthearted
Shirley Temple vehicle ''
Wee Willie Winkie'' (1937), each of which had a first-year US gross of more than $1 million. During filming of ''Wee Willie Winkie'', Ford had elaborate sets built on the
Iverson Movie Ranch in
Chatsworth, Calif., a heavily filmed location ranch most closely associated with serials and B-Westerns, which would become, along with
Monument Valley, one of the director's preferred filming locations, and a site to which Ford would return in the next few years for ''
Stagecoach'' and ''
The Grapes of Wrath''.
The longer revised version of ''
Directed by John Ford'' shown on
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of At ...
in November 2006 features directors
Steven Spielberg,
Clint Eastwood, and
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, inclu ...
, who suggest that the string of classic films Ford directed during 1936 to 1941 was due in part to an intense six-month extramarital affair with
Katharine Hepburn, the star of ''
Mary of Scotland'' (1936), an Elizabethan costume drama.
1939–1941
''
Stagecoach'' (1939) was Ford's first western since ''3 Bad Men'' in 1926, and it was his first with sound.
Orson Welles claimed that he watched ''Stagecoach'' forty times in preparation for making ''Citizen Kane''. It remains one of the most admired and imitated of all Hollywood movies, not least for its climactic stagecoach chase and the hair-raising horse-jumping scene, performed by the stuntman
Yakima Canutt
Enos Edward "Yakima" Canutt (November 29, 1895 – May 24, 1986) was an American champion rodeo rider, actor, stuntman, and action director. He developed many stunts for films and the techniques and technology to protect stuntmen in performing t ...
.
The
Dudley Nichols
Dudley Nichols (April 6, 1895 – January 4, 1960) was an American screenwriter and film director. He was the first person to decline an Academy Award, as part of a boycott to gain recognition for the Screen Writers Guild; he would later accept ...
–
Ben Hecht screenplay was based on an
Ernest Haycox story that Ford had spotted in ''
Collier's'' magazine and he purchased the screen rights for just $2500. Production chief
Walter Wanger urged Ford to hire
Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, quiet screen persona and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, ...
and
Marlene Dietrich for the lead roles, but eventually accepted Ford's decision to cast
Claire Trevor as Dallas and a virtual unknown, his friend
John Wayne, as Ringo; Wanger reportedly had little further influence over the production.
In making ''Stagecoach'', Ford faced entrenched industry prejudice about the now-hackneyed genre which he had helped to make so popular. Although low-budget western features and serials were still being churned out in large numbers by "
Poverty Row
Poverty Row is a slang term used to refer to Hollywood films produced from the 1920s to the 1950s by small (and mostly short-lived) B movie studios. Although many of them were based on (or near) today's Gower Street in Hollywood, the term did ...
" studios, the genre had fallen out of favor with the big studios during the 1930s and they were regarded as B-grade "pulp" movies at best. As a result, Ford shopped the project around Hollywood for almost a year, offering it unsuccessfully to both
Joseph Kennedy
Joseph Patrick Kennedy (September 6, 1888 – November 18, 1969) was an American businessman, investor, and politician. He is known for his own political prominence as well as that of his children and was the patriarch of the Irish-American Ken ...
and
David O. Selznick before finally linking with Walter Wanger, an independent producer working through
United Artists
United Artists Corporation (UA), currently doing business as United Artists Digital Studios, is an American digital production company. Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the stud ...
.
''Stagecoach'' is significant for several reasons—it exploded industry prejudices by becoming both a critical and commercial hit, grossing over US$1 million in its first year (against a budget of just under $400,000), and its success (along with the 1939 Westerns ''
Destry Rides Again
''Destry Rides Again'' is a 1939 American Western comedy film directed by George Marshall and starring Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. The supporting cast includes Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger, Brian Donlevy, Allen Jenkins, Irene Hervey ...
'' with
James Stewart and
Marlene Dietrich,
Cecil B. DeMille's ''
Union Pacific
The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pac ...
'' with
Joel McCrea
Joel Albert McCrea (November 5, 1905 – October 20, 1990) was an American actor whose career spanned a wide variety of genres over almost five decades, including comedy, drama, romance, thrillers, adventures, and Westerns, for which he bec ...
, and Michael Curtiz's ''
Dodge City
Dodge City is the county seat of Ford County, Kansas, United States, named after nearby Fort Dodge. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 27,788. The city is famous in American culture for its history as a wild frontier town ...
'' with Erroll Flynn), revitalized the moribund genre, showing that Westerns could be "intelligent, artful, great entertainment—and profitable". It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won two Oscars, for Best Supporting Actor (Thomas Mitchell) and Best Score. ''Stagecoach'' became the first in the series of seven classic Ford Westerns filmed on location in
Monument Valley, with additional footage shot at another of Ford's favorite filming locations, the
Iverson Movie Ranch in
Chatsworth, Calif., where he had filmed much of ''
Wee Willie Winkie'' two years earlier. Ford skillfully blended Iverson and Monument Valley to create the movie's iconic images of the American West.
John Wayne had good reason to be grateful for Ford's support; ''Stagecoach'' provided the actor with the career breakthrough that elevated him to international stardom. Over 35 years Wayne appeared in 24 of Ford's films and three television episodes. Ford is credited with playing a major role in shaping Wayne's screen image. Cast member Louise Platt, in a letter recounting the experience of the film's production, quoted Ford saying of Wayne's future in film: "He'll be the biggest star ever because he is the perfect 'everyman.'"
''Stagecoach'' marked the beginning of the most consistently successful phase of Ford's career—in just two years between 1939 and 1941 he created a string of classics films that won numerous Academy Awards. Ford's next film, the biopic ''
Young Mr Lincoln'' (1939) starring
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor. He had a career that spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. He cultivated an everyman screen image in several films considered to be classics.
Born and ra ...
, was less successful than ''Stagecoach'', attracting little critical attention and winning no awards. It was not a major box-office hit although it had a respectable domestic first-year gross of $750,000, but Ford scholar Tag Gallagher describes it as "a deeper, more multi-leveled work than ''Stagecoach'' ... (which) seems in retrospect one of the finest prewar pictures".
''
Drums Along the Mohawk
''Drums Along the Mohawk'' is a 1939 American historical drama western film based upon a 1936 novel of the same name by American author Walter D. Edmonds. The film was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and directed by John Ford. Henry Fonda and Cla ...
'' (1939) was a lavish frontier drama co-starring Henry Fonda and
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert ( ; born Émilie Claudette Chauchoin; September 13, 1903July 30, 1996) was an American actress. Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to films with the advent of talking pictures ...
; it was also Ford's first movie in color and included uncredited script contributions by
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...
. It was a big box-office success, grossing $1.25 million in its first year in the US and earning
Edna May Oliver
Edna May Oliver (born Edna May Nutter, November 9, 1883 – November 9, 1942) was an American stage and film actress. During the 1930s, she was one of the better-known character actresses in American films, often playing tart-tongued spinsters. ...
a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance.
Despite its uncompromising humanist and political stance, Ford's screen adaptation of
John Steinbeck's ''
The Grapes of Wrath'' (scripted by
Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Hunter Johnson (December 5, 1897 – March 25, 1977) was an American screenwriter, film director, producer, and playwright. As a filmmaker, he wrote the screenplays to more than fifty films in a career that spanned from 1927 to 1967. He ...
and photographed by
Gregg Toland) was both a big box office hit and a major critical success, and it is still widely regarded as one of the best Hollywood films of the era. Noted critic
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris (October 31, 1928 – June 20, 2012) was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism.
Early life
Sarris was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Greek immigrant parents, Themis (née Katav ...
described it as the movie that transformed Ford from "a storyteller of the screen into America's cinematic poet laureate". Ford's third movie in a year and his third consecutive film with Fonda, it grossed $1.1 million in the US in its first year
and won two Academy Awards—Ford's second 'Best Director' Oscar, and 'Best Supporting Actress' for
Jane Darwell
Jane Darwell (born Patti Woodard; October 15, 1879 – August 13, 1967) was an American actress of stage, film, and television. With appearances in more than 100 major movies spanning half a century, Darwell is perhaps best remembered for her p ...
's tour-de-force portrayal of Ma Joad. During production, Ford returned to the
Iverson Movie Ranch in
Chatsworth, Calif., to film a number of key shots, including the pivotal image depicting the migrant family's first full view of the fertile farmland of
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
, which was represented by the
San Fernando Valley as seen from the Iverson Ranch.
''The Grapes of Wrath'' was followed by two less successful and lesser-known films. ''
The Long Voyage Home
''The Long Voyage Home'' is a 1940 American drama film directed by John Ford. It stars John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell and Ian Hunter. It features Barry Fitzgerald, Wilfrid Lawson, John Qualen, Mildred Natwick, and Ward Bond, among others.
The f ...
'' (1940) was, like ''Stagecoach'', made with Walter Wanger through United Artists. Adapted from four plays by
Eugene O'Neill, it was scripted by Dudley Nichols and Ford, in consultation with O'Neill. Although not a significant box-office success (it grossed only $600,000 in its first year), it was critically praised and was nominated for seven Academy Awards—Best Picture, Best Screenplay, (Nichols), Best Music, Original Score (
Richard Hageman
Richard Hageman (9 July 1881 – 6 March 1966) was a Dutch-born American conductor, pianist, composer, and actor.
Biography
Hageman was born and raised in Leeuwarden, Friesland, Netherlands. He was the son of Maurits Hageman of Zutphen, a vio ...
), Best Photography (
Gregg Toland), Best Editing (Sherman Todd), Best Effects (Ray Binger & R.T. Layton), and Best Sound (
Robert Parrish). It was one of Ford's personal favorites; stills from it decorated his home and O'Neill also reportedly loved the film and screened it periodically.
''
Tobacco Road'' (1941) was a rural comedy scripted by
Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Hunter Johnson (December 5, 1897 – March 25, 1977) was an American screenwriter, film director, producer, and playwright. As a filmmaker, he wrote the screenplays to more than fifty films in a career that spanned from 1927 to 1967. He ...
, adapted from the long-running Jack Kirkland stage version of the novel by
Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Preston Caldwell (December 17, 1903 – April 11, 1987) was an American novelist and short story writer. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native Southern United States, in novels such as '' Tobacco Road'' (1 ...
. It starred veteran actor
Charley Grapewin
Charles Ellsworth Grapewin (December 20, 1869 – February 2, 1956) was an American vaudeville and circus performer, a writer, and a stage and film actor. He worked in over 100 motion pictures during the silent and sound eras, most notably port ...
and the supporting cast included Ford regulars
Ward Bond and
Mae Marsh
Mae Marsh (born Mary Wayne Marsh; November 9, 1894U.S. Census records for 1900, El Paso, Texas, Sheet No. 6 – February 13, 1968) was an American film actress with a career spanning over 50 years.
Early life
Mae Marsh was born Mary Wayne M ...
, with Francis Ford in an uncredited bit part; it is also notable for early screen appearances by future stars
Gene Tierney and
Dana Andrews
Carver Dana Andrews (January 1, 1909 – December 17, 1992) was an American film actor who became a major star in what is now known as film noir. A leading man during the 1940s, he continued acting in less prestigious roles and character parts ...
. Although not highly regarded by some critics—Tag Gallagher devotes only one short paragraph to it in his book on Ford—it was fairly successful at the box office, grossing $900,000 in its first year. The film was banned in Australia.
Ford's last feature before America entered World War II was his screen adaptation of ''
How Green Was My Valley'' (1941), starring
Walter Pidgeon
Walter Davis Pidgeon (September 23, 1897 – September 25, 1984) was a Canadian-American actor. He earned two Academy Award for Best Actor nominations for his roles in '' Mrs. Miniver'' (1942) and ''Madame Curie'' (1943). Pidgeon also starred in ...
,
Maureen O'Hara and
Roddy McDowell in his career-making role as Huw. The script was written by
Philip Dunne from the best-selling novel by
Richard Llewellyn. It was originally planned as a four-hour epic to rival ''
Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind most often refers to:
* ''Gone with the Wind'' (novel), a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell
* ''Gone with the Wind'' (film), the 1939 adaptation of the novel
Gone with the Wind may also refer to:
Music
* ''Gone with the Wind'' ...
''—the screen rights alone cost Fox $300,000—and was to have been filmed on location in Wales, but this was abandoned due to the heavy German bombing of Britain. A search of Southern California locations resulted in the set for the village being built on the grounds of the Crags Country Club (later the Fox ranch, now the core of Malibu Creek State Park). Another reported factor was the nervousness of Fox executives about the pro-union tone of the story.
William Wyler was originally engaged to direct, but he left the project when Fox decided to film it in California; Ford was hired in his place and production was postponed for several months until he became available. Producer
Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl Francis Zanuck (September 5, 1902December 22, 1979) was an American film producer and studio executive; he earlier contributed stories for films starting in the silent era. He played a major part in the Hollywood studio system as one of ...
had a strong influence over the movie and made several key decisions, including the idea of having the character of Huw narrate the film in voice-over (then a novel concept), and the decision that Huw's character should not age (
Tyrone Power was originally slated to play the adult Huw).
''How Green Was My Valley'' became one of the biggest films of 1941. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards including Best Supporting Actress (
Sara Allgood
Sarah Ellen Allgood (30 October 1880 – 13 September 1950), known as Sara Allgood, was an Irish-American actress. She first studied drama with the Irish nationalist Daughters of Ireland and was at the opening of the Irish National Theatre Soc ...
), Best Editing, Best Script, Best Music and Best Sound and it won five Oscars—Best Director, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (
Donald Crisp
Donald William Crisp (27 July 188225 May 1974) was an English film actor as well as an early producer, director and screenwriter. His career lasted from the early silent film era into the 1960s. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor ...
), Best B&W Cinematography (
Arthur C. Miller) and Best Art Direction/Interior Decoration. It was a huge hit with audiences, coming in behind ''
Sergeant York'' as the second-highest-grossing film of the year in the US and taking almost $3 million against its sizable budget of $1,250,000.
[Gallagher, 1986, p. 499] Ford was also named Best Director by the New York Film Critics, and this was one of the few awards of his career that he collected in person (he generally shunned the Oscar ceremony).
War years
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, Ford served as head of the photographic unit for the
Office of Strategic Services and made documentaries for the Navy Department. He was commissioned as a
commander in the
United States Navy Reserve. He won two more Academy Awards during this time, one for the semi-documentary ''
The Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. Navy under Ad ...
'' (1942), and one for the
propaganda film ''
December 7th: The Movie'' (1943). Ford filmed
the Japanese attack on Midway from the power plant of Sand Island and was wounded in the left arm by a
machine gun bullet.
[John Ford, 78, Film Director Who Won 4 Oscars, ls Dead](_blank)
''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' via Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
. Retrieved January 11, 2022.
Ford was also present on
Omaha Beach on
D-Day. He crossed the
English Channel
The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...
on the , which anchored off Omaha Beach at 0600. He observed the first wave land on the beach from the ship, landing on the beach himself later with a team of
Coast Guard
A coast guard or coastguard is a maritime security organization of a particular country. The term embraces wide range of responsibilities in different countries, from being a heavily armed military force with customs and security duties to ...
cameramen who filmed the battle from behind the beach obstacles, with Ford directing operations. The film was edited in London, but very little was released to the public. Ford explained in a 1964 interview that the US Government was "afraid to show so many American casualties on the screen", adding that all of the D-Day film "still exists in color in storage in Anacostia near Washington, D.C." Thirty years later, historian
Stephen E. Ambrose reported that the
Eisenhower Center had been unable to find the film. A film matching Ford's description was unearthed by the US National Archives in 2014.
Ford eventually rose to become a top adviser to OSS head
William Joseph Donovan
William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan (January 1, 1883 – February 8, 1959) was an American soldier, lawyer, intelligence officer and diplomat, best known for serving as the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the B ...
. According to records released in 2008, Ford was cited by his superiors for bravery, taking a position to film one mission that was "an obvious and clear target". He survived "continuous attack and was wounded" while he continued filming, one commendation in his file states. In 1945, Ford executed affidavits testifying to the integrity of films taken to document conditions at Nazi concentration camps.
His last wartime film was ''
They Were Expendable'' (MGM, 1945), an account of America's disastrous defeat in The Philippines, told from the viewpoint of a
PT boat
A PT boat (short for patrol torpedo boat) was a motor torpedo boat used by the United States Navy in World War II. It was small, fast, and inexpensive to build, valued for its maneuverability and speed but hampered at the beginning of the war ...
squadron and its commander. Ford created a part for the recovering
Ward Bond, who needed money. Although he was seen throughout the movie, he never walked until they put in a part where he was shot in the leg. For the rest of the picture, he was able to use a crutch on the final march. Ford repeatedly declared that he disliked the film and had never watched it, complaining that he had been forced to make it, although it was strongly championed by filmmaker
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994) was a British feature-film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading-light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered for ...
. Released several months after the end of the war, it was among the year's top 20 box-office draws, although Tag Gallagher notes that many critics have incorrectly claimed that it lost money.
Post-war career
After the war, Ford remained an officer in the
United States Navy Reserve. He returned to active service during the Korean War, and was promoted to
Rear Admiral the day he left service.
Ford directed sixteen features and several documentaries in the decade between 1946 and 1956. As with his pre-war career, his films alternated between (relative) box office flops and major successes, but most of his later films made a solid profit, and ''Fort Apache'', ''The Quiet Man'', ''
Mogambo
''Mogambo'' is a 1953 Technicolor adventure/ romantic drama film directed by John Ford and starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly, and featuring Donald Sinden. Shot on location in Equatorial Africa, with a musical soundtrack consisti ...
'' and ''The Searchers'' all ranked in the Top 20 box-office hits of their respective years.
Ford's first postwar movie ''
My Darling Clementine'' (Fox, 1946) was a romanticized retelling of the primal Western legend of
Wyatt Earp and the
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, with exterior sequences filmed on location in the visually spectacular (but geographically inappropriate)
Monument Valley. It reunited Ford with Henry Fonda (as Earp) and co-starred
Victor Mature in one of his best roles as the consumptive, Shakespeare-loving
Doc Holliday, with Ward Bond and
Tim Holt as the Earp brothers,
Linda Darnell
Linda Darnell (born Monetta Eloyse Darnell; October 16, 1923 – April 10, 1965) was an American actress. Darnell progressed from modeling as a child to acting in theater and film. At the encouragement of her mother, she made her first film in ...
as sultry saloon girl Chihuahua, a strong performance by
Walter Brennan
Walter Andrew Brennan (July 25, 1894 – September 21, 1974) was an American actor and singer. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances in '' Come and Get It'' (1936), ''Kentucky'' (1938), and '' The Westerner ...
(in a rare villainous role) as the venomous Old Man Clanton, with
Jane Darwell
Jane Darwell (born Patti Woodard; October 15, 1879 – August 13, 1967) was an American actress of stage, film, and television. With appearances in more than 100 major movies spanning half a century, Darwell is perhaps best remembered for her p ...
and an early screen appearance by
John Ireland
John Benjamin Ireland (January 30, 1914 – March 21, 1992) was a Canadian actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in ''All the King's Men'' (1949), making him the first Vancouver-born actor to receive an Oscar nomin ...
as Billy Clanton. In contrast to the string of successes in 1939–1941, it won no major American awards, although it was awarded a silver ribbon for Best Foreign Film in 1948 by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, and it was a solid financial success, grossing $2.75 million in the United States and $1.75 million internationally in its first year of release.
The Argosy years
Refusing a lucrative contract offered by Zanuck at 20th Century Fox that would have guaranteed him $600,000 per year, Ford launched himself as an independent director-producer and made many of his films in this period with Argosy Pictures Corporation, which was a partnership between Ford and his old friend and colleague
Merian C. Cooper. Ford and Cooper had previously been involved with the distinct Argosy Corporation, which was established after the success of ''Stagecoach'' (1939); Argosy Corporation produced one film, ''
The Long Voyage Home
''The Long Voyage Home'' is a 1940 American drama film directed by John Ford. It stars John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell and Ian Hunter. It features Barry Fitzgerald, Wilfrid Lawson, John Qualen, Mildred Natwick, and Ward Bond, among others.
The f ...
'' (1940), before the Second World War intervened. ''
The Fugitive'' (1947), again starring Fonda, was the first project of Argosy Pictures. It was a loose adaptation of
Graham Greene's ''
The Power and the Glory
''The Power and the Glory'' is a 1940 novel by British author Graham Greene. The title is an allusion to the doxology often recited at the end of the Lord's Prayer: "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever, amen." ...
'', which Ford had originally intended to make at Fox before the war, with
Thomas Mitchell as the priest. Filmed on location in Mexico, it was photographed by distinguished Mexican cinematographer
Gabriel Figueroa
Gabriel Figueroa Mateos (April 24, 1907 – April 27, 1997) was a Mexican cinematographer who is regarded as one of the greatest cinematographers of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. He has worked in over 200 films, which cover a broad range of ...
(who later worked with
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and ...
). The supporting cast included
Dolores del Río,
J. Carrol Naish,
Ward Bond,
Leo Carrillo
Leopoldo Antonio Carrillo (; August 6, 1880 – September 10, 1961), known professionally as Leo Carrillo, was an American actor, vaudevillian, political cartoonist, and conservationist.
He was best known for playing Pancho in the television ...
and
Mel Ferrer (making his screen début) and a cast of mainly Mexican extras. Ford reportedly considered this his best film but it fared relatively poorly compared to its predecessor, grossing only $750,000 in its first year. It also caused a rift between Ford and scriptwriter Dudley Nichols that brought about the end of their highly successful collaboration.
Greene himself had a particular dislike of this adaptation of his work.
''
Fort Apache'' (Argosy/RKO, 1948) was the first part of Ford's so-called 'Cavalry Trilogy', all of which were based on stories by
James Warner Bellah. It featured many of his 'Stock Company' of actors, including John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen, Mae Marsh, Francis Ford (as a bartender), Frank Baker, Ben Johnson and also featured
Shirley Temple, in her final appearance for Ford and one of her last film appearances. It also marked the start of the long association between Ford and scriptwriter
Frank S. Nugent, a former ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' film critic who (like Dudley Nichols) had not written a movie script until hired by Ford. It was a big commercial success, grossing nearly $5 million worldwide in its first year and ranking in the Top 20 box office hits of 1948.
During that year Ford also assisted his friend and colleague Howard Hawks, who was having problems with his current film ''Red River (1948 film), Red River'' (which starred John Wayne) and Ford reportedly made numerous editing suggestions, including the use of a narrator. ''Fort Apache'' was followed by another Western, ''3 Godfathers'', a remake of a The Three Godfathers (1916 film), 1916 silent film starring Harry Carey (to whom Ford's version was dedicated), which Ford had himself already remade in 1919 as ''Marked Men (1919 film), Marked Men'', also with Carey and thought lost. It starred John Wayne,
Pedro Armendáriz
Pedro Gregorio Armendáriz Hastings (May 9, 1912 – June 18, 1963) was a Mexican film actor who made films in both Mexico and the United States. With Dolores del Río and María Félix, he was one of the best-known Latin American movie stars ...
and Harry "Dobe" Carey Jr (in one of his first major roles) as three outlaws who rescue a baby after his mother (Mildred Natwick) dies giving birth, with
Ward Bond as the sheriff pursuing them. The recurrent theme of sacrifice can also be found in ''The Outcasts of Poker Flat'', ''Three Godfathers'', ''The Wallop'', ''Desperate Trails'', ''Hearts of Oak'', ''Bad Men'', ''Men without Women''.
In 1949, Ford briefly returned to Fox to direct ''Pinky (film), Pinky''. He prepared the project but worked only one day before being taken ill, supposedly with shingles, and Elia Kazan replaced him (although Tag Gallagher suggests that Ford's illness was a pretext for leaving the film, which Ford disliked).
His only completed film of that year was the second installment of his Cavalry Trilogy, ''She Wore a Yellow Ribbon'' (Argosy/RKO, 1949), starring John Wayne and Joanne Dru, with Victor McLaglen, John Agar,
Ben Johnson Ben, Benjamin or Benny Johnson may refer to:
In sports Association football
* Ben Johnson (footballer, born 2000), English footballer
* Ben Johnson (soccer) (born 1977), American soccer player
Other codes of football
*Ben Johnson (Australian foot ...
, Mildred Natwick and Harry Carey Jr. Again filmed on location in Monument Valley, it was widely acclaimed for its stunning Technicolor cinematography (including the famous cavalry scene filmed in front of an oncoming storm); it won Winton Hoch the 22nd Academy Awards, 1950 Academy Award for Best Color Cinematography and it did big business on its first release, grossing more than $5 million worldwide. John Wayne, then 41, also received wide praise for his role as the 60-year-old Captain Nathan Brittles.
1950s
Ford's first film of 1950 was the offbeat military comedy ''When Willie Comes Marching Home'', starring Dan Dailey and Corinne Calvet, with William Demarest, from Preston Sturges 'stock company', and early (uncredited) screen appearances by Alan Hale Jr. and
Vera Miles. It was followed by ''Wagon Master'', starring
Ben Johnson Ben, Benjamin or Benny Johnson may refer to:
In sports Association football
* Ben Johnson (footballer, born 2000), English footballer
* Ben Johnson (soccer) (born 1977), American soccer player
Other codes of football
*Ben Johnson (Australian foot ...
and Harry Carey Jr, which is particularly noteworthy as the only Ford film since 1930 that he scripted himself. It was subsequently adapted into the long-running TV series ''Wagon Train'' (with Ward Bond reprising the title role until his sudden death in 1960). Although it did far smaller business than most of his other films in this period, Ford cited ''Wagon Master'' as his personal favorite out of all his films, telling Peter Bogdanovich that it "came closest to what I had hoped to achieve".
''Rio Grande (1950 film), Rio Grande'' (Republic, 1950), the third part of the 'Cavalry Trilogy', co-starred John Wayne and
Maureen O'Hara, with Wayne's son Patrick Wayne making his screen debut (he appeared in several subsequent Ford pictures including ''
The Searchers''). It was made at the insistence of Republic Pictures, who demanded a profitable Western as the condition of backing Ford's next project, ''The Quiet Man''. A testament to Ford's legendary efficiency, ''Rio Grande'' was shot in just 32 days, with only 352 takes from 335 camera setups, and it was a solid success, grossing $2.25 million in its first year.
Republic's anxiety was erased by the resounding success of ''The Quiet Man'' (Republic, 1952), a pet project which Ford had wanted to make since the 1930s (and almost did so in 1937 with an independent cooperative called Renowned Artists Company). It became his biggest grossing picture to date, taking nearly $4 million in the US alone in its first year and ranking in the top 10 box office films of its year. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won Ford his fourth Oscar for Best Director, as well a second Best Cinematography Oscar for
Winton Hoch. It was followed by ''What Price Glory? (1952 film), What Price Glory?'' (1952), a World War I drama, the first of two films Ford made with James Cagney (''Mister Roberts'' was the other) which also did good business at the box office ($2 million).
''The Sun Shines Bright'' (1953), Ford's first entry in the Cannes Film Festival, was a western comedy-drama with Charles Winninger reviving the
Judge Priest
''Judge Priest'' is a 1934 American comedy film starring Will Rogers. The film was directed by John Ford, produced by Sol M. Wurtzel in association with Fox Film, and based on humorist Irvin S. Cobb's character Judge Priest. The picture is set i ...
role made famous by Will Rogers in the 1930s. Ford later referred to it as one of his favorites, but it was poorly received, and was drastically cut (from 90 mins to 65 mins) by Republic soon after its release, with some excised scenes now presumed lost. It fared poorly at the box office and its failure contributed to the subsequent collapse of Argosy Pictures.
Ford's next film was the romance-adventure ''
Mogambo
''Mogambo'' is a 1953 Technicolor adventure/ romantic drama film directed by John Ford and starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly, and featuring Donald Sinden. Shot on location in Equatorial Africa, with a musical soundtrack consisti ...
'' (MGM, 1953), a loose remake of the celebrated 1932 film ''Red Dust (1932 film), Red Dust''. Filmed on location in Africa, it was photographed by British cinematographer Freddie Young and starred Ford's old friend Clark Gable, with Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly (who replaced an ailing
Gene Tierney) and Donald Sinden. Although the production was difficult (exacerbated by the irritating presence of Gardner's then husband Frank Sinatra), ''Mogambo'' became one of the biggest commercial hits of Ford's career, with the highest domestic first-year gross of any of his films ($5.2 million); it also revitalized Gable's waning career and earned Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations for Gardner and Kelly (who was rumored to have had a brief affair with Gable during the making of the film).
In 1955, Ford made the lesser-known West Point drama ''The Long Gray Line'' for Columbia Pictures, the first of two Ford films to feature
Tyrone Power, who had originally been slated to star as the adult Huw in ''How Green Was My Valley'' back in 1941. Later in 1955, Ford was hired by Warner Bros to direct the Naval comedy ''Mister Roberts (1955 film), Mister Roberts'', starring
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor. He had a career that spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. He cultivated an everyman screen image in several films considered to be classics.
Born and ra ...
, Jack Lemmon, William Powell, and James Cagney, but there was conflict between Ford and Fonda, who had been playing the lead role on Broadway for the past seven years and had misgivings about Ford's direction. During a three-way meeting with producer Leland Hayward to try and iron out the problems, Ford became enraged and punched Fonda on the jaw, knocking him across the room, an action that created a lasting rift between them. After the incident Ford became increasingly morose, drinking heavily and eventually retreating to his yacht, the ''USS Araner (IX-57), Araner,'' and refusing to eat or see anyone. Production was shut down for five days and Ford sobered up, but soon after he suffered a ruptured gallbladder, necessitating emergency surgery, and he was replaced by Mervyn LeRoy.
Ford also made his first forays into television in 1955, directing two half-hour dramas for network TV. In the summer of 1955 he made ''Rookie of the Year'' (Hal Roach Studios) for the TV series ''Studio Directors Playhouse''; scripted by Frank S. Nugent, it featured Ford regulars John and Pat Wayne, Vera Miles and Ward Bond, with Ford himself appearing in the introduction. In November he made ''The Bamboo Cross'' (Lewman Ltd-Revue, 1955) for the ''Fireside Theater'' series; it starred Jane Wyman with an Asian-American cast and Stock Company veterans Frank Baker and Pat O'Malley in minor roles.
![The searchers Ford Trailer screenshot (crop)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/The_searchers_Ford_Trailer_screenshot_%28crop%29.jpg)
Ford returned to the big screen with ''
The Searchers'' (Warner Bros, 1956), the only Western he made between 1950 and 1959, which is now widely regarded as not only one of his best films, but also by many as one of the greatest westerns, and one of the best performances of John Wayne's career. Shot on location in Monument Valley, it tells of the embittered Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards who spends years tracking down his niece, kidnapped by Comanches as a young girl. The supporting cast included
Jeffrey Hunter,
Ward Bond,
Vera Miles and rising star Natalie Wood. It was Hunter's first film for Ford. It was very successful upon its first release and became one of the top 20 films of the year, grossing $4.45 million, although it received no
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
nominations. However, its reputation has grown greatly over the intervening years—it was named the AFI's 10 Top 10, Greatest Western of all time by the American Film Institute in 2008 and also placed 12th on the institute's 2007 list of the Top 100 greatest movies of all time. ''The Searchers'' has exerted a wide influence on film and popular culture—it has inspired (and been directly quoted by) many filmmakers including David Lean and George Lucas, Wayne's character's catchphrase "That'll be the day" inspired Buddy Holly to pen his famous hit song of the same name, and the British pop group The Searchers (band), The Searchers also took their name from the film.
''The Searchers'' was accompanied by one of the first "making of" documentaries, a four-part promotional program created for the "Behind the Camera" segment of the weekly ''Warner Bros. Presents'' TV show, (the studio's first foray into TV) which aired on the American Broadcasting Company, ABC network in 1955–56. Presented by Gig Young, the four segments included interviews with
Jeffrey Hunter and Natalie Wood and behind-the-scenes footage shot during the making of the film.
''The Wings of Eagles'' (MGM, 1957) was a fictionalized biography of Ford's old friend, aviator-turned-scriptwriter Frank Wead, Frank "Spig" Wead, who had scripted several of Ford's early sound films. It starred
John Wayne and
Maureen O'Hara, with
Ward Bond as John Dodge (a character based on Ford himself). It was followed by one of Ford's least known films, ''The Growler Story'', a 29-minute dramatized documentary about the USS ''Growler''. Made for the US Navy and filmed by the Pacific Fleet Command Combat Camera Group, it featured Ward Bond and Ken Curtis alongside real Navy personnel and their families.
Ford's next two films stand somewhat apart from the rest of his films in terms of production, and he notably took no salary for either job. ''The Rising of the Moon (film), The Rising of the Moon'' (Warner Bros, 1957) was a three-part 'omnibus' movie shot on location in Ireland and based on Irish short stories. It was made by Four Province Productions, a company established by Irish tycoon Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin, Lord Killanin, who had recently become Chair of the International Olympic Committee, and to whom Ford was distantly related. Killanin was also the actual (but uncredited) producer of ''The Quiet Man''. The film failed to recoup its costs, earning less than half ($100,000) its negative cost of just over $256,000 and it stirred up some controversy in Ireland.
Both of Ford's 1958 films were made for Columbia Pictures and both were significant departures from Ford's norm. ''Gideon's Day (film), Gideon's Day'' (titled ''Gideon of Scotland Yard'' in the US) was adapted from the novel by British writer John Creasey. It is Ford's only police genre film, and one of the few Ford films set in the present day of the 1950s. It was shot in England with a British cast headed by Jack Hawkins, whom Ford (unusually) lauded as "the finest dramatic actor with whom I have worked".
[Gallagher, 1986, p. 359] It was poorly promoted by Columbia, who only distributed it in B&W, although it was shot in color,
and it too failed to make a profit in its first year, earning only $400,000 against its budget of $453,000.
''The Last Hurrah (1958 film), The Last Hurrah'', (Columbia, 1958), again set in present-day of the 1950s, starred
Spencer Tracy, who had made his first film appearance in Ford's ''Up The River'' in 1930. Tracy plays an aging politician fighting his last campaign, with
Jeffrey Hunter as his nephew. Katharine Hepburn reportedly facilitated a rapprochement between the two men, ending a long-running feud, and she convinced Tracy to take the lead role, which had originally been offered to
Orson Welles (but was turned down by Welles' agent without his knowledge, much to his chagrin). It did considerably better business than either of Ford's two preceding films, grossing $950,000 in its first year
[Gallagher, 1986, p. 500] although cast member
Anna Lee
Anna Lee, MBE (born Joan Boniface Winnifrith; 2 January 1913 – 14 May 2004) was a British actress, labelled by studios "The British Bombshell".
Early life
Anna Lee was born Joan Boniface Winnifrith in Ightham, (pronounced 'Item'), Kent, th ...
stated that Ford was "disappointed with the picture" and that Columbia had not permitted him to supervise the editing.
''Korea: Battleground for Liberty'' (1959), Ford's second documentary on the Korean War, was made for the US Department of Defense as an orientation film for US soldiers stationed there.
It was followed by his last feature of the decade, ''The Horse Soldiers'' (Mirisch Company-United Artists, 1959), a heavily fictionalised Civil War story starring John Wayne, William Holden and Constance Towers. Although Ford professed unhappiness with the project, it was a commercial success, opening at #1 and ranking in the year's Top 20 box-office hits, grossing $3.6 million in its first year, and earning Ford his highest-ever fee—$375,000, plus 10% of the gross.
The production was reportedly a difficult one for director and cast, and it incurred significant cost overruns, exacerbated by the unprecedented salaries awarded to Holden and Wayne ($750,000, plus 20% of the overall profit, each). Mirroring the on-screen tensions between Wayne and Holden's characters, the two actors argued constantly; Wayne was also struggling to help his wife Pilar overcome a barbiturate addiction, which climaxed with her attempted suicide while the couple were on location together in Louisiana. Ford's problems peaked with the tragic death of stuntman Fred Kennedy, who suffered a fatal neck fracture while executing a horse fall during the climactic battle sequence. Ford was devastated by the accident and lost interest in the film, moving the production back to Hollywood. He also scrapped the planned ending, depicting the Marlowe's triumphant entry into Baton Rouge, instead concluding the film with Marlowe's farewell to Hannah Hunter and the crossing and demolition of the bridge.
Last years, 1960–1973
![John ford 4 Allan Warren](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/John_Ford_4_Allan_Warren_2.jpg)
In his last years Ford was dogged by declining health, largely the result of decades of heavy drinking and smoking, and exacerbated by the wounds he suffered during the Battle of Midway. His vision, in particular, began to deteriorate rapidly and at one point he briefly lost his sight entirely; his prodigious memory also began to falter, making it necessary to rely more and more on assistants. His work was also restricted by the new regime in Hollywood, and he found it hard to get many projects made. By the 1960s he had been pigeonholed as a Western director and complained that he now found it almost impossible to get backing for projects in other genres.
''Sergeant Rutledge'' (Ford Productions-Warner Bros, 1960) was Ford's last cavalry film. Set in the 1880s, it tells the story of an African-American cavalryman (played by
Woody Strode
Woodrow Wilson Woolwine Strode (July 25, 1914 – December 31, 1994) was an American athlete and actor. He was a decathlete and football star who was one of the first Black American players in the National Football League in the postwar era. Aft ...
) who is wrongfully accused of raping and murdering a white girl. It was erroneously marketed as a suspense film by Warners and was not a commercial success. During 1960, Ford made his third TV production, ''The Colter Craven Story'', a one-hour episode of the network TV show ''Wagon Train'', which included footage from Ford's ''Wagon Master'' (on which the series was based). He also visited the set of ''The Alamo (1960 film), The Alamo'', produced, directed by, and starring John Wayne, where his interference caused Wayne to send him out to film second-unit scenes which were never used (nor intended to be used) in the film.
''Two Rode Together'' (Ford Productions-Columbia, 1961) co-starred
James Stewart and
Richard Widmark
Richard Weedt Widmark (December 26, 1914March 24, 2008) was an American film, stage, and television actor and producer.
He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film, ''Kiss of Death'' (1947) ...
, with Shirley Jones and Stock Company regulars
Andy Devine
Andrew Vabre Devine (October 7, 1905 – February 18, 1977) was an American character actor known for his distinctive raspy, crackly voice and roles in Western films, including his role as Cookie, the sidekick of Roy Rogers in 10 feature fil ...
, Henry Brandon (actor), Henry Brandon, Harry Carey Jr, Anna Lee, Woody Strode, Mae Marsh and Frank Baker, with an early screen appearance by Linda Cristal, who went on to star in the Western TV series ''The High Chaparral''. It was a fair commercial success, grossing $1.6m in its first year.
''
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
''The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'' () is a 1962 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and James Stewart. The screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck was adapted from a 1953 short story written by ...
'' (Ford Productions-Paramount, 1962) is frequently cited as the last great film of Ford's career. Starring John Wayne and
James Stewart, the supporting cast features leading lady
Vera Miles, Edmond O'Brien as a loquacious newspaper publisher,
Andy Devine
Andrew Vabre Devine (October 7, 1905 – February 18, 1977) was an American character actor known for his distinctive raspy, crackly voice and roles in Western films, including his role as Cookie, the sidekick of Roy Rogers in 10 feature fil ...
as the inept marshal Appleyard, Denver Pyle,
John Carradine
John Carradine ( ; born Richmond Reed Carradine; February 5, 1906 – November 27, 1988) was an American actor, considered one of the greatest character actors in American cinema. He was a member of Cecil B. DeMille's stock company and later ...
, and Lee Marvin in a major role as the brutal Valance, with Lee Van Cleef and Strother Martin as his henchmen. It is also notable as the film in which Wayne most often used his trademark phrase "Pilgrim" (his nickname for James Stewart's character). The picture was very successful, grossing over $3 million in its first year, although the lead casting stretched credibility—the characters played by Stewart (then 53) and Wayne (then 54) could be assumed to be in their early 20s given the circumstances, and Ford reportedly considered casting a younger actor in Stewart's role but feared it would highlight Wayne's age. Though it is often claimed that budget constraints necessitated shooting most of the film on soundstages on the Paramount lot, studio accounting records show that this was part of the film's original artistic concept, according to Ford biographer Joseph McBride. According to Lee Marvin in a filmed interview, Ford had fought hard to shoot the film in black-and-white to accentuate his use of shadows. Still, it was one of Ford's most expensive films at US$3.2 million.
After completing ''Liberty Valance'', Ford was hired to direct the Civil War section of MGM's epic ''How the West Was Won (film), How The West Was Won'', the first non-documentary film to use the Cinerama wide-screen process. Ford's segment featured George Peppard, with
Andy Devine
Andrew Vabre Devine (October 7, 1905 – February 18, 1977) was an American character actor known for his distinctive raspy, crackly voice and roles in Western films, including his role as Cookie, the sidekick of Roy Rogers in 10 feature fil ...
, Russ Tamblyn, Harry Morgan as Ulysses S. Grant, and John Wayne as William Tecumseh Sherman. Wayne had already played Sherman in a 1960 episode of the television series ''Wagon Train'' that Ford directed in support of series star
Ward Bond, "The Colter Craven Story, The Coulter Craven Story", for which he brought in most of his stock company. Also in 1962, Ford directed his fourth and last TV production, ''Flashing Spikes'' a baseball story made for the ''Alcoa Premiere'' series and starring James Stewart, Jack Warden, Patrick Wayne and Tige Andrews, with Harry Carey Jr. and a lengthy surprise appearance by John Wayne, billed in the credits as "Michael Morris", as he also had been for the ''Wagon Train'' episode directed by Ford.
''Donovan's Reef'' (Paramount, 1963) was Ford's last film with John Wayne. Filmed on location on the Hawaiian island of Kauai (doubling for a fictional island in French Polynesia), it was a morality play disguised as an action-comedy, which subtly but sharply engaged with issues of racial bigotry, corporate connivance, greed and American beliefs of societal superiority. The supporting cast included Lee Marvin, Elizabeth Allen (actress), Elizabeth Allen, Jack Warden, Dorothy Lamour, and Cesar Romero. It was also Ford's last commercial success, grossing $3.3 million against a budget of $2.6 million.
''Cheyenne Autumn'' (Warner Bros, 1964) was Ford's epic farewell to the West, which he publicly declared to be an elegy to the Native American. It was his last Western, his longest film and the most expensive movie of his career ($4.2 million), but it failed to recoup its costs at the box office and lost about $1 million on its first release. The all-star cast was headed by
Richard Widmark
Richard Weedt Widmark (December 26, 1914March 24, 2008) was an American film, stage, and television actor and producer.
He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film, ''Kiss of Death'' (1947) ...
, with Carroll Baker, Karl Malden,
Dolores del Río, Ricardo Montalbán, Gilbert Roland, Sal Mineo,
James Stewart as Wyatt Earp, Arthur Kennedy (actor), Arthur Kennedy as Doc Holliday,
Edward G. Robinson, Patrick Wayne, Elizabeth Allen (actress), Elizabeth Allen, Mike Mazurki and many of Ford's faithful Stock Company, including
John Carradine
John Carradine ( ; born Richmond Reed Carradine; February 5, 1906 – November 27, 1988) was an American actor, considered one of the greatest character actors in American cinema. He was a member of Cecil B. DeMille's stock company and later ...
,
Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis (born Curtis Wain Gates; July 2, 1916 – April 28, 1991) was an American singer and actor best known for his role as Festus Haggen on the CBS western television series ''Gunsmoke''. Although he appeared on ''Gunsmoke'' earl ...
, Willis Bouchey, James Flavin, Danny Borzage,
Harry Carey Jr., Chuck Hayward,
Ben Johnson Ben, Benjamin or Benny Johnson may refer to:
In sports Association football
* Ben Johnson (footballer, born 2000), English footballer
* Ben Johnson (soccer) (born 1977), American soccer player
Other codes of football
*Ben Johnson (Australian foot ...
,
Mae Marsh
Mae Marsh (born Mary Wayne Marsh; November 9, 1894U.S. Census records for 1900, El Paso, Texas, Sheet No. 6 – February 13, 1968) was an American film actress with a career spanning over 50 years.
Early life
Mae Marsh was born Mary Wayne M ...
and Denver Pyle. William Clothier was nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar and Gilbert Roland was nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Cheyenne elder Dull Knife.
In 1965 Ford began work on ''Young Cassidy'' (MGM), a biographical drama based upon the life of Irish playwright Seán O'Casey, but he fell ill early in the production and was replaced by Jack Cardiff.
Ford's last completed feature film was ''7 Women'' (MGM, 1966), a drama set in about 1935, about missionary women in China trying to protect themselves from the advances of a barbaric Mongolian warlord. Anne Bancroft took over the lead role from Patricia Neal, who suffered a near-fatal stroke two days into shooting. The supporting cast included Margaret Leighton, Flora Robson, Sue Lyon, Mildred Dunnock,
Anna Lee
Anna Lee, MBE (born Joan Boniface Winnifrith; 2 January 1913 – 14 May 2004) was a British actress, labelled by studios "The British Bombshell".
Early life
Anna Lee was born Joan Boniface Winnifrith in Ightham, (pronounced 'Item'), Kent, th ...
, Eddie Albert, Mike Mazurki and
Woody Strode
Woodrow Wilson Woolwine Strode (July 25, 1914 – December 31, 1994) was an American athlete and actor. He was a decathlete and football star who was one of the first Black American players in the National Football League in the postwar era. Aft ...
, with music by Elmer Bernstein. Unfortunately, it was a commercial flop, grossing only about half of its $2.3 million budget. Unusual for Ford, it was shot in continuity for the sake of the performances and he, therefore, exposed about four times as much film as he usually shot. Anna Lee recalled that Ford was "absolutely charming" to everyone and that the only major blow-up came when Flora Robson complained that the sign on her dressing room door did not include her title ("Dame") and as a result, Robson was "absolutely shredded" by Ford in front of the cast and crew.
Ford's next project, ''The Miracle of Merriford'', was scrapped by MGM less than a week before shooting was to have begun. His last completed work was ''Chesty: A Tribute to a Legend'', a documentary on the most decorated U.S. Marine, General Chesty Puller, Lewis B. Puller, with narration by John Wayne, which was made in 1970 but not released until 1976, three years after Ford's death.
Ford's health deteriorated rapidly in the early 1970s; he suffered a broken hip in 1970 which put him in a wheelchair. He had to move from his Bel Air home to a single-level house in Palm Desert, California, near Eisenhower Medical Center, where he was being treated for stomach cancer. The Screen Directors Guild staged a tribute to Ford in October 1972, and in March 1973 the American Film Institute honored him with its first Lifetime Achievement Award at a ceremony which was telecast nationwide, with President Richard Nixon promoting Ford to full Admiral and presenting him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
According to Ford's longtime partner and friend,
John Wayne, Ford could have continued to direct movies. He told Roger Ebert in 1976:
Up until the very last years of his life ... Pappy could have directed another picture, and a damned good one. But they said Pappy was too old. Hell, he was never too old. In Hollywood these days, they don't stand behind a fella. They'd rather make a goddamned legend out of him and be done with him.
Ford died on 31 August 1973 at Palm Desert
[Eyman, Scott]
''Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford''
New York: Simon & Schuster. 1999. (excerpt c/o ''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'') and his funeral was held on 5 September at Hollywood's Church of the Blessed Sacrament. He was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.
Personality and directing style
Personality
Ford was renowned for his intense personality and his many idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. From the early Thirties onwards, he always wore dark glasses and a patch over his left eye, which was only partly to protect his poor eyesight. He was an inveterate pipe-smoker and while he was shooting he would chew on a linen handkerchief—each morning his wife would give him a dozen fresh handkerchiefs, but by the end of a day's filming the corners of all of them would be chewed to shreds. He always had music played on the set and would routinely break for tea (Earl Grey tea, Earl Grey) at mid-afternoon every day during filming. He discouraged chatter and disliked bad language on set; its use, especially in front of a woman, would typically result in the offender being thrown off the production. He rarely drank during the making of a film, but when a production wrapped he would often lock himself in his study, wrapped only in a sheet, and go on a solitary drinking binge for several days, followed by routine contrition and a vow never to drink again. He was extremely sensitive to criticism and was always particularly angered by any comparison between his work and that of his elder brother Francis. He rarely attended premieres or award ceremonies, although his Oscars and other awards were proudly displayed on the mantel in his home.
There were occasional rumors about his sexual preferences,
and in her 2004 autobiography '' 'Tis Herself'',
Maureen O'Hara recalled seeing Ford kissing a famous male actor (whom she did not name) in his office at Columbia Studios.
He was famously untidy, and his study was always littered with books, papers, and clothes. He bought a brand new List of Rolls-Royce motor cars, Rolls-Royce in the 1930s, but never rode in it because his wife, Mary, would not let him smoke in it. His own car, a battered Ford roadster, was so dilapidated and messy that he was once late for a studio meeting because the guard at the studio gate did not believe that the real John Ford would drive such a car, and refused to let him in.
Ford was also notorious for his antipathy towards studio executives. On one early film for Fox he is said to have ordered a guard to keep studio boss
Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl Francis Zanuck (September 5, 1902December 22, 1979) was an American film producer and studio executive; he earlier contributed stories for films starting in the silent era. He played a major part in the Hollywood studio system as one of ...
off the set, and on another occasion, he brought an executive in front of the crew, stood him in profile and announced, "This is an associate producer — take a good look, because you won't be seeing him on this picture again". While shooting ''Rio Grande'' in 1950, producer Herbert Yates and Republic executive Rudy Ralston visited the location and when Yates pointed out the time (it was 10am) and asked when Ford intended to start shooting, Ford barked: "Just as soon as you get the hell off my set!" At dinner, Ford reportedly recruited cast member Alberto Morin to masquerade as an inept French waiter, who proceeded to spill soup over them, break plates and cause general mayhem, but the two executives apparently didn't realise they were the victims of one of Ford's practical jokes.
His pride and joy was his yacht, ''Araner (yacht), Araner'', which he bought in 1934 and on which he lavished hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs and improvements over the years; it became his chief retreat between films and a meeting place for his circle of close friends, including John Wayne and Ward Bond.
Ford was highly intelligent, erudite, sensitive and sentimental, but to protect himself in the cutthroat atmosphere of Hollywood he cultivated the image of a "tough, two-fisted, hard-drinking Irish sonofabitch".
[Gallagher, 1986, p. 381] One famous event, witnessed by Ford's friend, actor Frank Baker, strikingly illustrates the tension between the public persona and the private man. During the Depression, Ford—by then a very wealthy man—was accosted outside his office by a former Universal actor who was destitute and needed $200 for an operation for his wife. As the man related his misfortunes, Ford appeared to become enraged and then, to the horror of onlookers, he launched himself at the man, knocked him to the floor and shouted "How dare you come here like this? Who do think you are to talk to me this way?" before storming out of the room. However, as the shaken old man left the building, Frank Baker saw Ford's business manager Fred Totman meet him at the door, where he handed the man a cheque for $1,000 and instructed Ford's chauffeur to drive him home. There, an ambulance was waiting to take the man's wife to the hospital where a specialist, flown in from San Francisco at Ford's expense, performed the operation. Sometime later, Ford purchased a house for the couple and pensioned them for life. When Baker related the story to Francis Ford, he declared it the key to his brother's personality:
Any moment, if that old actor had kept talking, people would have realized what a softy Jack is. He couldn't have stood through that sad story without breaking down. He's built this whole legend of toughness around himself to protect his softness.
In the book ''Wayne and Ford, The Films, the Friendship, and the Forging of an American Hero'' by Nancy Schoenberger, the author dissects the cultural impact of the masculinity portrayed in Ford's films. In a
interviewwith ''Portland Magazine'', Schoenberger states, "Regarding Ford and Wayne "tweaking the conventions of what a 'man' is today," I think Ford, having grown up with brothers he idolized, in a rough-and-tumble world of boxers, drinkers, and roustabouts, found his deepest theme in male camaraderie, especially in the military, one of the few places where men can express their love for other men. But he was concerned with men acting heroically, thus the most macho guy was not always the most heroic. McLaglen often presented the comic side of blustery masculinity. Ford brought out Wayne's tenderness as well as his toughness, especially in ''Stagecoach''."
General style
Ford had many distinctive stylistic trademarks and a suite of thematic preoccupations and visual and aural Motif (narrative), motifs recurs throughout his work as a director. Film journalist Ephraim Katz summarized some of the keynote features of Ford's work in his Collins ''Film Encyclopedia'' entry:
In contrast to his contemporary Alfred Hitchcock, Ford never used storyboards, composing his pictures entirely in his head, without any written or graphic outline of the shots he would use. Script development could be intense but, once approved, his screenplays were rarely rewritten; he was also one of the first filmmakers to encourage his writers and actors to prepare a full back story for their characters. He hated long expository scenes and was famous for tearing pages out of a script to cut dialogue. During the making of ''
Mogambo
''Mogambo'' is a 1953 Technicolor adventure/ romantic drama film directed by John Ford and starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly, and featuring Donald Sinden. Shot on location in Equatorial Africa, with a musical soundtrack consisti ...
'', when challenged by the film's producer Sam Zimbalist about falling three days behind schedule, Ford responded by tearing three pages out of the script and declaring "We're on schedule" and indeed he never filmed those pages. While making ''Drums Along the Mohawk'', Ford neatly sidestepped the challenge of shooting a large and expensive battle scene—he had
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor. He had a career that spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. He cultivated an everyman screen image in several films considered to be classics.
Born and ra ...
improvise a monologue while firing questions from behind the camera about the course of the battle (a subject on which Fonda was well-versed) and then simply editing out the questions.
He was relatively sparing in his use of camera movements and close-ups, preferring static medium or long shots, with his players framed against dramatic vistas or interiors lit in an Expressionism, Expressionistic style, although he often used panning shots and sometimes used a dramatic dolly in (e.g. John Wayne's first appearance in ''Stagecoach''). Ford is famous for his exciting tracking shots, such as the Apache chase sequence in ''Stagecoach'' or the attack on the Comanche camp in ''The Searchers''.
Recurring visual motifs include trains and wagons—many Ford films begin and end with a linking vehicle such as a train or wagon arriving and leaving—doorways, roads, flowers, rivers, gatherings (parades, dances, meetings, bar scenes, etc.); he also employed gestural motifs in many films, notably the throwing of objects and the lighting of lamps, matches or cigarettes. If a doomed character was shown playing poker (such as Liberty Valance or gunman Tom Tyler in ''Stagecoach''), the last hand he plays is the "dead man's hand, death hand"—two eights and two aces, one of them the ace of spades—so-called because
Wild Bill Hickok
James Butler Hickok (May 27, 1837August 2, 1876), better known as "Wild Bill" Hickok, was a folk hero of the American Old West known for his life on the frontier as a soldier, scout, lawman, gambler, showman, and actor, and for his involvement ...
is said to have held this hand when he was murdered. Many of his sound films include renditions or quotations of his favorite hymn, "Shall We Gather at the River?", such as its parodic use to underscore the opening scenes of ''Stagecoach'', when the prostitute Dallas is being run out of town by local matrons. Character names also recur in many Ford films — the name Quincannon, for example, is used in several films including ''The Lost Patrol'', ''Rio Grande'', ''She Wore A Yellow Ribbon'' and ''Fort Apache'', John Wayne's character is named "Kirby Yorke" in both ''Fort Apache'' and ''Rio Grande'', and the names Tyree and Boone are also recur in several Ford films.
Recent works about Ford's depictions of Native Americans have argued that contrary to popular belief, his Indian characters spanned a range of hostile to sympathetic images from ''
The Iron Horse'' to ''Cheyenne Autumn''. His depiction of the Navajo people, Navajo in ''Wagon Master'' included their characters speaking the Navajo language. The distinguishing mark of Ford's Indian-themed Westerns is that his Native characters always remained separate and apart from white society.
Ford was legendary for his discipline and efficiency on-set and was notorious for being extremely tough on his actors, frequently mocking, yelling and bullying them; he was also infamous for his sometimes sadistic practical jokes. Any actor foolish enough to demand star treatment would receive the full force of his relentless scorn and sarcasm. He once referred to John Wayne as a "big idiot" and even punched Henry Fonda. Henry Brandon (actor), Henry Brandon (who played Chief Scar from ''The Searchers'') once referred to Ford as "the only man who could make John Wayne cry". . He likewise belittled Victor McLaglen, on one occasion reportedly bellowing through the megaphone: "D'ya know, McLaglen, that Fox are paying you $1200 a week to do things that I could get any child off the street to do better?". Stock Company veteran
Ward Bond was reportedly one of the few actors who were impervious to Ford's taunting and sarcasms. Sir Donald Sinden, then a contract star for the Rank Organisation at Pinewood Studios when he starred in ''
Mogambo
''Mogambo'' is a 1953 Technicolor adventure/ romantic drama film directed by John Ford and starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly, and featuring Donald Sinden. Shot on location in Equatorial Africa, with a musical soundtrack consisti ...
'', was not the only person to suffer at the hands of John Ford's notorious behaviour. He recalls "Ten White Hunters were seconded to our unit for our protection and to provide fresh meat. Among them was Marcus, Lord Wallscourt, a delightful man whom Ford treated abysmally—sometimes very sadistically. In Ford's eyes the poor man could do nothing right and was continually being bawled out in front of the entire unit (in some ways he occasionally took the heat off me). None of us could understand the reason for this appalling treatment, which the dear kind man in no way deserved. He himself was quite at a loss. Several weeks later we discovered the cause from Ford's brother-in-law: before emigrating to America, Ford's grandfather had been a labourer on the estate in Republic of Ireland, Ireland of the then Lord Wallscourt: Ford was now getting his own back at his descendant. Not a charming sight." "We now had to return to the MGM-British Studios in London to shoot all the interior scenes. Someone must have pointed out to Ford that he had been thoroughly foul to me during the entire location shoot and when I arrived for my first day's work, I found that he had caused a large notice to be painted at the entrance to our sound stage in capital letters reading BE KIND TO DONALD WEEK. He was as good as his word—for precisely seven days. On the eighth day he ripped the sign down and returned to his normal bullying behaviour."
Ford usually gave his actors little explicit direction, although on occasion he would casually walk through a scene himself, and actors were expected to note every subtle action or mannerism; if they did not, Ford would make them repeat the scene until they got it right, and he would often berate and belittle those who failed to achieve his desired performance. On ''The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'', Ford ran through a scene with Edmond O'Brien and ended by drooping his hand over a railing. O'Brien noticed this but deliberately ignored it, placing his hand ''on'' the railing instead; Ford would not explicitly correct him and he reportedly made O'Brien play the scene forty-two times before the actor relented and did it Ford's way.
Despite his often difficult and demanding personality, many actors who worked with Ford acknowledged that he brought out the best in them. John Wayne remarked that "Nobody could handle actors and crew like Jack." Dobe Carey stated that "He had a quality that made everyone almost kill themselves to please him. Upon arriving on the set, you would feel right away that something special was going to happen. You would feel spiritually awakened all of a sudden." Carey credits Ford with the inspiration of Carey's final film, ''Comanche Stallion'' (2005 in film, 2005).
![John Ford Point - Monument Valley](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/John_Ford_Point_-_Monument_Valley.jpg)
Ford's favorite location for his Western films was southern Utah's
Monument Valley. Although not generally appropriate geographically as a setting for his plots, the expressive visual impact of the area enabled Ford to define images of the American West with some of the most beautiful and powerful cinematography ever shot, in such films as ''Stagecoach'', ''
The Searchers'', and ''
Fort Apache''. A notable example is the famous scene in ''She Wore a Yellow Ribbon'' in which the cavalry troop is photographed against an oncoming storm. The influence on the films of classic Western artists such as Frederic Remington and others has been examined. Ford's evocative use of the territory for his Westerns has defined the images of the American West so powerfully that
Orson Welles once said that other film-makers refused to shoot in the region out of fears of plagiarism.
Ford typically shot only the footage he needed and often filmed in sequence, minimizing the job of his film editors. In the opinion of Joseph McBride, Ford's technique of cutting in the camera enabled him to retain creative control in a period where directors often had little say on the final editing of their films. Ford noted:
I don't give 'em a lot of film to play with. In fact, Eastman used to complain that I exposed so little film. I do cut in the camera. Otherwise, if you give them a lot of film 'the committee' takes over. They start juggling scenes around and taking out this and putting in that. They can't do it with my pictures. I cut in the camera and that's it. There's not a lot of film left on the floor when I'm finished.
Awards and honors
Ford won a total of four
Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
with all of them being for
Best Director, for the films ''
The Informer'' (1935), ''
The Grapes of Wrath'' (1940), ''How Green Was My Valley (film), How Green Was My Valley'' (1941), and ''The Quiet Man'' (1952)—none of them Westerns (also starring in the last two was
Maureen O'Hara, "his favorite actress"). He was also nominated as Best Director for ''Stagecoach'' (1939). He later directed two documentaries, ''The Battle of Midway (film), The Battle of Midway'' and ''December 7th: The Movie, December 7th'', which both won Academy Award for Best Documentary, Best Documentary, although the award was not won by him. To this day Ford holds the record for winning the most Best Director Oscars, having won the award on four occasions.
William Wyler and Frank Capra come in second having won the award three times. Ford was the first director to win consecutive Best Director awards, in 1940 and 1941. This feat was later matched by Joseph L. Mankiewicz exactly ten years later, when he won consecutive awards for Best Director in 1950 and 1951. As a producer, he also received a nomination for Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Picture for ''The Quiet Man''. In 1955 and 1957, Ford was awarde
The George Eastman Award given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film. He was the first recipient of the American Film Institute AFI Life Achievement Award, Life Achievement Award in 1973. Also in that year, Ford was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon.
Ford directed 10 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Victor McLaglen, Thomas Mitchell, Edna May Oliver, Jane Darwell, Henry Fonda, Donald Crisp, Sara Allgood, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly and Jack Lemmon. McLaglen, Mitchell, Darwell, Crisp and Lemmon won an Oscar for one of their roles in one of Ford's movies.
A television special featuring Ford, John Wayne, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda was broadcast over the CBS network on December 5, 1971, called ''The American West of John Ford'', featuring clips from Ford's career interspersed with interviews conducted by Wayne, Stewart, and Fonda, who also took turns narrating the hourlong documentary.
In 2007, Twentieth Century Fox released ''Ford at Fox'', a DVD boxed set of 24 of Ford's films. ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine's Richard Corliss named it one of the "Top 10 DVDs of 2007", ranking it at No. 1.
A statue of Ford in Portland, Maine depicts him sitting in a director's chair. The statue made by New York City, New York sculptor George M. Kelly, cast at Modern Art Foundry, Astoria, NY, and commissioned by Louisiana philanthropist Linda Noe Laine was unveiled on 12 July 1998 at Gorham's Corner in Portland, Maine, United States, as part of a celebration of Ford that was later to include renaming the auditorium of Portland High School (Maine), Portland High School the John Ford Auditorium.
In 2019 Jean-Christophe Klotz released the documentary film ''John Ford, l'homme qui inventa l'Amérique'', about his influence in the legend of the American West in films like ''
Stagecoach'' (1939), ''The Grapes of Wrath'' (1940), ''
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
''The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'' () is a 1962 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and James Stewart. The screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck was adapted from a 1953 short story written by ...
'' (1962) and ''Cheyenne Autumn'' (1964).
Preservation
The Academy Film Archive has preserved a number of John Ford's films, including ''How Green Was My Valley'', ''The Battle of Midway'', ''Drums Along the Mohawk'', ''Sex Hygiene'', ''Torpedo Squadron 8'', and ''Four Sons''.
Academy Awards
Directed Academy Award Performances
Politics
Early in life, Ford's politics were conventionally progressive; his favorite presidents were Democrats Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy and Republican Abraham Lincoln. But despite these leanings, many thought he was a Republican because of his long association with actors
John Wayne,
James Stewart,
Maureen O'Hara, and
Ward Bond.
Ford's attitude to McCarthyism in Hollywood is expressed by a story told by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. A faction of the
Directors Guild of America, led by Cecil B. DeMille, had tried to make it mandatory for every member to sign a loyalty oath. A whispering campaign was being conducted against Mankiewicz, then President of the Guild, alleging he had Communist sympathies. At a crucial meeting of the Guild, DeMille's faction spoke for four hours until Ford spoke against DeMille and proposed a vote of confidence in Mankiewicz, which was passed. His words were recorded by a stenographer:
Mankiewicz's version of events was contested in 2016, with the discovery of the court transcript, which was released as part of the Mankiewicz archives. Mankiewicz's account gives sole credit to Ford in sinking DeMille. The account has several embellishments. DeMille's move to fire Mankiewicz had caused a storm of protest. DeMille was basically on the receiving end of a torrent of attacks from many speakers throughout the meeting and at one point looked like being solely thrown off the guild board.
At this point, Ford rose to speak. His opening was that he rose in defense of the board. He claimed a personal role in a vote of confidence for Joseph Mankiewicz. He then called for an end to politics in the Guild and for it to refocus on working conditions. Ford told the meeting that the guild was formed to "protect ourselves against producers." Ford argued against "putting out derogatory information about a director, whether he is a Communist, beats his mother-in-law, or beats dogs." Ford wanted the debate and the meeting to end as his focus was the unity of the guild. He said that Mankiewicz had been vilified and deserved an apology. His final section was to support DeMille against further calls for his resignation. Ford's words about DeMille were, "And I think that some of the accusations made here tonight were pretty UnAmerican. I mean a group of men have picked on probably the dean of our profession. I don't agree with C. B. DeMille. I admire him. I don't like him, but I admire him. Everything he said tonight he had a right to say. I don't like to hear accusations against him." He concluded by "pleading" with the membership to retain DeMille.
Ford feared that DeMille's exit might have caused the body to disintegrate. His second move was to have the entire board resign, which saved face for DeMille and allowed the issue to be settled without forced resignations. The next day, Ford wrote a letter supporting DeMille and then telephoned, where Ford described DeMille as "a magnificent figure" so far above that "goddamn pack of rats."
At a heated and arduous meeting, Ford went to the defense of a colleague under sustained attack from his peers. He saw the dangers of expelling DeMille. Ford stared down the entire meeting to ensure that DeMille remained in the guild. He then later offered his own resignation – as part of the entire board – to ensure that the guild did not break and allowed DeMille to go without losing face.
As time went on, however, Ford became more publicly allied with the Republican Party, declaring himself a "Maine Republican" in 1947. He said he voted for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 United States presidential election and supported Richard Nixon in 1968 and became a supporter of the Vietnam War. In 1973, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Nixon, whose campaign he had publicly supported.
In 1952, Ford hoped for a Robert A. Taft, Robert Taft/Douglas MacArthur Republican presidential ticket. When Dwight Eisenhower won the nomination, Ford wrote to Taft saying that like "a million other Americans, I am naturally bewildered and hurt by the outcome of the 1952 Republican National Convention, Republican Convention in Chicago."
In 1966, he supported Ronald Reagan in his 1966 California gubernatorial election, governor's race and again for 1970 California gubernatorial election, his reelection in 1970.
Influence
Ford is widely considered to be among the most influential of Hollywood's filmmakers. He was listed as the sixth most influential director of all time b
Flickside Below are some of the people who were directly influenced by Ford, or greatly admired his work:
*
Ingmar Bergman – Said of Ford, "the best director in the world".
* Bahram Beyzai wrote a laudatory critical review of Ford's more famous films in 1961, which is anthologized in Massoud Farasati's 2014 collection of writings by and about Ford in Persian
* Peter Bogdanovich - ''
Directed by John Ford'' (1971)
* Frank Capra
– Referred to Ford as the "king of directors"
* Michael Cimino
* Federico Fellini
* Jean-Luc Godard – Once compared the ending of ''
The Searchers'' to "Ulysses being reunited with Telemachus"
* Howard Hawks
* Alfred Hitchcock
– "A John Ford film was a visual gratification"
* Elia Kazan
* Satoshi Kon took inspiration from Ford's ''Three Godfathers (1936 film), Three Godfathers'' for his animated film ''Tokyo Godfathers'', a riff on Ford's western, set in contemporary Tokyo.
* Stanley Kubrick
*
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...
– "I have respected John Ford from the beginning. Needless to say, I pay close attention to his productions, and I think I am influenced by them."
* David Lean took inspiration from ''
The Searchers'' for his film ''Lawrence of Arabia (film), Lawrence of Arabia''
* Sergio Leone
* George Lucas
* Sam Peckinpah
* Satyajit Ray – "A hallmark is never easy to describe, but the nearest description of Ford's would be a combination of strength and simplicity. The nearest equivalent I can think of is a musical one: middle-period Beethoven."
* Jean Renoir
– After seeing ''
The Informer'', he reportedly told George Seaton: "I learned so much today ... I learned how to not move my camera."
*
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, inclu ...
*
Steven Spielberg - Once encountered Ford on a studio lot in the 1960s, an event he would go on to dramatize in the 2022 film ''The Fabelmans'', with David Lynch as Ford.
* Straub-Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub praised Ford as "the most Bertolt Brecht, Brechtian of all filmmakers"
* Bertrand Tavernier
* François Truffaut
*
John Wayne
*
Orson Welles – When asked to name the directors who most appealed to him, he replied: "I like the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford and John Ford."
* Wim Wenders
* Pedro Costa – "It makes me dream and it makes me come back. I felt so right when I saw a film by John Ford and I was in front of those people. It was a dream thing. It was a real thing."
John Ford Ireland
In December 2011 the Irish Film & Television Awards#Irish Film & Television Academy, Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA), in association with the John Ford Estate and the Irish Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, established "John Ford Ireland", celebrating the work and legacy of John Ford. The Irish Academy stated that through John Ford Ireland, they hope to lay the foundations for honoring, examining and learning from the work and legacy of John Ford, who is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation.
Symposium
The first John Ford Ireland Symposium was held in Dublin, Ireland from 7 to 10 June 2012. The Symposium, designed to draw inspiration from and celebrate Ford's ongoing influence on contemporary cinema, featured a diverse program of events, including a series of screenings, masterclasses, panel discussions, public interviews, and an outdoor screening of ''
The Searchers''.
Guests who attended included Dan Ford, grandson of John Ford; composer Christopher Caliendo conducted the acclaimed RTÉ Concert Orchestra performing his score to Ford's ''
The Iron Horse'', opening the four-day event; author and biographer Joseph McBride (writer), Joseph McBride gave the Symposium's opening lecture; directors Peter Bogdanovich, Stephen Frears, John Boorman, Jim Sheridan, Brian Kirk, Thaddeus O'Sullivan and Sé Merry Doyle participated in a number of events; Irish writers Patrick McCabe (novelist), Patrick McCabe, Colin Bateman, Ian Power and Eoghan Harris examined Ford's work from a screenwriters perspective; Joel Cox delivered an editing masterclass; and composers and musicians, among whom David Holmes (musician), David Holmes and Kyle Eastwood, discussed music for film.
The John Ford Ireland Film Symposium was held again in Dublin in Summer 2013.
John Ford Award
Clint Eastwood received the inaugural John Ford Award in December 2011. It was presented to Mr. Eastwood, at a reception in Burbank, California, by Michael Collins, Irish Ambassador to the United States, Dan Ford, grandson of John Ford, and Áine Moriarty, Chief Executive of the Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA).
Accepting the Award, Mr Eastwood said: "Any kind of association with John Ford is most directors' dream, as he was certainly a pioneer of American filmmaking and I grew up on his films. His Westerns had a great influence on me, as I think they had on everybody. When I worked with Sergio Leone years ago in Italy, his favorite Director was John Ford and he spoke very openly about that influence. I want to thank everybody who is here from the Irish Academy, the John Ford family and thank you to John Ford Ireland."
Filmography
Awards (military and civil)
Ford was awarded the Legion of Merit with "V" device, Combat "V",
[Ford, John, RADM; USN Retired](_blank)
navy.togetherweserved.com. Retrieved January 11, 2022.
Naval History and Heritage Command, United States Navy, navy.mil. Retrieved January 11, 2022. a Purple Heart,
the Meritorious Service Medal (United States), Meritorious Service Medal,
the Air Medal,
the Commendation Medal#Navy.2C Marine_Corps and Coast Guard, Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Combat "V",
the Combat Action Ribbon, Navy Combat Action Ribbon
the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
Remarks on Presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to John Ford.
The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara. Retrieved January 11, 2022. the China Service Medal the American Defense Service Medal with service star, the American Campaign Medal, the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with three Service star, campaign stars, the Asiatic–Pacific Campaign Medal also with three campaign stars,[How Maine Changed the World: A History in 50 People, Places, and Objects](_blank)
Griffin, Nancy (2017). Lanham, Maryland: Down East Books distributed by Rowman & Littlefield, National Book Network, pg 135, (hardcover). (Ebook, e-book). the World War II Victory Medal (United States), World War II Victory Medal, the Navy Occupation Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal with service star, the Korean Service Medal with one campaign star, the Naval Reserve Medal, the Order of National Security Merit, Order of National Security Merit Samil Medal, the United Nations Korea Medal, the Distinguished Marksmanship Ribbon, Distinguished Pistol Shot Ribbon (1952-1959), and the Order of Leopold (Belgium), Belgian Order of Leopold.
See also
* List of film collaborations
References
Further reading
* Brianton, Kevin, ''Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild and the Impact of the Blacklist'', Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2016.
* Evans, Alun, ''Brassey's Guide to War Films'', Brassey's, 2000.
* Lindsay Anderson, ''Never Apologise: The Collected Writings'', London: Plexus, 2004. Republication of "Meeting in Dublin with John Ford: ''The Quiet Man''", ''Sequence'' 14, 1952.
* Lindsay Anderson, ''About John Ford'', London: Plexus, 1981, 1999 edition.
* Peter Bogdanovich, ''John Ford'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, revised 1978.
* Peter Cowie, ''John Ford and the American West'', New York: Harry Abrams Inc., 2004.
* Serge Daney, "John Ford", in Dictionnaire du cinéma, Paris, Éditions universitaires, 1966, ripubblicato in Serge Daney, ''La Maison cinéma et le monde'', 1. Le Temps des Cahiers, 1962–1982, Paris: P.O.L., 2001.
* Toni D'Angela, ''John Ford. Un pensiero per immagini'', Milano, Edizioni Unicopli, 2010.
* Scott Eyman, ''Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford'', New York, 1999.
* Dan Ford, ''The Unquiet Man: The Life of John Ford'', London: Kimber. 1982 (1979).
* Tag Gallagher. ''John Ford: The Man and His Films''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
''La furia umana'', n. 3, 2010
Special issue about John Ford, incorporating texts (in French, Italian, English, Portuguese) by Julio Bressane, Paul Vecchiali, Raymond Bellour, Art Redding, Toni D'Angela, Juan Gorostidi Munguia, Tag Gallagher, Joseph McBride (writer), Joseph McBride, Jacques Aumont, John Zorn, Barry Gifford, Giulio Giorello, Alberto Abruzzese, Eva Truffaut and others.
* Jean Mitry, ''John Ford'', Paris, 1954.
*
* Pippin, Robert B. ''Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy'' (Yale University Press, 2010) 208 pp.
* Patrice Rollet and Nicolás Saada, ''John Ford'', Paris: Editions de l'Etoile/Cahiers du cinéma, 1990.
* Andrew Sinclair, ''John Ford'', New York: Dial Press/J. Wade, 1979.
*
* Koszarski, Richard. 1976. ''Hollywood Directors: 1914-1940''. Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 76-9262.
External links
*
Archival materials
John Ford papers
at the Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington
Criticism
''La furia umana/3''
winter 2010, special about John Ford, texts (in French, Italian, English, Portuguese) by Julio Bressane, Paul Vecchiali, Raymond Bellour, Art Redding, Toni D'Angela, Juan Gorostidi Munguia, Tag Gallagher, Joseph McBride, Jacques Aumont, John Zorn, Barry Gifford, Giulio Giorello, Alberto Abruzzese, Eva Truffaut and others; on www.lafuriaumana.it
The Influence of Western Painting and Genre Painting on the Films of John Ford Ph.D. Dissertation by William Howze, 1986
Official sites
Website for John Ford Ireland
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! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" , Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
, -
, -
! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" , Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
, -
, -
! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" , Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
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, -
! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" , American Film Institute
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ford, John
1894 births
1973 deaths
United States Navy personnel of World War II
Battle of Midway
American people of Irish descent
Best Directing Academy Award winners
Burials at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from stomach cancer
Irish-American history
People from Cape Elizabeth, Maine
Artists from Portland, Maine
Military personnel from Maine
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
United States Navy rear admirals (lower half)
Western (genre) film directors
People of the Office of Strategic Services
Directors Guild of America Award winners
Portland High School (Maine) alumni
AFI Life Achievement Award recipients
Film directors from Maine
Maine Republicans