Directed by John Ford
Encyclopedia
Directed by John Ford is a documentary
film directed by Peter Bogdanovich
. Originally released in 1971, it covers the life and career of film director John Ford
.
, interviwing the veteran filmmaker for a piece in Esquire
magazine, one in a series of profiles of famous directors. Ford, who typically despised interviews, perversely decided to be accommodating after he witnessed a production assistant warning Bogdanovich and his then-wife Polly Platt
about Ford's difficult nature. Ford occasionally found himself exasperated by Bogdanovich's questions, but also enjoyed his company, and amused himself by needling the young man and pulling his leg. Bogdanovich's Esquire piece temporarily produced some measure of friction between the two, as Bogdanovich did not remove the profanity from Ford's quotes in his initial draft, to Ford's displeasure. Ford described it as "nauseating". He was also unhappy with the tone of the piece, entitled "The Autumn of John Ford", because he resented the implication that his time as a director was nearing its end. Despite this, Bogdanovich and Ford remained friends. In 1967, Bogdanovich completed an interview book about Ford, which was published in England. Ford affected a lack of interest in the work, describing it as "a caricature" and claiming that he threw his copy away after reading the first three pages, though in reality he purchased more than 200 copies. The next year, Bogdanovich began working on Directed by John Ford.
Bogdanovich conducted interviews with actors Henry Fonda
, Jimmy Stewart
, and John Wayne
, as well as Ford himself. Orson Welles
delivered an original narration, which was recorded in a Howard Johnson's
while Welles was directing The Other Side of the Wind
, during a 20-minute break in filming. Bogdanovich also interviewed Ford in Monument Valley
, a location Ford had used in some of his own films, producing footage that Bogdanovich described as "one of the funnier sequences in the picture". Ford, who was partially deaf and who did not enjoy discussing his work, would routinely make interviewers sit on the side of his bad ear, and then indicate that he was unable to understand the questions he was being asked. Whenever his interrogators ultimately succeeded in making themselves understood, he would deliver only monosyllabic responses. Ford's behavior in his interview with Bogdanovich accordingly delivered little useful information, but it pleased Bogdanovich anyway because he felt that it was an accurate depiction of Ford's character.
During production, the American Film Institute
exhausted its funding, and was unable to purchase the rights to the film clips of Ford's work used in the documentary. As a result, the film could only be shown in non-profit venues, such as free screenings at film festivals or one fundraiser for PBS
. For this reason, it was rarely seen after its initial release.
The original version of Directed by John Ford was shown at the 1999 Telluride Film Festival
, garnering a strong positive reaction, and this success led Bogdanovich to believe that a re-edited version might be a viable option. He delivered a pitch to producer Frank Marshall, an old friend with whom he had first worked on the 1968 film Targets
, promising to "use all the good stuff and do some interviews with new people and jazz it up a little bit and make it more commercial, faster and incisive, and also more revealing." Marshall, in turn, brokered a deal with Turner Classic Movies
and Warner Home Video
.
When re-editing the film, Bogdanovich started with the original set of interviews with Fonda, Ford, Stewart, and Wayne, as well as the Welles narration. To supplement them, he conducted additional interviews with actors Harry Carey, Jr.
, Clint Eastwood
and Maureen O'Hara
, and directors Martin Scorsese
, Steven Spielberg
, and Walter Hill. He also recorded some additional commentary of his own.
The revised documentary was subsequently aired on the Turner Classic Movies channel, as part of a month-long tribute to Ford.
characterized the initial cut of the film as a "piece of lightweight scholarship", in which Ford's "every blemish is a virtue, and no detail is too trivial to examine." Though dismissive of Bogdanovich's critical analysis within the film, the reviewer was more positive about the interview segments, in which Fonda, Stewart, and Wayne displayed the "terror and awe" of young and callow actors when discussing Ford. Reviewing the film for the New York Times, critic Roger Greenspun
praised it as "workmanlike, amusing, [and] instructive," and noted that on several occasions he was "moved literally to tears" while watching it. However, he also expressed disappointment that the film did not place the end of Ford's career into what he felt to be the proper context, ignoring films such as Donovan's Reef
and 7 Women
, and glossing over the modest critical and box-office reception that characterized the end of Ford's career.
Ford was honored at a high-profile Hollywood event on November 23, 1973, which included a showing of Directed by John Ford. When asked what he had thought of the film, Ford had said that it was "long, and the print was bad".
, Todd McCarthy was largely positive. He praised the interviews with Fonda, Stewart, and Wayne, describing them as "possessing an extraordinary here-and-now immediacy", and found the interview with Ford "hilarious". He was less enthusiastic about some of the newer interviews, which were shot on video, feeling that they lacked the "vibrant look" and "elegant mobility" of the earlier interviews, recorded on film by a dolly-mounted camera. He did, however, single out Lindsay Anderson
's 1992 interview with Maureen O'Hara
, a deathbed recording of Ford speaking with Katharine Hepburn
, and a more honest treatment of Ford's personal life illustrated by scenes from How Green Was My Valley
as worthwhile additions to the updated version.
. It was to have starred Fonda, Stewart, and Wayne, but Bogdanovich claims that Ford talked Wayne out of participating, causing the project's collapse. Boganovich voiced the belief that the work "would have been my masterpiece," but was unwilling to speak about Ford's motives in acting as he did.
Bodganovich later developed a one-man stage show called "Sacred Monsters," in which he related anecdotes about his filmmaking career and performed impressions
, including one of Ford.
Documentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
film directed by Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...
. Originally released in 1971, it covers the life and career of film director John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
.
Production
Bogdanovich first met John Ford in 1963, on the set of Ford's film Cheyenne AutumnCheyenne Autumn
Cheyenne Autumn is a 1964 western starring Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, James Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson. Regarded as an epic film it tells the story of a factual event, the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878-9, although it is told in 'Hollywood style' using a great degree of artistic license...
, interviwing the veteran filmmaker for a piece in Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
magazine, one in a series of profiles of famous directors. Ford, who typically despised interviews, perversely decided to be accommodating after he witnessed a production assistant warning Bogdanovich and his then-wife Polly Platt
Polly Platt
Mary Marr "Polly" Platt was an American film producer, production designer and screenwriter.-Early life:Platt was born Mary Marr Platt in Fort Sheridan, Illinois on January 29, 1939, later using the name Polly. Her father John was a colonel in the army while her mother Vivian worked in...
about Ford's difficult nature. Ford occasionally found himself exasperated by Bogdanovich's questions, but also enjoyed his company, and amused himself by needling the young man and pulling his leg. Bogdanovich's Esquire piece temporarily produced some measure of friction between the two, as Bogdanovich did not remove the profanity from Ford's quotes in his initial draft, to Ford's displeasure. Ford described it as "nauseating". He was also unhappy with the tone of the piece, entitled "The Autumn of John Ford", because he resented the implication that his time as a director was nearing its end. Despite this, Bogdanovich and Ford remained friends. In 1967, Bogdanovich completed an interview book about Ford, which was published in England. Ford affected a lack of interest in the work, describing it as "a caricature" and claiming that he threw his copy away after reading the first three pages, though in reality he purchased more than 200 copies. The next year, Bogdanovich began working on Directed by John Ford.
Bogdanovich conducted interviews with actors Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
, Jimmy Stewart
James Stewart (actor)
James Maitland Stewart was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and his everyman persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...
, and John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
, as well as Ford himself. Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
delivered an original narration, which was recorded in a Howard Johnson's
Howard Johnson's
Howard Johnson's is a chain of hotels and restaurants, located primarily throughout the United States and Canada. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Howard Johnson's was the largest restaurant chain in the United States, with over 1,000 restaurants...
while Welles was directing The Other Side of the Wind
The Other Side of the Wind
The Other Side of the Wind is an unfinished film directed by Orson Welles, shot between 1969 and 1976, and starring John Huston, Bob Random, Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg and Oja Kodar.-Summary:...
, during a 20-minute break in filming. Bogdanovich also interviewed Ford in Monument Valley
Monument Valley
Monument Valley is a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by a cluster of vast sandstone buttes, the largest reaching above the valley floor. It is located on the northern border of Arizona with southern Utah , near the Four Corners area...
, a location Ford had used in some of his own films, producing footage that Bogdanovich described as "one of the funnier sequences in the picture". Ford, who was partially deaf and who did not enjoy discussing his work, would routinely make interviewers sit on the side of his bad ear, and then indicate that he was unable to understand the questions he was being asked. Whenever his interrogators ultimately succeeded in making themselves understood, he would deliver only monosyllabic responses. Ford's behavior in his interview with Bogdanovich accordingly delivered little useful information, but it pleased Bogdanovich anyway because he felt that it was an accurate depiction of Ford's character.
During production, the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
exhausted its funding, and was unable to purchase the rights to the film clips of Ford's work used in the documentary. As a result, the film could only be shown in non-profit venues, such as free screenings at film festivals or one fundraiser for PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
. For this reason, it was rarely seen after its initial release.
Revised version
Bogdanovich had long been dissatisfied with the initial version of the film, for several reasons. In addition to the rights issues, he felt that some of the film clips used came across as "a little long and lugubrious", and he was unhappy that the film did not go into sufficient depth when exploring certain aspects of Ford's personal life, which were either unknown at the time the film was made or too controversial to include during Ford's lifetime.The original version of Directed by John Ford was shown at the 1999 Telluride Film Festival
Telluride Film Festival
The Telluride Film Festival was started in 1974 by Bill and Stella Pence, Tom Luddy and Jim Card in the town of Telluride, Colorado, United States. It is operated by the National Film Preserve....
, garnering a strong positive reaction, and this success led Bogdanovich to believe that a re-edited version might be a viable option. He delivered a pitch to producer Frank Marshall, an old friend with whom he had first worked on the 1968 film Targets
Targets
Targets is a thriller film written, produced and directed by Peter Bogdanovich.-Plot summary:The story concerns a quiet insurance agent / Vietnam veteran, played by Tim O'Kelly, who murders his young wife, his mother and a grocery delivery boy at home and then initiates an afternoon shooting...
, promising to "use all the good stuff and do some interviews with new people and jazz it up a little bit and make it more commercial, faster and incisive, and also more revealing." Marshall, in turn, brokered a deal with Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
and Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video is the home video unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Video . The company launched in the United States with twenty films on VHS and Betamax videocassettes in late 1979...
.
When re-editing the film, Bogdanovich started with the original set of interviews with Fonda, Ford, Stewart, and Wayne, as well as the Welles narration. To supplement them, he conducted additional interviews with actors Harry Carey, Jr.
Harry Carey, Jr.
Harry Carey, Jr. is an American film actor. He appeared in over 90 films. He is mostly remembered for appearing in Western films — notably those by his friend John Ford — and in television programs.-Early life:...
, Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
and Maureen O'Hara
Maureen O'Hara
Maureen O'Hara is an Irish film actress and singer. The famously red-headed O'Hara has been noted for playing fiercely passionate heroines with a highly sensible attitude. She often worked with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne...
, and directors Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
, Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
, and Walter Hill. He also recorded some additional commentary of his own.
The revised documentary was subsequently aired on the Turner Classic Movies channel, as part of a month-long tribute to Ford.
1971 version
An unattributed review in Time magazineTime (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
characterized the initial cut of the film as a "piece of lightweight scholarship", in which Ford's "every blemish is a virtue, and no detail is too trivial to examine." Though dismissive of Bogdanovich's critical analysis within the film, the reviewer was more positive about the interview segments, in which Fonda, Stewart, and Wayne displayed the "terror and awe" of young and callow actors when discussing Ford. Reviewing the film for the New York Times, critic Roger Greenspun
Roger Greenspun
Roger Greenspun was an American journalist and noted film critic. He is best known for his work with The New York Times in which he reviewed near 400 films, particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and for Penthouse in which he was a columnist throughout much of the late 1970s and 1980s...
praised it as "workmanlike, amusing, [and] instructive," and noted that on several occasions he was "moved literally to tears" while watching it. However, he also expressed disappointment that the film did not place the end of Ford's career into what he felt to be the proper context, ignoring films such as Donovan's Reef
Donovan's Reef
Donovan's Reef is a 1963 American film starring John Wayne. It was directed John Ford and filmed on location on Kauai, Hawaii.The cast included Elizabeth Allen, Lee Marvin, Dorothy Lamour, and Cesar Romero. The film marked the last time Ford and Wayne ever worked together on a...
and 7 Women
7 Women
7 Women, also known as Seven Women, is a 1966 film drama made by MGM. It was directed by John Ford, produced by Bernard Smith and John Ford, from a screenplay by Janet Green and John McCormick, based on the story Chinese Finale by Norah Lofts. The music score was by Elmer Bernstein and the...
, and glossing over the modest critical and box-office reception that characterized the end of Ford's career.
Ford was honored at a high-profile Hollywood event on November 23, 1973, which included a showing of Directed by John Ford. When asked what he had thought of the film, Ford had said that it was "long, and the print was bad".
2006 version
In a review published in VarietyVariety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
, Todd McCarthy was largely positive. He praised the interviews with Fonda, Stewart, and Wayne, describing them as "possessing an extraordinary here-and-now immediacy", and found the interview with Ford "hilarious". He was less enthusiastic about some of the newer interviews, which were shot on video, feeling that they lacked the "vibrant look" and "elegant mobility" of the earlier interviews, recorded on film by a dolly-mounted camera. He did, however, single out Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...
's 1992 interview with Maureen O'Hara
Maureen O'Hara
Maureen O'Hara is an Irish film actress and singer. The famously red-headed O'Hara has been noted for playing fiercely passionate heroines with a highly sensible attitude. She often worked with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne...
, a deathbed recording of Ford speaking with Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...
, and a more honest treatment of Ford's personal life illustrated by scenes from How Green Was My Valley
How Green Was My Valley
How Green Was My Valley is a 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, telling the story through narration of the main character, of his Welsh family and the mining community in which they live. The author had claimed to have based the book on his own knowledge of the Gilfach Goch area, but this was proven...
as worthwhile additions to the updated version.
Bogdanovich and Ford
According to Bogdanovich, Ford was instrumental in breaking up a planned film called "The Streets of Laredo," after the song of the same nameStreets of Laredo (song)
"Streets of Laredo" , also known as the "Cowboy's Lament", is a famous American cowboy ballad in which a dying cowboy tells his story to a living one. Derived from the English folk song "The Unfortunate Lad", it has become a folk music standard, and as such has been performed, recorded and adapted...
. It was to have starred Fonda, Stewart, and Wayne, but Bogdanovich claims that Ford talked Wayne out of participating, causing the project's collapse. Boganovich voiced the belief that the work "would have been my masterpiece," but was unwilling to speak about Ford's motives in acting as he did.
Bodganovich later developed a one-man stage show called "Sacred Monsters," in which he related anecdotes about his filmmaking career and performed impressions
Impressionist (entertainment)
An impressionist or a mimic is a performer whose act consists of imitating the voice and mannerisms of others. The word usually refers to a professional comedian/entertainer who specializes in such performances and has developed a wide repertoire of impressions, including adding to them, often to...
, including one of Ford.