John Ford
Encyclopedia
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
. His four Academy Awards
for Best Director (1935, 1940, 1941, 1952) is a record, and one of those films, How Green Was My Valley
, also won Best Picture.
In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Ford directed more than 140 films (although nearly all of his silent film
s are now lost) and he is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. Ford's films and personality were held in high regard by his colleagues, with Ingmar Bergman
and Orson Welles
among those who have named him as one of the greatest directors of all time.
In particular, Ford was a pioneer of location shooting
and the long shot
which frames his characters against a vast, harsh and rugged natural terrain.
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
, County Galway
, Ireland in 1854. Barbara Curran had been born in the Aran Islands
, in the town of Kilronan
on the island of Inishmore (Inis Mór). John A. Feeney's grandmother, Barbara Morris, was said to be a member of a local (impoverished) gentry family, the Morrises of Spiddal, headed at present by Lord Killanin.
John Augustine and Barbara Curran arrived in Boston and Portland
respectively within a few days of each other in May and June 1872. They were married in 1875, and became American citizens five years later on September 11, 1880. They 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). John Augustine lived in the Munjoy Hill
neighborhood of Portland, Maine
with his family, and would try farming, fishing, working for the gas company, running a saloon, and being an alderman.
Feeney attended Portland High School, Portland, Maine
. He moved to California and began acting and working in film production for his older brother Francis
in 1914, taking "Jack Ford" as a stage name. In addition to credited roles, he appeared uncredited as a Klansman
in D.W. Griffith's 1915
classic, The Birth of a Nation
, as the man who lifts up one side of his hood so he can see clearly. He married Mary McBryde Smith, on July 3, 1920, and they had two children. His daughter Barbara was married to singer and actor Ken Curtis
from 1952 to 1964. The Ford marriage lasted until his death, although he had many extramarital relationships.
before becoming a movie actor. Francis played in hundreds of silent pictures for Thomas Edison
, Georges Melies
and Thomas Ince
, eventually progressing to become a prominent Hollywood actor-writer-director with his own production company (101 Bison) at Universal
.
Jack 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 (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 afterward.
One notable feature of John 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 silents), Will Rogers
, John Wayne
, Henry Fonda
, Maureen O'Hara
, James Stewart
, Woody Strode
, Richard Widmark
, Victor McLaglen
, 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
, Chill Wills
, Andy Devine
, Ward Bond
, Grant Withers
, Mae Marsh
, Anna Lee
, Harry Carey, Jr.
, Ken Curtis
, Frank Baker, Dolores del Río
, Pedro Armendáriz
, Hank Worden
, John Qualen
, Barry Fitzgerald
, Arthur Shields
, John Carradine
, O.Z. Whitehead
and Carleton Young
. 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
, Dudley Nichols
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
, Gregg Toland
, Winton Hoch
, Charles Lawton Jr., Bert Glennon
, Archie Stout
and William H. Clothier
.
, 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 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 on 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 debut 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
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
(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 buffalo, 2000 horses, 10,000 cattle and 50,000 properties, including the original stagecoach used by Horace Greeley
, Wild Bill Hickok
's derringer
pistol and replicas of the "Jupiter
" and "119
" locomotives that met at Promontory Point when the two ends of the line were joined on 10 May 1869.
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
(1926), set during the Dakota land rush and filmed at Jackson Hole
, 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
, a forerunner to today's Directors Guild of America
.
(1928) of which only three 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 in Ford's next two movies. Ford also directed Fox's first all-talking dramatic feature Napoleon's Barber (1928), a 3-reeler which is also now lost.
Just before the studio converted to talkies, Fox gave a contract to the German director F. W. Murnau, and his film Sunrise
(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—his penultimate silent feature Four Sons
(1928), starring Victor McLaglen, was filmed on some of the lavish sets left over from Murnau's production. Ford's last silent feature Hangman's House
(1928) is notable as one of the first credited screen appearances by John Wayne
.
Napoleon's Barber was followed by Riley the Cop
(1928) and Strong Boy
(1929), starring Victor McLaglen
, both of which are 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
is Ford's first complete surviving talking picture; 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 1929–1942 inclusive. Three films were released in 1929—Strong Boy
, The Black Watch
and Salute. His three films of 1930 were Men Without Women
, Born Reckless
and Up the River
, 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
and Arrowsmith
; the last-named, adapted from the Sinclair Lewis
novel and starring Ronald Colman
and Helen Hayes
, marked Ford's first Academy Awards
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 and 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 being paid $300–600 per week, but as his career took off in the mid-Twenties his annual income significantly increased. He earned nearly $134,000 in 1929, and he 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—Airmail
(made for Universal) with a young Ralph Bellamy
and Flesh
(for MGM) with Wallace Beery
. In 1933, he returned to Fox for Pilgrimage
and Doctor Bull
, the first of his three films with Will Rogers
.
The World War I desert drama The Lost Patrol
(1934), based on the book Patrol by Philip MacDonald
, was a superior remake of the 1929 silent film Lost Patrol
. It starred Victor McLaglen
as The Sergeant—the role played by his brother Cyril McLaglen
in the earlier version—with Boris Karloff
, Wallace Ford
, 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 and The New York Times
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
with Madeleine Carroll
and Franchot Tone
, and the highly successful Judge Priest
, his second film with Will Rogers, which became one of the top-grossing movies of the year.
Ford's first film of 1935 (made for Columbia
) was the mistaken-identity comedy The Whole Town's Talking
with Edward G. Robinson
and Jean Arthur
, 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
drama The Informer (1935), starring Victor McLaglen. It earned great critical praise, was nominated for Best Picture, won Ford his first Academy Award 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
—explored the little-known story of Samuel Mudd
, a physician who was caught up in the Abraham Lincoln assassination
conspiracy and consigned to an offshore prison for treating the injured John Wilkes 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. The longer revised version of Directed by John Ford shown on Turner Classic Movies
in November, 2006 features directors Steven Spielberg
, Clint Eastwood
, and Martin Scorsese
, who suggest that the string of classic films Ford directed during 1936 to 1941 was due in part to an intense six-month extra-marital affair with Katharine Hepburn
, the star of Mary of Scotland
(1936), an Elizabethan costume drama.
.
The Dudley Nichols
–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
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, ironically, 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
' 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 and David O. Selznick
before finally linking with Walter Wanger, an independent producer working through United Artists
.
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 singlehandedly 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
.
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 twenty-four of Ford's films (and three TV episodes). Ford is credited with playing a major role in shaping Wayne's screen image.
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
, 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
(1939) was a lavish frontier drama co-starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert
; it was also Ford's first movie in color and included uncredited script contributions by William Faulkner
. It was a big box-office success, grossing $1.25 million in its first year in the US and earning Edna May Oliver
a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance.
Despite its uncompromising communist political stance, Ford's screen adaptation of John Steinbeck
's The Grapes of Wrath
(scripted by Nunnally Johnson
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
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 USA in its first year and won two Academy Awards—Ford's second 'Best Director' Oscar, and 'Best Supporting Actress' for Jane Darwell's tour-de-force portrayal of Ma Joad.
The Grapes of Wrath was followed by two less successful and lesser known films. The Long Voyage Home
(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 himself. 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 (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
, adapted from the long-running Jack Kirkland stage version of the novel by Erskine Caldwell
. It starred veteran actor Charley Grapewin and the supporting cast included Ford regulars Ward Bond
and Mae Marsh
, with Francis Ford in an uncredited bit part; it is also notable for early screen appearances by future stars Gene Tierney
and Dana Andrews
. 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. According to IMDb, the film was banned in Australia for unspecified reasons.
Ford's last feature before America entered World War II was his screen adaptation of How Green Was My Valley
(1941), starring Walter Pidgeon
, 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 Robert Llewellyn
. It was originally planned as a four-hour epic to rival 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, so it was shot at Fox's San Fernando Valley ranch instead; 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
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 1940. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards including Best Supporting Actress (Sara Allgood
), Best Editing, Best Script, Best Music and Best Sound and it won five Oscars—Best Director, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp
), 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 USA and taking almost $3 million against its sizable budget of $1,250,000. 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).
and as head of the photographic unit for the Office of Strategic Services
, made documentaries for the Navy Department. He won two more Academy Awards during this time, one for the semi-documentary The Battle of Midway
(1942), and a second for the propaganda
film December 7th
(1943). Commander Ford was a veteran of the Battle of Midway
, where he was wounded in the arm by shrapnel while filming the Japanese attack from the power plant of Sand Island on Midway.
Ford was also present on Omaha Beach
on D-Day
. He crossed the English Channel
on the , anchored off Omaha Beach at 0600 where he observed the first wave land on the beach from the ship, landing on the beach himself later with a team of US Coast Guard 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. Ford eventually rose to become a top adviser to OSS head William Joseph Donovan
. 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.
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
squadron and its commander. 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
. 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.
in the United States Navy Reserve
.Ford directed sixteen features and several documentaries in the decade between 1946 and 1956. As with his prewar 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
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
as sultry saloon girl Chihuahua, a strong performance by Walter Brennan
(in a rare villainous role) as the venomous Old Man Clanton, with Jane Darwell and an early screen appearance by John Ireland
as Billy Clanton. In contrast to the string of successes in 1939–41, 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 USA and $1.75 million internationally in its first year of release.
, originally founded after the success of Stagecoach. The Fugitive
(1946), again starring Fonda, was the first project of the Argosy Productions enterprise. It was a loose adaptation of Grahame Greene's The Power and the Glory
, 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
(who later worked with Luis Buñuel
). The supporting cast included Dolores Del Rio
, J. Carroll Naish, Ward Bond
, Leo Carillo and Mel Ferrer
(making his screen debut) 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 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 the year Ford also assisted his friend and colleague Howard Hawks
, who was having problems with his current 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 1916 silent film starring Harry Carey (to whom Ford's version was dedicated), which Ford had himself already remade in 1919 as Marked Men, also with Carey and thought lost. It starred John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz
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.
In 1949 Ford briefly returned to Fox to direct 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
, 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 1950 Academy Award for Best Color Cinematography and it did big business on its first release, grossing more than $5m worldwide. John Wayne, then 41, also received wide praise for his role as the 60-year-old Capt. Nathan Brittles.
, 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
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 his personal favorite of all his films, telling Peter Bogdanovich
that it "came closest to what I had hoped to achieve".
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 $2.25m 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 USA 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), 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 ($2m).
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
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
(MGM, 1953), a loose remake of the celebrated 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
), Mogamabo became one of the biggest commercial hits of Ford's career, with the highest domestic first-year gross of any of his films ($5.2m); 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, starring Henry Fonda
, 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 the 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 Theatre series; it starred Jane Wyman
with an Asian-American cast and Stock Company veterans Frank Baker and Pat O'Malley in minor roles.
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 regarded by many as the greatest western ever made, 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
(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 $4.45m, although it received no Academy Award nominations. However its reputation has grown greatly over the intervening years—it was named the 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
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 Brothers Presents TV show, (the studio's first foray into TV) which aired on the 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 "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
(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 British tycoon 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 ($100k) 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 (titled Gideon of Scotland Yard in the USA) 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". 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
, (Columbia, 1958), again set in present day of the '50s, 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 although cast member Anna Lee
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 U.S. Department of Defense as an orientation film for US soldiers stationed there. It was followed by his next feature, The Horse Soldiers
(Mirisch Company-United Artists, 1959), a Civil War story starring John Wayne and William Holden
. Although Ford professed unhappiness with the project, it was a commercial success, ranking in the year's Top 20 box-office hits, grossing $3.6m in its first year, and earning Ford his highest-ever fee—$375,000, plus 10% of the gross.
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
) 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 the year 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
, 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
, with Shirley Jones
and Stock Company regulars Andy Devine
, 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
(Ford Productions-Paramount, 1962) is frequently cited as the last great film of Ford's career. It co-starred John Wayne and James Stewart
, with Vera Miles
, Edmund O'Brien, Andy Devine
as the inept marshal, Denver Pyle
, John Carradine
and Lee Marvin
in one of his first major roles as the brutal Valance, with Lee Van Cleef
and Strother Martin
as his henchmen. It is also notable as the film in which Wayne first used his trademark phrase "Pilgrim" (his nickname for James Stewart's character). It was very successful, grossing over $3m in its first year, although the lead casting stretched credibility—the characters played by Stewart (then 53) and Wayne (then 54) were meant to be in their early 20s, 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. 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
, the first non-documentary film to use the Cinerama
wide-screen process. Ford's segment featured George Peppard
, with Andy Devine
, Russ Tamblyn
, Harry Morgan
as Ulysses S. Grant
and John Wayne as William Tecumseh Sherman
. 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."
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 Elizabeth Allen, Lee Marvin
, Jack Warden
, Dorothy Lamour
, and Cesar Romero
. It was also Ford's last commercial success, grossing $3.3m against a budget of $2.6m.
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 ($4.2m), but it failed to recoup its costs at the box office and lost about $1m on its first release. The all-star cast was headed by Richard Widmark
, with Carroll Baker
, Karl Malden
, Dolores del Río
, Ricardo Montalbán
, Gilbert Roland
, Sal Mineo
, James Stewart
as Wyatt Earp, Arthur Kennedy
as Doc Holliday, Edward G. Robinson
, Patrick Wayne
, Elizabeth Allen, Mike Mazurki
and many of Ford's faithful Stock Company, including John Carradine
, Ken Curtis
, Willis Bouchey
, James Flavin
, Danny Borzage, Harry Carey Jr, Chuck Hayward
, Ben Johnson
, Mae Marsh
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 Sean 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 about missionary women in China ca. 1935 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
, Eddie Albert
, Mike Mazurki
and Woody Strode
, with music by Elmer Bernstein
. Unfortunately it was a commercial flop, grossing only about half of its $2.3m budget. Unusually 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 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, and had to move from his Bel Air home to a single-level house in Palm Desert, near Eisenhower Medical Center
, where he was being treated for cancer. In October 1972 the Screen Directors Guild staged a tribute to Ford 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
.
Ford died on 31 August 1973 at Palm Desert, California, and his funeral was held on 5 September at Hollywood's Church of the Blessed Sacrament. He was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery
in Culver City, California
.
) 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 older brother Francis. He almost never attended premieres or award ceremonies, although his Oscars and other awards were proudly displayed on the mantle in his home.
He was famously untidy, and his study was always littered with books, papers and clothes. He bought a brand new 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 he was John Ford the famous director, and refused to let him in. He 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
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".
His pride and joy was his 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" (Harry "Dobe" Carey Jr). 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. Some time 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:
Although Ford had many affairs with women, 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.
s recurs throughout his work as a director. Film journalist Ephraim Katz
summarised some of the keynote features of Ford's work in his Collins Film Enclopedia 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 one film, when challenged by a studio executive about falling behind schedule, Ford responded by tearing an entire scene out of the script and declaring "There, now we're all caught up!", and indeed he never filmed the scene. While making Drums Along the Mohawk, Ford neatly sidestepped the challenge of shooting a large and expensive battle scene—he had Henry Fonda
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 Expressionistic
style, although he often used panning shots and sometimes used a dramatic zoom-in (e.g. John Wayne's first appearance in Stagecoach). Ford is justly famous for his exciting tracking shots, such as the 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 "death hand
"—two eights and two aces, one of them the ace of spades—so-called because Wild Bill Hickok
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.
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 (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 known, 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.
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 Edmund 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." and 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
).
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
, 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:
. Four of these were for Best Director for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath
(1940), 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 won two Oscars for Best Documentary for The Battle of Midway
and December 7th
. 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 received nominations for Best Picture for The Quiet Man
and The Long Voyage Home
. He was the first recipient of the American Film Institute
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 Oscar for one of their roles in one of Fords 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's Richard Corliss
named it one of the "Top 10 DVDs of 2007", ranking it at #1.
A statue of Ford in Portland, Maine
depicts him sitting in a director's chair. The statue made by New York
sculptor George M. Kelly and commissioned by Louisiana philanthropst Linda Noe Laine was unveiled on 12 July 1998 at Gorham's Corner in Portland, Maine
, United State, as part of a celebration of Ford that was later to include renaming the auditorium of Portland High School the John Ford Auditorium.
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
. Time
magazine editor Whittaker Chambers
wrote a harsh review of The Grapes of Wrath
as left-wing propaganda, assuming Steinbeck, the author, and Ford to be of that political stripe.
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 court stenographer:
As time went on, however, Ford became more publicly allied with the Republican Party, declaring himself a 'Maine Republican' in 1947. He voted for Barry Goldwater
in 1964 and 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.
Ford scholar Tag Gallagher asserts that Ford was "essentially apolitical", although he also notes that the director became an ardent supporter of the Irish Republican Army
after his first visit to Ireland in the 1920s and that he channelled funds to the IRA for the rest of his career.
. Below are some of the people who were directly influenced by Ford, or greatly admired his work:
|-
! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Academy Awards
|-
|-
! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Academy Awards
|-
|-
! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Academy Awards
|-
|-
! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | American Film Institute
|-
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
. He was famous for both his westerns
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
such as Stagecoach, The Searchers
The Searchers (film)
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...
, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a 1962 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring James Stewart and John Wayne. The black-and-white film was released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck was adapted from a short story written by Dorothy M...
, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath (film)
The Grapes of Wrath is a 1940 drama film directed by John Ford. It was based on John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F...
. His four Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for Best Director (1935, 1940, 1941, 1952) is a record, and one of those films, How Green Was My Valley
How Green Was My Valley (film)
How Green Was My Valley is a 1941 drama film directed by John Ford. The film, based on the 1939 Richard Llewellyn novel, was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and written by Philip Dunne. The film stars Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, and Roddy McDowall...
, also won Best Picture.
In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Ford directed more than 140 films (although nearly all of his silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
s are now lost) and he is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. Ford's films and personality were held in high regard by his colleagues, with Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
and 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...
among those who have named him as one of the greatest directors of all time.
In particular, Ford was a pioneer of location shooting
Location shooting
Location shooting is the practice of filming in an actual setting rather than on a sound stage or back lot. In filmmaking a location is any place where a film crew will be filming actors and recording their dialog. A location where dialog is not recorded may be considered as a second unit...
and the long shot
Long shot
In photography, filmmaking and video production, a long shot typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings...
which frames his characters against a vast, harsh and rugged natural terrain.
Early life
Ford was born John Martin "Jack" Feeney (though he later often gave his given names as Sean Aloysius, sometimes with surname O'Feeny or O'Fearna; an Irish languageIrish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
equivalent of Feeney) in Cape Elizabeth, Maine
Cape Elizabeth, Maine
Cape Elizabeth is a town in Cumberland County, Maine, United States. The town is part of the Portland–South Portland–Biddeford, Maine metropolitan statistical area...
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
Spiddal is a village on the shore of Galway Bay in County Galway in Ireland. It is west of Galway city on the R336 road. Spiddal is on the eastern side of the county's Gaeltacht near Connemara, and is a tourist centre with a scenic beach, harbour, and shore fishing.-The village:The Mac...
, County Galway
County Galway
County Galway is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the city of Galway. Galway County Council is the local authority for the county. There are several strongly Irish-speaking areas in the west of the county...
, Ireland in 1854. Barbara Curran had been born in the Aran Islands
Aran Islands
The Aran Islands or The Arans are a group of three islands located at the mouth of Galway Bay, on the west coast of Ireland. They constitute the barony of Aran in County Galway, Ireland...
, in the town of Kilronan
Kilronan
Cill Rónáin is the main settlement on Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. The ferries serving the island call at Doolin, County Clare and also Rossaveal, County Galway. The main industries are fishing and tourism. School children also visit to improve their Irish at...
on the island of Inishmore (Inis Mór). John A. Feeney's grandmother, Barbara Morris, was said to be a member of a local (impoverished) gentry family, the Morrises of Spiddal, headed at present by Lord Killanin.
John Augustine and Barbara Curran arrived in Boston and Portland
Portland, Maine
Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...
respectively within a few days of each other in May and June 1872. They were married in 1875, and became American citizens five years later on September 11, 1880. They had eleven children: Mamie (Mary Agnes), born 1876; Delia (Edith), 1878–1881; Patrick; Francis Ford
Francis Ford (actor)
Francis Ford was a prolific film actor, writer, and director. He was the older brother of film director John Ford. He also appeared in many of John Ford's movies, including Young Mr. Lincoln and The Quiet Man.He starred in the 1912 two-reeler The Deserter by Thomas H. Ince and acted in over 400...
, 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). John Augustine lived in the Munjoy Hill
Munjoy Hill
Munjoy Hill is an historically Irish-American neighborhood and prominent geographical feature of Portland, Maine. It is located east of downtown, and south of East Deering, the neighborhood it is connected to by Tukey's Bridge.-Geography:...
neighborhood of Portland, Maine
Portland, Maine
Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...
with his family, and would try farming, fishing, working for the gas company, running a saloon, and being an alderman.
Feeney attended Portland High School, Portland, Maine
Portland High School, Portland, Maine
Portland High School is a public high school in Portland, Maine which educates grades 9–12. The school is part of the Portland Public Schools district....
. He moved to California and began acting and working in film production for his older brother Francis
Francis Ford (actor)
Francis Ford was a prolific film actor, writer, and director. He was the older brother of film director John Ford. He also appeared in many of John Ford's movies, including Young Mr. Lincoln and The Quiet Man.He starred in the 1912 two-reeler The Deserter by Thomas H. Ince and acted in over 400...
in 1914, taking "Jack Ford" as a stage name. In addition to credited roles, he appeared uncredited as a Klansman
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
in D.W. Griffith's 1915
1915 in film
The year 1915 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* February 8 : D.W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation premieres at Clune's Auditorium Los Angeles and breaks box office and film length records, running at a total length of 3 hrs 10 minutes.* June 18 : The Motion Picture Directors...
classic, The Birth of a Nation
The Birth of a Nation
The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and based on the novel and play The Clansman, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr. Griffith also co-wrote the screenplay , and co-produced the film . It was released on February 8, 1915...
, as the man who lifts up one side of his hood so he can see clearly. He married Mary McBryde Smith, on July 3, 1920, and they had two children. His daughter Barbara was married to singer and actor Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis was an American singer and actor best known for his role as Festus Haggen on the long-running CBS western television series Gunsmoke.-Early years:...
from 1952 to 1964. The Ford marriage lasted until his death, although he had many extramarital relationships.
Directing career
John 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 vaudevilleVaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
before becoming a movie actor. Francis played in hundreds of silent pictures for Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
, Georges Melies
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...
and Thomas Ince
Thomas H. Ince
Thomas Harper Ince was an American silent film actor, director, screenwriter and producer of more than 100 films and pioneering studio mogul. Known as the "Father of the Western", he invented many mechanisms of professional movie production, introducing early Hollywood to the "assembly line"...
, eventually progressing to become a prominent Hollywood actor-writer-director with his own production company (101 Bison) at Universal
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
.
Jack 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 (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 afterward.
One notable feature of John 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 silents), Will Rogers
Will Rogers
William "Will" Penn Adair Rogers was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, film actor, and one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s....
, 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...
, 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...
, 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...
, James Stewart
James Stewart
James Stewart was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart may also refer to:-Noblemen:*James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland*James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn James Stewart (1908–1997) was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart...
, Woody Strode
Woody Strode
Woodrow Wilson Woolwine "Woody" Strode was a decathlete and football star who went on to become a pioneering black American film actor. He was nominated for a Golden Globe award for best supporting actor for his role in Spartacus in 1960...
, Richard Widmark
Richard Widmark
Richard Weedt Widmark was an American film, stage and television actor.He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film, Kiss of Death...
, Victor McLaglen
Victor McLaglen
Victor Andrew de Bier Everleigh McLaglen was an English boxer and World War I veteran who became a successful film actor.Towards the end of his life he was naturalised as a U.S. citizen.-Early life:...
, Vera Miles
Vera Miles
Vera Miles is an American film actress who gained popularity for starring in films such as The Searchers, The Wrong Man, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Psycho and Psycho II.-Early life:...
and Jeffrey Hunter
Jeffrey Hunter
Jeffrey Hunter was an American film and television actor. His most famous roles are as Jesus in the film King of Kings, as Martin Pawley in The Searchers, and as Capt...
. Many of his supporting actors appeared in multiple Ford films, often over a period of several decades, including Ben Johnson
Ben Johnson (actor)
Ben "Son" Johnson, Jr. was an American motion picture actor who was mainly cast in Westerns. He was also a rodeo cowboy, stuntman, and rancher.-Personal life:...
, Chill Wills
Chill Wills
Chill Theodore Wills was an American film actor, and a singer in the Avalon Boys Quartet.-Biography:Wills was born in Seagoville, Texas in 1902. He was a performer from early childhood, forming and leading the Avalon Boys singing group in the 1930s...
, Andy Devine
Andy Devine
Andrew Vabre "Andy" Devine was an American character actor and comic cowboy sidekick known for his distinctive raspy voice.-Early life:...
, Ward Bond
Ward Bond
Wardell Edwin "Ward" Bond was an American film actor whose rugged appearance and easygoing charm were featured in over 200 movies and the television series Wagon Train.-Early life:...
, Grant Withers
Grant Withers
Grant Withers was an American film actor. With early beginnings in the silent era, Withers moved into talkies establishing himself with a list of headlined features as a young and handsome male lead...
, Mae Marsh
Mae Marsh
Mae Marsh was an American film actress with a career spanning over 50 years.-Early life:...
, Anna Lee
Anna Lee
Anna Lee, MBE was an English actress.-Career:Lee studied at the Royal Albert Hall, then debuted with a bit part in the film His Lordship...
, 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:...
, Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis was an American singer and actor best known for his role as Festus Haggen on the long-running CBS western television series Gunsmoke.-Early years:...
, Frank Baker, Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río was a Mexican film actress. She was a star of Hollywood films during the silent era and in the Golden Age of Hollywood...
, Pedro Armendáriz
Pedro Armendáriz
Pedro Armendáriz was a Mexican actor of the cinema of Mexico and Hollywood.-Early life:Born Pedro Gregorio Armendáriz Hastings in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico to Pedro Armendáriz García-Conde and Adela Hastings . He was also the cousin of actress Gloria Marín...
, Hank Worden
Hank Worden
Hank Worden was an American cowboy-turned-character-actor who appeared in many Westerns.-Biography:...
, John Qualen
John Qualen
John Qualen was a Canadian-American character actor of Norwegian heritage who specialized in Scandinavian roles....
, Barry Fitzgerald
Barry Fitzgerald
Barry Fitzgerald was an Irish stage, film and television actor.-Life:He was born William Joseph Shields in Walworth Road, Portobello, Dublin, Ireland. He is the older brother of Irish actor Arthur Shields. He went to Skerry's College, Dublin, before going on to work in the civil service, while...
, Arthur Shields
Arthur Shields
Arthur Shields was an Irish stage and film actor.Born into an Irish Protestant family in Portobello, Dublin, he started acting in the Abbey Theatre when still a young man. He was the younger brother of Oscar-winning actor Barry Fitzgerald. An Irish nationalist, he fought in the Easter Rising of...
, John Carradine
John Carradine
John Carradine was an American actor, best known for his roles in horror films and Westerns as well as Shakespearean theater. A member of Cecil B DeMille's stock company and later John Ford's company, he was one of the most prolific character actors in Hollywood history...
, O.Z. Whitehead
O.Z. Whitehead
Oothout Zabriskie Whitehead was born in New York City and attended Harvard University. Called "O.Z." or "Zebby", he was a stage star and a prominent character actor who also authored several volumes of biographical sketches of early members of the Bahá'í Faith especially in the West after he...
and Carleton Young
Carleton Young
Carleton Scott Young was an American character actor born in New York City, New York and known for his deep voice.-Private life:...
. 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
John Ford Stock Company
The John Ford Stock Company is the name given to the large collection of actors used repeatedly in the films of American director John Ford. Most famous among these was John Wayne, who appeared in twenty-four films and three television episodes for the director...
.
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
Merian C. Cooper
Merian Caldwell Cooper was an American aviator, United States Air Force and Polish Air Force officer, adventurer, screenwriter, and film director and producer. His most famous film was the 1933 movie King Kong.-Early life:...
, scriptwriters Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Hunter Johnson was an American filmmaker who wrote, produced, and directed motion pictures.Johnson was born in Columbus, Georgia. He began his career as a journalist, writing for the Columbus Enquirer Sun, the Savannah Press, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and the New York Herald Tribune...
, Dudley Nichols
Dudley Nichols
Dudley Nichols was an American screenwriter who first came to prominence after winning and refusing the screenwriting Oscar for The Informer in 1936....
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 H. August
Joseph H. August, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer and co-founder of the American Society of Cinematographers....
, Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer noted for his innovative use of lighting and techniques such as deep focus, an example of which can be found in his work on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.-Career:...
, Winton Hoch
Winton Hoch
Winton C. Hoch, A.S.C. in Santa Monica was originally a lab technician who contributed to the development of Technicolor before becoming a cinematographer in 1936. His understanding of the colour process quickly led to him being hailed as one of Hollywood's premier colour cinematographers...
, Charles Lawton Jr., Bert Glennon
Bert Glennon
Bert Glennon was an American cinematographer and film director.He was nominated for three Academy Awards in Best Cinematography categories for the films Stagecoach , Drums Along the Mohawk , and Dive Bomber .Glennon worked as a cinematographer on over a hundred films for directors including John...
, Archie Stout
Archie Stout
Archie Stout, A.S.C. was a second unit photographer whose career spanned from 1921 to 1954. In a career largely confined to B movies, he provided cinematography assistance on such films as the original version of The Ten Commandments and several Hopalong Cassidy and Tarzan films...
and William H. Clothier
William H. Clothier
William H. Clothier, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer.Born in Decatur, Illinois, Clothier entered the film industry painting sets at Warner Bros., and at the end of the silent era began photographing such films as Wings and Ernst Lubitsch's The Patriot...
.
Silent era
During his first decade as a director Ford honed his craft on dozens of features (including many westerns) but fewer than a dozen of the more than sixty silent films he made between 1917 and 1928 still exist in any form and only ten have survived 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 ArchiveNew Zealand Film Archive
The New Zealand Film Archive is a charitable trust dedicated to the collection, preservation and viewing of mainly New Zealand films and videos made between 1895 to the present day.- Background :...
, among which was the only surviving print of Ford's 1927 silent comedy Upstream
Upstream (film)
Upstream is a comedy film directed by John Ford. A "backstage drama", the movie is about a Shakespearean actor and a woman from a knife-throwing act. The film was considered to be a lost film, but in 2009 it was discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive.It is considered the first Ford film to...
. The print was restored in New Zealand by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences before being returned to America, where it was given a "repremiere" at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater
Samuel Goldwyn Theater
The Samuel Goldwyn Theatre is a movie theater in Beverly Hills, California named after Samuel Goldwyn.Currently, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences uses the theater in January to announce the nominations for their Academy Awards....
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 on 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 debut as the silent two-reeler The Tornado
The Tornado
The Tornado is a 1917 short Western film directed by John Ford. It was Ford's debut film as a director. The film is considered to be lost.-Cast:* John Ford - Jack Dayton * Jean Hathaway - Jack's mother...
, released in March 1917. According to Ford's own story, he was given the job by Universal boss Carl Laemmle
Carl Laemmle
Carl Laemmle , born in Laupheim, Württemberg, Germany, was a pioneer in American film making and a founder of one of the original major Hollywood movie studios - Universal...
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 Trail of Hate
The Trail of Hate is a 1917 short drama film directed by John Ford. The film is now considered to be lost.-Cast:* John Ford - The lieutenant * Louise Granville* Duke Worne* Jack Lawton...
, The Scrapper
The Scrapper
The Scrapper is a 1917 short Western film directed by John Ford. The film is considered to be lost.-Cast:* John Ford - Buck, the scrapper * Louise Granville - Helen Dawson* Duke Worne - Jerry Martin* Jean Hathaway* Martha Hayes...
, The Soul Herder
The Soul Herder
The Soul Herder is a 1917 Western film directed by John Ford and featuring Harry Carey. The film is considered to be lost.-Cast:* Harry Carey* Molly Malone* Hoot Gibson* Jean Hersholt - Priest* Fritzi Ridgeway* Duke R. Lee...
and Cheyenne's Pal
Cheyenne's Pal
Cheyenne's Pal is a 1917 Western film directed by John Ford and featuring Harry Carey. The film is considered to be lost.-Production:Filming took place over a three-day period under the working titles Cactus My Pal and The Dumb Friend. The finished film was released by Universal Studios as a...
; 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
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...
. Carey's son Harry "Dobe" 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:...
, 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
Straight Shooting is a 1917 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.-Cast:* Harry Carey - Cheyenne Harry* Duke R...
(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
Bucking Broadway
Bucking Broadway is a 1917 film by John Ford, probably his sixth feature film. Long thought to be lost, along with about 60 of Ford's 70 silent films, it was found in 2002 in the archives of the CNC . It was subsequently restored and digitized...
, 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
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
studio in 1920; his first film for them was Just Pals
Just Pals
Just Pals is a 1920 Western film directed by John Ford. It was Ford's first film for the Fox Film Corporation.-Cast:* Buck Jones - Bim* Helen Ferguson - Mary Bruce* George Stone - Bill* Duke R. Lee - Sheriff* William Buckley - Harvey Cahill...
(1920). His 1923 feature Cameo Kirby, starring screen idol John Gilbert
John Gilbert (actor)
John Gilbert was an American actor and a major star of the silent film era.Known as "the great lover," he rivaled even Rudolph Valentino as a box office draw...
—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
The Iron Horse (film)
The Iron Horse is a silent film directed by John Ford in 1924. It was produced by Fox Film. -Synopsis:The film presents an idealized image of the construction of the American first transcontinental railroad. It culminates with the scene of driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit on May...
(1924), an epic account of the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad
First Transcontinental Railroad
The First Transcontinental Railroad was a railroad line built in the United States of America between 1863 and 1869 by the Central Pacific Railroad of California and the Union Pacific Railroad that connected its statutory Eastern terminus at Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska The First...
. 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 buffalo, 2000 horses, 10,000 cattle and 50,000 properties, including the original stagecoach used by Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley was an American newspaper editor, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, a politician, and an outspoken opponent of slavery...
, Wild Bill Hickok
Wild Bill Hickok
James Butler Hickok , better known as Wild Bill Hickok, was a folk hero of the American Old West. His skills as a gunfighter and scout, along with his reputation as a lawman, provided the basis for his fame, although some of his exploits are fictionalized.Hickok came to the West as a stagecoach...
's derringer
Derringer
The term derringer is a genericized misspelling of the last name of Henry Deringer, a famous 19th-century maker of small pocket pistols. Many copies of the original Philadelphia Deringer pistol were made by other gun makers worldwide, and the name was often misspelled; this misspelling soon became...
pistol and replicas of the "Jupiter
Jupiter (locomotive)
The Jupiter was a 4-4-0 steam locomotive which made history as one of the two locomotives The Jupiter (officially known as Central Pacific Railroad #60) was a 4-4-0 steam locomotive which made history as one of the two locomotives The Jupiter (officially known as Central Pacific Railroad #60) was...
" and "119
Union Pacific No. 119
The No. 119 was a 4-4-0 steam locomotive which made history as one of the two locomotives to meet at Promontory Summit during the Golden Spike ceremony commemorating the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad.No...
" locomotives that met at Promontory Point when the two ends of the line were joined on 10 May 1869.
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
William Fox (producer)
William Fox born Fried Vilmos was a pioneering Hungarian American motion picture executive who founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915 and the Fox West Coast Theatres chain in the 1920s...
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
-Cast:* George O'Brien as Dan O'Malley* Olive Borden as Lee Carlton* Lou Tellegen as Sheriff Layne Hunter* Tom Santschi as 'Bull' Stanley* J. Farrell MacDonald as Mike Costigan* Frank Campeau as 'Spade' Allen* Priscilla Bonner as Millie Stanley...
(1926), set during the Dakota land rush and filmed at Jackson Hole
Jackson Hole
Jackson Hole, originally called Jackson's Hole, is a valley located in the U.S. state of Wyoming, near the western border with Idaho. The name "hole" derives from language used by early trappers or mountain men, who primarily entered the valley from the north and east and had to descend along...
, Wyoming and in the Mojave Desert
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert occupies a significant portion of southeastern California and smaller parts of central California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona, in the United States...
. 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
Motion Picture Directors Association
The Motion Picture Directors Association was an American non-profit fraternal organization formed by twenty-six film directors on June 18, 1915 in Los Angeles, California.Its articles of incorporation stated as that the organization existed to:...
, a forerunner to today's Directors Guild of America
Directors Guild of America
Directors Guild of America is an entertainment labor union which represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry...
.
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 MachreeMother Machree
Mother Machree is a 1928 silent film, directed by John Ford, based on a novel by Rida Johnson Young about a poor Irish immigrant in America. John Wayne had a minor role in the film.-Cast:* Belle Bennett as Mother Machree...
(1928) of which only three of the original seven reels survive; this film is also notable as the first Ford film to feature the young 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 an uncredited extra) and he appeared in Ford's next two movies. Ford also directed Fox's first all-talking dramatic feature Napoleon's Barber (1928), a 3-reeler which is also now lost.
Just before the studio converted to talkies, Fox gave a contract to the German director F. W. Murnau, and his film Sunrise
Sunrise (film)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, also known as Sunrise, is a 1927 American silent film directed by German film director F. W. Murnau. The story was adapted by Carl Mayer from the short story "Die Reise nach Tilsit" by Hermann Sudermann.Sunrise won an Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Production...
(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—his penultimate silent feature Four Sons
Four Sons
Four Sons is a silent drama film directed and produced by John Ford and written for the screen by Philip Klein from a story by I. A. R. Wylie. It is one of only a handful of survivors out of the more than fifty silent films that Ford directed between 1917 and 1928. It starred Margaret Mann, James...
(1928), starring Victor McLaglen, was filmed on some of the lavish sets left over from Murnau's production. Ford's last silent feature Hangman's House
Hangman's House
Hangman's House is a 1928 romantic drama genre silent film set in Co. Wicklow, Ireland, directed by John Ford with intertitles written by Malcolm Stuart Boylan. It is based on a novel by Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne. It was adapted by Philip Klein with scenarios by Marion Orth...
(1928) is notable as one of the first credited screen appearances by 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...
.
Napoleon's Barber was followed by Riley the Cop
Riley the Cop
Riley the Cop is a 1928 comedy film directed by John Ford. It was a silent film with a synchronized music track.-Cast:* J. Farrell MacDonald - James 'Aloysius' Riley * Nancy Drexel - Mary Coronelli...
(1928) and Strong Boy
Strong Boy
Strong Boy is a comedy film directed by John Ford. It was a silent film with a synchronized music track. The film is now considered to be a lost film. A trailer for the film was discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive in 2010.-Cast:...
(1929), starring Victor McLaglen
Victor McLaglen
Victor Andrew de Bier Everleigh McLaglen was an English boxer and World War I veteran who became a successful film actor.Towards the end of his life he was naturalised as a U.S. citizen.-Early life:...
, both of which are 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
The Black Watch
The Black Watch is a 1929 American early epic adventure drama film directed by John Ford and written by James Kevin McGuinness based on the novel King of the Khyber Rifles by Talbot Mundy. The film starred Victor McLaglen...
(1929), a colonial army adventure set in the Khyber Pass
Khyber Pass
The Khyber Pass, is a mountain pass linking Pakistan and Afghanistan.The Pass was an integral part of the ancient Silk Road. It is mentioned in the Bible as the "Pesh Habor," and it is one of the oldest known passes in the world....
starring Victor McLaglen and Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy was an American actress. Trained as a dancer, she devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. Originally typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent, her career prospects improved following her portrayal of Nora Charles...
is Ford's first complete surviving talking picture; it was remade in 1954 by Henry King
Henry King (director)
Henry King was an American film director.Before coming to film, King worked as an actor in various repertoire theatres, and first started to take small film roles in 1912. He directed for the first time in 1915, and grew to become one of the most commercially successful Hollywood directors of the...
as King of the Khyber Rifles
King of the Khyber Rifles (film)
King of the Khyber Rifles is a 1953 adventure film directed by Henry King and starring Tyrone Power and Terry Moore. The film is based on the novel King of the Khyber Rifles by Talbot Mundy. It is a remake of John Ford's The Black Watch . The Khyber Pass scenes were shot in Alabama Hills, Lone...
.
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 1929–1942 inclusive. Three films were released in 1929—Strong Boy
Strong Boy
Strong Boy is a comedy film directed by John Ford. It was a silent film with a synchronized music track. The film is now considered to be a lost film. A trailer for the film was discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive in 2010.-Cast:...
, The Black Watch
The Black Watch
The Black Watch is a 1929 American early epic adventure drama film directed by John Ford and written by James Kevin McGuinness based on the novel King of the Khyber Rifles by Talbot Mundy. The film starred Victor McLaglen...
and Salute. His three films of 1930 were Men Without Women
Men Without Women (film)
Men Without Women is an American drama film directed and written by John Ford, from the script by James Kevin McGuinness. The film also starred Kenneth MacKenna, Frank Albertson, and J. Farrell MacDonald.-Cast:...
, Born Reckless
Born Reckless (1930 film)
Born Reckless is a American crime comedy directed by Andrew Bennison and John Ford, from a screenplay written by Donald Henderson Clarke based on his novel Louis Beretti. The film starred Edmund Lowe and Catherine Dale Owen.-Plot:...
and Up the River
Up the River
Up the River is a Pre-Code comedy film about escaped convicts, directed by John Ford and featuring Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart in their feature film debuts.-Plot:...
, which is notable as the debut film for both Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was an American theatrical and film actor, who appeared in 75 films from 1930 to 1967. Tracy was one of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, ranking among the top ten box office draws for almost every year from 1938 to 1951...
and Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
, who were both signed to Fox on Ford's recommendation (but subsequently dropped). Ford's films in 1931 were Seas Beneath
Seas Beneath
-Cast:* George O'Brien - Cmdr. Robert 'Bob' Kingsley* Marion Lessing - Anna Marie Von Steuben* Mona Maris - Fraulein Lolita* Walter C. Kelly - Chief Mike 'Guns' Costello* Warren Hymer - 'Lug' Kaufman...
, The Brat
The Brat
The Brat is a 1931 comedy film directed by John Ford. It is based on the 1917 play by Maude Fulton. A previous silent film had been made in 1919 with Alla Nazimova. This 1931 screen version has been updated to then contemporary standards i.e...
and Arrowsmith
Arrowsmith (film)
Arrowsmith is a 1931 film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was written by Sidney Howard from the Sinclair Lewis novel Arrowsmith, and directed by John Ford.-Plot:...
; the last-named, adapted from the Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
novel and starring Ronald Colman
Ronald Colman
Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...
and Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...
, marked Ford's first Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
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 and 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 being paid $300–600 per week, but as his career took off in the mid-Twenties his annual income significantly increased. He earned nearly $134,000 in 1929, and he 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
Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard was an American actress. She was particularly noted for her comedic roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s...
, 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—Airmail
Airmail (film)
Air Mail is a 1932 American adventure film directed by John Ford and starring Ralph Bellamy and Gloria Stuart.-Cast:* Ralph Bellamy - Mike Miller* Gloria Stuart - Ruth Barnes* Pat O'Brien - Duke Talbot...
(made for Universal) with a young Ralph Bellamy
Ralph Bellamy
Ralph Bellamy was an American actor whose career spanned sixty-two years.-Early life:He was born Ralph Rexford Bellamy in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Lilla Louise , a native of Canada, and Charles Rexford Bellamy. He ran away from home when he was fifteen and managed to get into a road show...
and Flesh
Flesh
In vertebrate animals, flesh is the colloquial for biological tissue which consists of skeletal muscles and fat as opposed to bones, viscera and integuments. Flesh may be used as food, in which case it is called meat....
(for MGM) with Wallace Beery
Wallace Beery
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...
. In 1933, he returned to Fox for Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey or search of great moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith...
and Doctor Bull
Doctor Bull
Doctor Bull is a comedy film directed by John Ford, based on the James Gould Cozzens novel The Last Adam. Will Rogers portrays a small town doctor who must deal with a typhoid outbreak in the community....
, the first of his three films with Will Rogers
Will Rogers
William "Will" Penn Adair Rogers was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, film actor, and one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s....
.
The World War I desert drama The Lost Patrol
The Lost Patrol (1934 film)
The Lost Patrol is a 1934 war film made by RKO. It was directed and produced by John Ford, with Merian C. Cooper as executive producer and Cliff Reid as associate producer. The screenplay was by Dudley Nichols, adapted by Garrett Fort from the novel Patrol by Philip MacDonald. The music score was...
(1934), based on the book Patrol by Philip MacDonald
Philip MacDonald
Philip MacDonald was an English author of thrillers.-Life and work:...
, was a superior remake of the 1929 silent film Lost Patrol
Lost Patrol
Lost Patrol is a survival action role-playing game with strategy elements developed by the team Shadow Development and published by Ocean Software Ltd for Amiga computers in 1990 and the Atari ST in 1991; a DOS version was also released by Astros Productions...
. It starred Victor McLaglen
Victor McLaglen
Victor Andrew de Bier Everleigh McLaglen was an English boxer and World War I veteran who became a successful film actor.Towards the end of his life he was naturalised as a U.S. citizen.-Early life:...
as The Sergeant—the role played by his brother Cyril McLaglen
Cyril McLaglen
Cyril McLaglen 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 actor Victor McLaglen...
in the earlier version—with Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
, Wallace Ford
Wallace Ford
Wallace Ford was an English film and television actor who, with his friendly appearance and stocky build later in life, appeared in a number of film westerns and B-movies....
, Alan Hale
Alan Hale, Sr.
Alan Hale, Sr. was an American movie actor and director, most widely remembered for his many supporting character roles, in particular as frequent sidekick of Errol Flynn. His wife of over thirty years was Gretchen Hartman , a child actress and silent film player and mother of their three children...
and Reginald Denny
Reginald Denny (actor)
Reginald Denny was an English stage, film, and television actor. He was once an amateur boxing champion of Great Britain.-Acting career:...
(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 and The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
as one of the Top 10 films of that year and won an Oscar nomination for its stirring Max Steiner
Max Steiner
Max Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as...
score. It was followed later that year by The World Moves On
The World Moves On
-Plot:The story opens 185 years ago when two families, cotton merchants in England and America, with branches in France and Prussia swear to stand by each other in a belief that a great business firmly established in four countries will be able to withstand even such another calamity as the...
with Madeleine Carroll
Madeleine Carroll
Edith Madeleine Carroll was an English actress, popular in the 1930s and 1940s.-Early life:Carroll was born at 32 Herbert Street in West Bromwich, England. She graduated from the University of Birmingham, England with a B.A. degree...
and Franchot Tone
Franchot Tone
Franchot Tone was an American stage, film, and television actor, star of Mutiny on the Bounty and many other films through the 1960s...
, and the highly successful Judge Priest
Judge Priest
Judge Priest is a 1934 American comedy film. The film was based on humorist Irvin S. Cobb's character Judge Priest. The film was directed by John Ford and produced by Sol M. Wurtzel in association with Fox Film...
, his second film with Will Rogers, which became one of the top-grossing movies of the year.
Ford's first film of 1935 (made for Columbia
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
) was the mistaken-identity comedy The Whole Town's Talking
The Whole Town's Talking
The Whole Town's Talking is a 1935 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 was directed by John Ford from a screenplay by Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin based on a story by W.R...
with Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson was a Romanian-born American actor. A popular star during Hollywood's Golden Age, he is best remembered for his roles as gangsters, such as Rico in his star-making film Little Caesar and as Rocco in Key Largo...
and Jean Arthur
Jean Arthur
Jean Arthur was an American actress and a major film star of the 1930s and 1940s. She remains arguably the epitome of the female screwball comedy actress. As James Harvey wrote in his recounting of the era, "No one was more closely identified with the screwball comedy than Jean Arthur...
, released in the UK as Passport to Fame, and it drew critical praise. Steamboat Round The Bend
Steamboat Round the Bend
-Plot:A con man enters his steamboat in a winner-take-all race with a rival while attempting to find a witness that will save his nephew, who has been wrongly convicted of murder, from the gallows.-Cast:* Will Rogers - Doctor John Pearly...
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
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916...
drama The Informer (1935), starring Victor McLaglen. It earned great critical praise, was nominated for Best Picture, won Ford his first Academy Award 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
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
, or Ford's own later The Searchers
The Searchers (film)
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...
(1956).
The politically charged The Prisoner of Shark Island
The Prisoner of Shark Island
The Prisoner of Shark Island is a 1936 film loosely based on the life of Samuel Mudd, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, directed by John Ford, and starring Warner Baxter and Gloria Stuart.-Plot:...
(1936)—which marked the debut with Ford of long-serving "Stock Company" player John Carradine
John Carradine
John Carradine was an American actor, best known for his roles in horror films and Westerns as well as Shakespearean theater. A member of Cecil B DeMille's stock company and later John Ford's company, he was one of the most prolific character actors in Hollywood history...
—explored the little-known story of Samuel Mudd
Samuel Mudd
Samuel Alexander Mudd I, M.D. was an American physician who was convicted and imprisoned for aiding and conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the 1865 assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. He was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and released from prison in 1869...
, a physician who was caught up in the Abraham Lincoln assassination
Abraham Lincoln assassination
The assassination of United States President Abraham Lincoln took place on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, as the American Civil War was drawing to a close. The assassination occurred five days after the commanding General of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee, and his battered Army of...
conspiracy and consigned to an offshore prison for treating the injured John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor...
. Other films of this period include the South Seas melodrama The Hurricane
The Hurricane (1937 film)
The Hurricane is a 1937 film set in the South Seas, directed by John Ford and produced by Samuel Goldwyn, about a Polynesian who is unjustly imprisoned. The climax features a special effects hurricane. It stars Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall, with Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith, Thomas Mitchell, Raymond...
(1937) and the lighthearted Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple Black , born Shirley Jane Temple, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia...
vehicle Wee Willie Winkie
Wee Willie Winkie
"Wee Willie Winkie" is a Scottish nursery rhyme, whose titular figure has become popular the world over as a personification of sleep. The poem, written by William Miller and titled "Willie Winkie", was first published in Whistle-binkie: Stories for the Fireside in 1841...
(1937), each of which had a first-year US gross of more than $1 million. The longer revised version of Directed by John Ford shown on 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...
in November, 2006 features directors 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...
, 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 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...
, who suggest that the string of classic films Ford directed during 1936 to 1941 was due in part to an intense six-month extra-marital affair 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...
, the star of Mary of Scotland
Mary of Scotland (film)
Mary of Scotland is a 1936 RKO film starring Katharine Hepburn as the 16th century ruler, Mary, Queen of Scots. Directed by John Ford, it is an adaptation of the 1933 Maxwell Anderson play by Dudley Nichols. The play starred Helen Hayes as Mary...
(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. Reputedly Orson Welles 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 CanuttYakima Canutt
Yakima Canutt , also known as Yak Canutt, was an American rodeo rider, actor, stuntman and action director.-Biography:...
.
The Dudley Nichols
Dudley Nichols
Dudley Nichols was an American screenwriter who first came to prominence after winning and refusing the screenwriting Oscar for The Informer in 1936....
–Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of...
screenplay was based on an Ernest Haycox
Ernest Haycox
Ernest James Haycox was a prolific American author of Western fiction.-Biography:Haycox was born in Portland, Oregon, to William James Haycox and the former Martha Burghardt on October 1, 1899...
story that Ford had spotted in Collier's magazine and he purchased the screen rights for just $2500. Production chief Walter Wanger
Walter Wanger
Walter Wanger was an American film producer. An intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas, Wanger's career began at Paramount Pictures in the 1920s and led him to work at virtually every major studio as either a...
urged Ford to hire Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
and Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
for the lead roles, but eventually accepted Ford's decision to cast Claire Trevor
Claire Trevor
Claire Trevor was an Academy Award-winning American actress. She was nicknamed the "Queen of Film Noir" because of her many appearances in "bad girl” roles in film noir and other black-and-white thrillers...
as Dallas and a virtual unknown, his friend 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 Ringo; Wanger reportedly had little further influence over the production.
In making Stagecoach Ford faced entrenched industry prejudice about the now-hackneyed genre which, ironically, 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
Poverty Row is a slang term used in Hollywood from the late silent period through the mid-fifties to refer to a variety of small and mostly short-lived B movie studios...
' 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 and David O. Selznick
David O. Selznick
David O. Selznick was an American film producer. He is best known for having produced Gone with the Wind and Rebecca , both of which earned him an Oscar for Best Picture.-Early years:...
before finally linking with Walter Wanger, an independent producer working through United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
.
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 singlehandedly 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
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...
.
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 twenty-four of Ford's films (and three TV episodes). Ford is credited with playing a major role in shaping Wayne's screen image.
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 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...
, 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
Drums Along the Mohawk is a 1939 historical Technicolor 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 Claudette Colbert portray settlers on the New York frontier during the...
(1939) was a lavish frontier drama co-starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert was a French-born American-based actress of stage and film.Born in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures...
; it was also Ford's first movie in color and included uncredited script contributions by William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
. 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
Edna May Oliver was an American stage and film actress. During the 1930s, she was one of the best-known character actresses in American films, often playing tart-tongued spinsters.-Early life:...
a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance.
Despite its uncompromising communist political stance, Ford's screen adaptation of John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
's The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....
(scripted by Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Hunter Johnson was an American filmmaker who wrote, produced, and directed motion pictures.Johnson was born in Columbus, Georgia. He began his career as a journalist, writing for the Columbus Enquirer Sun, the Savannah Press, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and the New York Herald Tribune...
and photographed by Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer noted for his innovative use of lighting and techniques such as deep focus, an example of which can be found in his work on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.-Career:...
) 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
Andrew Sarris is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.-Career:Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S...
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 USA in its first year and won two Academy Awards—Ford's second 'Best Director' Oscar, and 'Best Supporting Actress' for Jane Darwell's tour-de-force portrayal of Ma Joad.
The Grapes of Wrath was followed by two less successful and lesser known films. The Long Voyage Home
The Long Voyage Home
The Long Voyage Home is an American drama film and directed by John Ford. It features John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell, Ian Hunter, Barry Fitzgerald, Wilfrid Lawson, John Qualen, Mildred Natwick, Ward Bond, among others....
(1940) was, like Stagecoach, made with Walter Wanger through United Artists. Adapted from four plays by Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
, it was scripted by Dudley Nichols and Ford, in consultation with O'Neill himself. 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 (Best Photography (Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer noted for his innovative use of lighting and techniques such as deep focus, an example of which can be found in his work on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.-Career:...
), Best Editing (Sherman Todd), Best Effects (Ray Binger & R.T. Layton), and Best Sound (Robert Parrish
Robert Parrish
Robert R. Parrish was an American actor, film editor, film director, and writer. He received an Academy Award for Film Editing for the 1947 film, Body and Soul....
). 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
Tobacco Road (film)
Tobacco Road is a 1941 film directed by John Ford starring Charley Grapewin, Marjorie Rambeau, Gene Tierney, William Tracy and Dana Andrews. It was based on the novel of the same name by Erskine Caldwell, but the plot was rewritten for the film.-Cast:...
(1941) was a rural comedy scripted by Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Hunter Johnson was an American filmmaker who wrote, produced, and directed motion pictures.Johnson was born in Columbus, Georgia. He began his career as a journalist, writing for the Columbus Enquirer Sun, the Savannah Press, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and the New York Herald Tribune...
, adapted from the long-running Jack Kirkland stage version of the novel by Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Preston Caldwell was an American author. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native South like the novels Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre won him critical acclaim, but they also made him controversial among fellow Southerners of the time who felt he was...
. It starred veteran actor Charley Grapewin and the supporting cast included Ford regulars Ward Bond
Ward Bond
Wardell Edwin "Ward" Bond was an American film actor whose rugged appearance and easygoing charm were featured in over 200 movies and the television series Wagon Train.-Early life:...
and Mae Marsh
Mae Marsh
Mae Marsh was an American film actress with a career spanning over 50 years.-Early life:...
, with Francis Ford in an uncredited bit part; it is also notable for early screen appearances by future stars Gene Tierney
Gene Tierney
Gene Eliza Tierney was an American film and stage actress. Acclaimed as one of the great beauties of her day, she is best remembered for her performance in the title role of Laura and her Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Actress in Leave Her to Heaven .Other notable roles include...
and Dana Andrews
Dana Andrews
Dana Andrews was an American film actor. He was one of Hollywood's major stars of the 1940s, and continued acting, though generally in less prestigious roles, into the 1980s.-Early life:...
. 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. According to IMDb, the film was banned in Australia for unspecified reasons.
Ford's last feature before America entered World War II was his screen adaptation of 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...
(1941), starring Walter Pidgeon
Walter Pidgeon
Walter Davis Pidgeon was a Canadian actor, who starred in many motion pictures, including Mrs...
, 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 Roddy McDowell in his career-making role as Huw. The script was written by Philip Dunne
Philip Dunne (writer)
Philip Dunne was a Hollywood screenwriter, film director and producer, who worked prolifically from 1932 until 1965. He spent the majority of his career at 20th Century Fox crafting well regarded romantic and historical dramas, usually adapted from another medium...
from the best-selling novel by Robert Llewellyn
Robert Llewellyn
Robert Llewellyn is an English actor, presenter, and writer. He is best known as the mechanoid Kryten in the hit sitcom Red Dwarf, and for his role as presenter of Scrapheap Challenge.-Early career:...
. It was originally planned as a four-hour epic to rival Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
—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, so it was shot at Fox's San Fernando Valley ranch instead; another reported factor was the nervousness of Fox executives about the pro-union tone of the story. William Wyler
William Wyler
William Wyler was a leading American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.Notable works included Ben-Hur , The Best Years of Our Lives , and Mrs. Miniver , all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture...
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 F. Zanuck
Darryl Francis Zanuck was an American producer, writer, actor, director and studio executive who played a major part in the Hollywood studio system as one of its longest survivors...
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
Tyrone Power
Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...
was originally slated to play the adult Huw).
How Green Was My Valley became one of the biggest films of 1940. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards including Best Supporting Actress (Sara Allgood
Sara Allgood
-Biography:Allgood was born in Dublin, Ireland. Her sister was actress Maire O'Neill.Allgood began her acting career at the Abbey Theatre and was in the opening of the Irish National Theatre Society, appearing in many of their plays all over Britain...
), Best Editing, Best Script, Best Music and Best Sound and it won five Oscars—Best Director, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp
Donald Crisp
Donald Crisp was an English film actor. He was also an early motion picture producer, director and screenwriter...
), Best B&W Cinematography (Arthur C. Miller
Arthur C. Miller
Arthur Charles Miller, A.S.C. was an acclaimed American cinematographer.-Early life:Born in Roslyn, New York, Arthur Miller began his career at the age of 13, working as an assistant to filmmaker Fred J. Balshofer...
) and Best Art Direction/Interior Decoration. It was a huge hit with audiences, coming in behind Sergeant York
Sergeant York
Sergeant York is a 1941 biographical film about the life of Alvin York, the most-decorated American soldier of World War I. It was directed by Howard Hawks and was the highest-grossing film of the year....
as the second-highest grossing film of the year in the USA and taking almost $3 million against its sizable budget of $1,250,000. 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, Commander John Ford, USNR, served in the United States NavyUnited States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
and as head of the photographic unit for the Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
, made documentaries for the Navy Department. He won two more Academy Awards during this time, one for the semi-documentary The Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway is a 1942 American documentary film short directed by John Ford. It is a montage of color footage of the Battle of Midway with voice overs of various narrators, including Donald Crisp, Henry Fonda, and Jane Darwell...
(1942), and a second for the propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
film December 7th
December 7th (film)
December 7th is a propaganda film produced by the US Navy and directed by John Ford, about the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the event which sparked the Pacific War and American involvement in World War II.-Production background:...
(1943). Commander Ford was a veteran of the Battle of Midway
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, approximately one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea and six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy decisively defeated...
, where he was wounded in the arm by shrapnel while filming the Japanese attack from the power plant of Sand Island on Midway.
Ford was also present on Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach is the code name for one of the five sectors of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, during World War II...
on D-Day
D-Day
D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...
. He crossed the English Channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
on the , anchored off Omaha Beach at 0600 where he observed the first wave land on the beach from the ship, landing on the beach himself later with a team of US Coast Guard 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. Ford eventually rose to become a top adviser to OSS head William Joseph Donovan
William Joseph Donovan
William Joseph Donovan was a United States soldier, lawyer and intelligence officer, best remembered as the wartime head of the Office of Strategic Services...
. 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.
His last wartime film was They Were Expendable
They Were Expendable
They Were Expendable is a 1945 American war film directed by John Ford and starring Robert Montgomery and John Wayne. The film is based on the book by William L. White, relating the story of the exploits of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three, a PT boat unit defending the Philippines against Japanese...
(MGM, 1945), an account of America's disastrous defeat in The Philippines, told from the viewpoint of a PT boat
PT boat
PT Boats were a variety of motor torpedo boat , a small, fast vessel used by the United States Navy in World War II to attack larger surface ships. The PT boat squadrons were nicknamed "the mosquito fleet". The Japanese called them "Devil Boats".The original pre–World War I torpedo boats were...
squadron and its commander. 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 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...
. 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 became a Rear AdmiralRear admiral (United States)
Rear admiral is a naval commissioned officer rank above that of a commodore and captain, and below that of a vice admiral. The uniformed services of the United States are unique in having two grades of rear admirals.- Rear admiral :...
in the United States Navy Reserve
United States Navy Reserve
The United States Navy Reserve, until 2005 known as the United States Naval Reserve, is the Reserve Component of the United States Navy...
.Ford directed sixteen features and several documentaries in the decade between 1946 and 1956. As with his prewar 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
Mogambo is a 1953 film directed by John Ford, featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly and Donald Sinden. The film was adapted by John Lee Mahin from the play by Wilson Collison....
and The Searchers all ranked in the Top 20 box-office hits of their respective years.
Ford's first postwar movie My Darling Clementine
My Darling Clementine
My Darling Clementine is a 1946 western movie. It was directed by John Ford, and based on the story of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral between the Earp brothers and the Clanton gang. It features an ensemble cast including Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Ward Bond, Walter Brennan, and others.The movie...
(Fox, 1946) was a romanticized retelling of the primal Western legend of Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was an American gambler, investor, and law enforcement officer who served in several Western frontier towns. He was also at different times a farmer, teamster, bouncer, saloon-keeper, miner and boxing referee. However, he was never a drover or cowboy. He is most well known...
and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a roughly 30-second gunfight that took place at about 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona Territory, of the United States. Outlaw Cowboys Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne ran from the fight, unharmed, but Ike's brother...
, with exterior sequences filmed on location in the visually spectacular (but geographically inappropriate) 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...
. It reunited Ford with Henry Fonda (as Earp) and co-starred Victor Mature
Victor Mature
Victor John Mature was an American stage, film and television actor.-Early life:Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky to an Italian-speaking father from the town Pinzolo, in the Italian part of the former County of Tyrol , Marcello Gelindo Maturi, later Marcellus George Mature, a cutler,...
in one of his best roles as the consumptive, Shakespeare-loving Doc Holliday
Doc Holliday
John Henry "Doc" Holliday was an American gambler, gunfighter and dentist of the American Old West, who is usually remembered for his friendship with Wyatt Earp and his involvement in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral...
, with Ward Bond and Tim Holt
Tim Holt
Tim Holt was an American film actor perhaps best known for co-starring in the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.-Early life:...
as the Earp brothers, Linda Darnell
Linda Darnell
Linda Darnell was an American film actress.Darnell was a model as a child, and progressed to theater and film acting as an adolescent. At the encouragement of her mother, she made her first film in 1939, and appeared in supporting roles in big budget films for 20th Century Fox throughout the 1940s...
as sultry saloon girl Chihuahua, a strong performance by Walter Brennan
Walter Brennan
Walter Brennan was an American actor. Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on three separate occasions, which is currently the record for most wins.-Early life:...
(in a rare villainous role) as the venomous Old Man Clanton, with Jane Darwell and an early screen appearance by John Ireland
John Ireland (actor)
John Benjamin Ireland was an actor and film director.-Biography:Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, he was raised in New York City from the age of 18. He started out in minor stage roles on Broadway...
as Billy Clanton. In contrast to the string of successes in 1939–41, 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 USA 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 Productions, a partnership between Ford and his old friend and colleague Merian C. CooperMerian C. Cooper
Merian Caldwell Cooper was an American aviator, United States Air Force and Polish Air Force officer, adventurer, screenwriter, and film director and producer. His most famous film was the 1933 movie King Kong.-Early life:...
, originally founded after the success of Stagecoach. The Fugitive
The Fugitive (1947 film)
The Fugitive is a 1947 drama film starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, based on the novel The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. It was shot on location in Mexico by Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa.-Plot:...
(1946), again starring Fonda, was the first project of the Argosy Productions enterprise. It was a loose adaptation of Grahame Greene's The Power and the Glory
The Power and the Glory
The Power and the Glory is a novel by British author Graham Greene. The title is an allusion to the doxology often added to the end of the Lord's Prayer: "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, now and forever , amen." This novel has also been published in the US under the name The...
, which Ford had originally intended to make at Fox before the war, with Thomas Mitchell
Thomas Mitchell (actor)
Thomas Mitchell was an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. Among his most famous roles in a long career are those of Gerald O'Hara, the father of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, the drunken Doc Boone in John Ford's Stagecoach, and Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life...
as the priest. Filmed on location in Mexico, it was photographed by distinguished Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa
Gabriel Figueroa
Gabriel Figueroa Mateos was a Mexican cinematographer who worked both in Mexican cinema and Hollywood....
(who later worked with Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
). The supporting cast included Dolores Del Rio
Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río was a Mexican film actress. She was a star of Hollywood films during the silent era and in the Golden Age of Hollywood...
, J. Carroll Naish, Ward Bond
Ward Bond
Wardell Edwin "Ward" Bond was an American film actor whose rugged appearance and easygoing charm were featured in over 200 movies and the television series Wagon Train.-Early life:...
, Leo Carillo and Mel Ferrer
Mel Ferrer
Mel Ferrer was an American actor, film director and film producer.-Early life:Ferrer was born Melchor Gastón Ferrer in Elberon, New Jersey, of Catalan and Irish descent. His father, Dr. José María Ferrer , was born in Cuba, was an authority on pneumonia and served as chief of staff of St....
(making his screen debut) 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
Fort Apache (film)
Fort Apache is a 1948 Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Henry Fonda. The film was the first of the director's "cavalry trilogy" and was followed by She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande , both also starring Wayne...
(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
James Warner Bellah
James Warner Bellah was a popular American Western author from the 1930s to the 1950s...
. 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
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple Black , born Shirley Jane Temple, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia...
, 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 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 the year Ford also assisted his friend and colleague Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
, who was having problems with his current 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 1916 silent film starring Harry Carey (to whom Ford's version was dedicated), which Ford had himself already remade in 1919 as Marked Men, also with Carey and thought lost. It starred John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz
Pedro Armendáriz
Pedro Armendáriz was a Mexican actor of the cinema of Mexico and Hollywood.-Early life:Born Pedro Gregorio Armendáriz Hastings in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico to Pedro Armendáriz García-Conde and Adela Hastings . He was also the cousin of actress Gloria Marín...
and Harry "Dobe" Carey Jr (in one of his first major roles) as three outlaws who rescue a baby after his mother (Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick was an American stage and film actress.- Early life :A native of Baltimore, Maryland, she was born to Joseph and Mildred Marion Dawes Natwick. She graduated from the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore...
) dies giving birth, with Ward Bond
Ward Bond
Wardell Edwin "Ward" Bond was an American film actor whose rugged appearance and easygoing charm were featured in over 200 movies and the television series Wagon Train.-Early life:...
as the sheriff pursuing them.
In 1949 Ford briefly returned to Fox to direct Pinky. He prepared the project but worked only one day before being taken ill, supposedly with shingles, and Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
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
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is a 1949 Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne. The film was the second of Ford's trilogy of films focusing on the US Cavalry ; the other two films were Fort Apache and Rio Grande...
(Argosy/RKO, 1949), starring John Wayne and Joanne Dru
Joanne Dru
Joanne Dru was an American film and television actress, known for such films as Red River and All the King's Men.-Career:...
, with Victor McLaglen, John Agar
John Agar
John George Agar was an American actor. He starred alongside John Wayne in the films Sands of Iwo Jima, Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, but was later relegated to B movies, such as Tarantula, The Mole People, The Brain from Planet Arous, Flesh and the Spur, and Hand of Death...
, Ben Johnson
Ben Johnson (actor)
Ben "Son" Johnson, Jr. was an American motion picture actor who was mainly cast in Westerns. He was also a rodeo cowboy, stuntman, and rancher.-Personal life:...
, Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick was an American stage and film actress.- Early life :A native of Baltimore, Maryland, she was born to Joseph and Mildred Marion Dawes Natwick. She graduated from the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore...
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 1950 Academy Award for Best Color Cinematography and it did big business on its first release, grossing more than $5m worldwide. John Wayne, then 41, also received wide praise for his role as the 60-year-old Capt. Nathan Brittles.
1950s
Ford's first film of 1950 was the offbeat military comedy When Willie Comes Marching HomeWhen Willie Comes Marching Home
When Willie Comes Marching Home is a 1950 World War II comedy film directed by John Ford and starring Dan Dailey and Corinne Calvet. It is based on the 1945 short story When Leo Comes Marching Home by Sy Gomberg.-Plot:...
, starring Dan Dailey
Dan Dailey
Daniel James Dailey Jr. was an American dancer and actor.-Early life and career:Born in New York City on December 14, 1915, to James J. and Helen Dailey, both born in New York City. He appeared in a minstrel show when very young, and appeared in vaudeville before his Broadway debut in 1937 in...
and Corinne Calvet
Corinne Calvet
Corinne Calvet was a French actress who appeared mostly in American films.Born Corinne Dibos in Paris, Calvet studied criminal law at the Sorbonne and made her debut in French radio, stage plays and cinema in the 1940s before being brought to Hollywood in the 1940s by producer Hal B. Wallis...
, with William Demarest
William Demarest
Carl William Demarest was an American character actor. He frequently played crusty but good-hearted roles.-Early life and career:...
, from Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges , originally Edmund Preston Biden, was a celebrated playwright, screenwriter and film director born in Chicago, Illinois...
'stock company', and early (uncredited) screen appearances by Alan Hale Jr and Vera Miles
Vera Miles
Vera Miles is an American film actress who gained popularity for starring in films such as The Searchers, The Wrong Man, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Psycho and Psycho II.-Early life:...
. It was followed by Wagon Master
Wagon Master
Wagon Master is a 1950 Western film directed by John Ford and starring Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr., Joanne Dru, and Ward Bond.-Plot:Learning of their ability as experienced horsemen, Mormon Elder Wiggs , hires Travis Blue and Sandy Owens to guide a small group of Mormons across the West to the...
, starring Ben Johnson
Ben Johnson (actor)
Ben "Son" Johnson, Jr. was an American motion picture actor who was mainly cast in Westerns. He was also a rodeo cowboy, stuntman, and rancher.-Personal life:...
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
Wagon Train
Wagon Train is an American Western series that ran on NBC from 1957–62 and then on ABC from 1962–65...
(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 his personal favorite of all his films, telling 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...
that it "came closest to what I had hoped to achieve".
Rio Grande
Rio Grande
The Rio Grande is a river that flows from southwestern Colorado in the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way it forms part of the Mexico – United States border. Its length varies as its course changes...
(Republic, 1950), the third part of the 'Cavalry Trilogy', co-starred John Wayne 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...
, with Wayne's son Patrick Wayne
Patrick Wayne
Patrick John Morrison, better known by his stage name Patrick Wayne , is an American actor, the second son of movie star John Wayne and his first wife, Josephine Alicia Saenz. He made over 40 films in his career, including nine with his father...
making his screen debut (he appeared in several subsequent Ford pictures including The Searchers
The Searchers (film)
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...
). It was made at the insistence of Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures was an independent film production-distribution corporation with studio facilities, operating from 1934 through 1959, and was best known for specializing in westerns, movie serials and B films emphasizing mystery and action....
who demanded a profitable Western as the condition of backing Ford's next project, The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man is a 1952 American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film. It was directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald. It was based on a 1933 Saturday Evening Post short story by Maurice Walsh...
. 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 $2.25m in its first year.
Republic's anxiety was erased by the resounding success of The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man is a 1952 American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film. It was directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald. It was based on a 1933 Saturday Evening Post short story by Maurice Walsh...
(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 USA 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
Winton Hoch
Winton C. Hoch, A.S.C. in Santa Monica was originally a lab technician who contributed to the development of Technicolor before becoming a cinematographer in 1936. His understanding of the colour process quickly led to him being hailed as one of Hollywood's premier colour cinematographers...
. It was followed by What Price Glory?
What Price Glory? (1952 film)
What Price Glory is a 1952 World War I film based on a 1924 play by Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings, though it used virtually none of Anderson's dialogue. Originally intended as a musical, it was filmed as a straight comedy, directed by John Ford and released by 20th Century Fox on 22...
(1952), a World War I drama, the first of two films Ford made with James Cagney
James Cagney
James Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing "tough guys." In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth...
(Mister Roberts was the other) which also did good business at the box office ($2m).
The Sun Shines Bright
The Sun Shines Bright
The Sun Shines Bright is a 1953 comedy film directed by John Ford, based on material taken from a series of Irvin S. Cobb stories. Ford had adapted some of the same material in 1934 in his film Judge Priest. That film originally had a scene depicting the lynching of Stepin Fetchit’s character , but...
(1953), Ford's first entry in the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
, was a western comedy-drama with Charles Winninger
Charles Winninger
Charles Winninger was an American stage and film actor, most often cast in comedies or musicals, but equally at home in drama.-Biography:He began as a vaudeville actor...
reviving the Judge Priest
Judge Priest
Judge Priest is a 1934 American comedy film. The film was based on humorist Irvin S. Cobb's character Judge Priest. The film was directed by John Ford and produced by Sol M. Wurtzel in association with Fox Film...
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
Mogambo is a 1953 film directed by John Ford, featuring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly and Donald Sinden. The film was adapted by John Lee Mahin from the play by Wilson Collison....
(MGM, 1953), a loose remake of the celebrated 1932 film Red Dust
Red Dust
Red Dust is an American 1932 romantic drama film directed by Victor Fleming. The picture is the second of six movies Clark Gable and Jean Harlow made together and was produced during the Pre-Code era of Hollywood...
. Filmed on location in Africa, it was photographed by British cinematographer Freddie Young
Freddie Young
Freddie Young OBE, BSC , was one of Britain's most distinguished and influential cinematographers...
and starred Ford's old friend Clark Gable
Clark Gable
William Clark Gable , known as Clark Gable, was an American film actor most famous for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh...
, with Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner
Ava Lavinia Gardner was an American actress.She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers . She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses, considered one of the most beautiful women of her day...
, Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly
Grace Patricia Kelly was an American actress who, in April 1956, married Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, to become Princess consort of Monaco, styled as Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco, and commonly referred to as Princess Grace.After embarking on an acting career in 1950, at the age of...
(who replaced an ailing Gene Tierney
Gene Tierney
Gene Eliza Tierney was an American film and stage actress. Acclaimed as one of the great beauties of her day, she is best remembered for her performance in the title role of Laura and her Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Actress in Leave Her to Heaven .Other notable roles include...
) and Donald Sinden
Donald Sinden
Sir Donald Alfred Sinden CBE is an English actor of theatre, film and television.-Personal life:Sinden was born in Plymouth, Devon, England, on 9 October 1923. The son of Alfred Edward Sinden and his wife Mabel Agnes , he grew up in the Sussex village of Ditchling, where their home doubled as the...
. Although the production was difficult (exacerbated by the irritating presence of Gardner's then husband Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
), Mogamabo became one of the biggest commercial hits of Ford's career, with the highest domestic first-year gross of any of his films ($5.2m); 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
The Long Gray Line
The Long Gray Line is a 1955 American drama film directed by John Ford based on the life of Marty Maher. Tyrone Power stars as the scrappy Irish immigrant whose 50-year career at West Point took him from dishwasher to non-commissioned officer and athletic instructor.Maureen O'Hara, one of Ford's...
for Columbia Pictures, the first of two Ford films to feature Tyrone Power
Tyrone Power
Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...
, 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, starring 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...
, Jack Lemmon
Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts , Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925June...
, William Powell
William Powell
William Horatio Powell was an American actor.A major star at MGM, he was paired with Myrna Loy in 14 films, including the popular Thin Man series in which Powell and Loy played Nick and Nora Charles...
, and James Cagney
James Cagney
James Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing "tough guys." In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth...
, 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
Leland Hayward
Leland Hayward was a Hollywood and Broadway agent and theatrical producer. He produced the original Broadway stage productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and The Sound of Music.-Early years:...
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 the 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
Mervyn LeRoy
Mervyn LeRoy was an American film director, producer and sometime actor.-Early life:Born to Jewish parents in San Francisco, California, his family was financially ruined by the 1906 earthquake...
.
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 Theatre series; it starred Jane Wyman
Jane Wyman
Jane Wyman was an American singer, dancer, and character actress of film and television. She began her film career in the 1930s, and was a prolific performer for two decades...
with an Asian-American cast and Stock Company veterans Frank Baker and Pat O'Malley in minor roles.
The Searchers (film)
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...
(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 regarded by many as the greatest western ever made, 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
Jeffrey Hunter
Jeffrey Hunter was an American film and television actor. His most famous roles are as Jesus in the film King of Kings, as Martin Pawley in The Searchers, and as Capt...
, Ward Bond
Ward Bond
Wardell Edwin "Ward" Bond was an American film actor whose rugged appearance and easygoing charm were featured in over 200 movies and the television series Wagon Train.-Early life:...
, Vera Miles
Vera Miles
Vera Miles is an American film actress who gained popularity for starring in films such as The Searchers, The Wrong Man, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Psycho and Psycho II.-Early life:...
and rising star Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
(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 $4.45m, although it received no Academy Award nominations. However its reputation has grown greatly over the intervening years—it was named the Greatest Western of all time
AFI's 10 Top 10
AFI's 10 Top 10 honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute , the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008....
by 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...
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
David Lean
Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...
and George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
, 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
The Searchers (band)
The Searchers are an English beat group, who emerged as part of the 1960s Merseybeat scene along with The Beatles, The Fourmost, The Merseybeats, The Swinging Blue Jeans, and Gerry & The Pacemakers....
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 Brothers Presents TV show, (the studio's first foray into TV) which aired on the ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
network in 1955-56. Presented by Gig Young
Gig Young
Gig Young was an American film, stage, and television actor. Known mainly for second leads and supporting roles, Young won an Academy Award for his performance as a dance-marathon emcee in the 1969 film, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.-Early life and career:Born Byron Elsworth Barr in St...
, the four segments included interviews with Jeffrey Hunter
Jeffrey Hunter
Jeffrey Hunter was an American film and television actor. His most famous roles are as Jesus in the film King of Kings, as Martin Pawley in The Searchers, and as Capt...
and Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
and behind-the-scenes footage shot during the making of the film.
The Wings of Eagles
The Wings of Eagles
The Wings of Eagles is a 1957 Metrocolor film about Frank "Spig" Wead and US Naval aviation from its inception through World War II. The film is a tribute to Wead from his friend, director John Ford....
(MGM, 1957) was a fictionalized biography of Ford's old friend, aviator-turned-scriptwriter Frank "Spig" Wead
Frank Wead
Frank Wilbur "Spig" Wead was a U.S. Navy aviator turned screenwriter who helped promote United States Naval aviation from its inception through World War II.-Military service:A 1916 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Wead began to promote Naval Aviation after World War...
, who had scripted several of Ford's early sound films. It starred 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...
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...
, with Ward Bond
Ward Bond
Wardell Edwin "Ward" Bond was an American film actor whose rugged appearance and easygoing charm were featured in over 200 movies and the television series Wagon Train.-Early life:...
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
The Rising of the Moon (film)
The Rising of the Moon is a 1957 anthology film directed by John Ford. It consists of three episodes all set in Ireland:*"The Majesty of the Law", based on the short story of that title by Frank O'Connor in Bones of Contention...
(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 British tycoon Lord Killanin, who had recently become Chair of the International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...
, 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 ($100k) 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
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
and both were significant departures from Ford's norm. Gideon's Day (titled Gideon of Scotland Yard in the USA) was adapted from the novel by British writer John Creasey
John Creasey
John Creasey MBE was an English crime and science fiction writer. The author of more than 600 novels, he published them using 28 different pseudonyms, including Anthony Morton, Michael Halliday, Kyle Hunt, J.J. Marric, Jeremy York, Richard Martin, Peter Manton, Norman Deane, Gordon Ashe, Henry St...
. 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
Jack Hawkins
Colonel John Edward "Jack" Hawkins CBE was an English actor of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s.-Career:Hawkins was born at Lyndhurst Road, Wood Green, Middlesex, the son of master builder Thomas George Hawkins and his wife, Phoebe née Goodman. The youngest of four children in a close-knit family,...
, whom Ford (unusually) lauded as "the finest dramatic actor with whom I have worked". 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
The Last Hurrah
The Last Hurrah is a 1956 novel written by Edwin O'Connor. It is considered the most popular of O’Connor's works, partly because of a significant 1958 movie adaptation starring Spencer Tracy. The novel was immediately a bestseller in the United States for 20 weeks, and was also on lists for...
, (Columbia, 1958), again set in present day of the '50s, starred Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was an American theatrical and film actor, who appeared in 75 films from 1930 to 1967. Tracy was one of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, ranking among the top ten box office draws for almost every year from 1938 to 1951...
, 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
Jeffrey Hunter
Jeffrey Hunter was an American film and television actor. His most famous roles are as Jesus in the film King of Kings, as Martin Pawley in The Searchers, and as Capt...
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
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...
(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 although cast member Anna Lee
Anna Lee
Anna Lee, MBE was an English actress.-Career:Lee studied at the Royal Albert Hall, then debuted with a bit part in the film His Lordship...
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
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
, was made for the U.S. Department of Defense as an orientation film for US soldiers stationed there. It was followed by his next feature, The Horse Soldiers
The Horse Soldiers
The Horse Soldiers is a 1959 DeLuxe Color war film, set in the American Civil War, directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne, William Holden and Constance Towers...
(Mirisch Company-United Artists, 1959), a Civil War story starring John Wayne and William Holden
William Holden
William Holden was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974...
. Although Ford professed unhappiness with the project, it was a commercial success, ranking in the year's Top 20 box-office hits, grossing $3.6m in its first year, and earning Ford his highest-ever fee—$375,000, plus 10% of the gross.
Last years, 1960–1973
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
Sergeant Rutledge
Sergeant Rutledge is a 1960 Western and military courtroom drama starring Woody Strode and Jeffrey Hunter. It was directed by John Ford and shot on location in Monument Valley, Utah....
, (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
Woody Strode
Woodrow Wilson Woolwine "Woody" Strode was a decathlete and football star who went on to become a pioneering black American film actor. He was nominated for a Golden Globe award for best supporting actor for his role in Spartacus in 1960...
) 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 the year Ford made his third TV production, The Colter Craven Story, a one-hour episode of the network TV show Wagon Train
Wagon Train
Wagon Train is an American Western series that ran on NBC from 1957–62 and then on ABC from 1962–65...
, which included footage from Ford's Wagon Master
Wagon Master
Wagon Master is a 1950 Western film directed by John Ford and starring Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr., Joanne Dru, and Ward Bond.-Plot:Learning of their ability as experienced horsemen, Mormon Elder Wiggs , hires Travis Blue and Sandy Owens to guide a small group of Mormons across the West to the...
(on which the series was based). He also visited the set of The Alamo
The Alamo (1960 film)
The Alamo is a 1960 American historical epic released by United Artists. The film was directed by John Wayne, who also starred as Davy Crockett. The cast also includes Richard Widmark as Jim Bowie and Laurence Harvey as William B...
, 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
Two Rode Together
Two Rode Together is a western film directed by John Ford, and starring James Stewart, Richard Widmark, and Shirley Jones. The supporting cast includes Linda Cristal, Andy Devine, and John McIntire...
(Ford Productions-Columbia, 1961) co-starred James Stewart
James Stewart
James Stewart was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart may also refer to:-Noblemen:*James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland*James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn James Stewart (1908–1997) was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart...
and Richard Widmark
Richard Widmark
Richard Weedt Widmark was an American film, stage and television actor.He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film, Kiss of Death...
, with Shirley Jones
Shirley Jones
Shirley Mae Jones is an American singer and actress of stage, film and television. In her six decades of television, she starred as wholesome characters in a number of well-known musical films, such as Oklahoma! , Carousel , and The Music Man...
and Stock Company regulars Andy Devine
Andy Devine
Andrew Vabre "Andy" Devine was an American character actor and comic cowboy sidekick known for his distinctive raspy voice.-Early life:...
, Henry Brandon, Harry Carey Jr, Anna Lee, Woody Strode, Mae Marsh and Frank Baker, with an early screen appearance by Linda Cristal
Linda Cristal
Linda Cristal is an Argentine actress. She is currently retired....
, who went on to star in the Western TV series The High Chaparral
The High Chaparral
The High Chaparral is a Western-themed television series starring Leif Erickson and Cameron Mitchell which aired on NBC from 1967 to 1971. The show was created by David Dortort, who had previously created the hit Bonanza for the network...
. 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
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a 1962 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring James Stewart and John Wayne. The black-and-white film was released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck was adapted from a short story written by Dorothy M...
(Ford Productions-Paramount, 1962) is frequently cited as the last great film of Ford's career. It co-starred John Wayne and James Stewart
James Stewart
James Stewart was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart may also refer to:-Noblemen:*James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland*James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn James Stewart (1908–1997) was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart...
, with Vera Miles
Vera Miles
Vera Miles is an American film actress who gained popularity for starring in films such as The Searchers, The Wrong Man, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Psycho and Psycho II.-Early life:...
, Edmund O'Brien, Andy Devine
Andy Devine
Andrew Vabre "Andy" Devine was an American character actor and comic cowboy sidekick known for his distinctive raspy voice.-Early life:...
as the inept marshal, Denver Pyle
Denver Pyle
Denver Dell Pyle was an American film and television actor. He is best remembered for playing Uncle Jesse in The Dukes of Hazzard .-Early life:...
, John Carradine
John Carradine
John Carradine was an American actor, best known for his roles in horror films and Westerns as well as Shakespearean theater. A member of Cecil B DeMille's stock company and later John Ford's company, he was one of the most prolific character actors in Hollywood history...
and Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin was an American film actor. Known for his gravelly voice, white hair and 6' 2" stature, Marvin at first did supporting roles, mostly villains, soldiers and other hardboiled characters, but after winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual roles in Cat Ballou , he landed more...
in one of his first major roles as the brutal Valance, with Lee Van Cleef
Lee Van Cleef
Lee Van Cleef was an American film actor who appeared mostly in Western and action pictures. His sharp features and piercing eyes led to his being cast as a villain in scores of films such as High Noon, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Good The Bad and the Ugly.-Early life:Van Cleef was...
and Strother Martin
Strother Martin
Strother Martin was an American actor in numerous films and television programs. Martin is perhaps best known as the prison "captain" in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, where he uttered the line, "What we've got here is...failure to communicate."-Early life:Strother Martin Jr. was born in Kokomo,...
as his henchmen. It is also notable as the film in which Wayne first used his trademark phrase "Pilgrim" (his nickname for James Stewart's character). It was very successful, grossing over $3m in its first year, although the lead casting stretched credibility—the characters played by Stewart (then 53) and Wayne (then 54) were meant to be in their early 20s, 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. 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
How the West Was Won (film)
How the West Was Won is a 1962 American epic Western film. The picture was one of the last "old-fashioned" epic films made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to enjoy great success. It follows four generations of a family as they move ever westward, from western New York state to the Pacific Ocean...
, the first non-documentary film to use the Cinerama
Cinerama
Cinerama is the trademarked name for a widescreen process which works by simultaneously projecting images from three synchronized 35 mm projectors onto a huge, deeply-curved screen, subtending 146° of arc. It is also the trademarked name for the corporation which was formed to market it...
wide-screen process. Ford's segment featured George Peppard
George Peppard
George Peppard, Jr. was an American film and television actor.Peppard secured a major role when he starred alongside Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's , portrayed a character based on Howard Hughes in The Carpetbaggers , and played the title role of the millionaire sleuth Thomas Banacek in...
, with Andy Devine
Andy Devine
Andrew Vabre "Andy" Devine was an American character actor and comic cowboy sidekick known for his distinctive raspy voice.-Early life:...
, Russ Tamblyn
Russ Tamblyn
Russell Irving "Russ" Tamblyn is an American film and television actor, who is arguably best known for his performance in the 1961 movie musical West Side Story as Riff, the leader of the Jets gang....
, Harry Morgan
Harry Morgan
Harry Morgan is an American actor. Morgan is well-known for his roles as Colonel Sherman T. Potter on M*A*S*H , Pete Porter on both Pete and Gladys and December Bride , Detective Bill Gannon on Dragnet , and Amos Coogan on Hec Ramsey...
as Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
and John Wayne as William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War , for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched...
. 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
Jack Warden
Jack Warden was an American character actor.-Early life:Warden was born John Warden Lebzelter in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Laura M. and John Warden Lebzelter, who was an engineer and technician. He was of Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry...
, Patrick Wayne
Patrick Wayne
Patrick John Morrison, better known by his stage name Patrick Wayne , is an American actor, the second son of movie star John Wayne and his first wife, Josephine Alicia Saenz. He made over 40 films in his career, including nine with his father...
and Tige Andrews
Tige Andrews
Tige Andrews was an American character actor. His work includes the role of Captain Adam Greer on the late 1960s-to-early 1970s television series The Mod Squad and Detective Lt...
, with Harry Carey, Jr. and a lengthy surprise appearance by John Wayne, billed in the credits as "Michael Morris."
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...
(Paramount, 1963) was Ford's last film with John Wayne. Filmed on location on the Hawaiian island of Kauai
Kauai
Kauai or Kauai, known as Tauai in the ancient Kaua'i dialect, is geologically the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands. With an area of , it is the fourth largest of the main islands in the Hawaiian archipelago, and the 21st largest island in the United States. Known also as the "Garden Isle",...
(doubling for a fictional island in French Polynesia
French Polynesia
French Polynesia is an overseas country of the French Republic . It is made up of several groups of Polynesian islands, the most famous island being Tahiti in the Society Islands group, which is also the most populous island and the seat of the capital of the territory...
), it was a morality play
Morality play
The morality play is a genre of Medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment. In their own time, these plays were known as "interludes", a broader term given to dramas with or without a moral theme. Morality plays are a type of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of...
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 Elizabeth Allen, Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin was an American film actor. Known for his gravelly voice, white hair and 6' 2" stature, Marvin at first did supporting roles, mostly villains, soldiers and other hardboiled characters, but after winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual roles in Cat Ballou , he landed more...
, Jack Warden
Jack Warden
Jack Warden was an American character actor.-Early life:Warden was born John Warden Lebzelter in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Laura M. and John Warden Lebzelter, who was an engineer and technician. He was of Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry...
, Dorothy Lamour
Dorothy Lamour
Dorothy Lamour was an American film actress. She is best remembered for appearing in the Road to... movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope .-Early life:Lamour was born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Carmen Louise Dorothy...
, and Cesar Romero
Cesar Romero
Cesar Julio Romero, Jr. was an American film and television actor who was active in film, radio, and television for almost sixty years...
. It was also Ford's last commercial success, grossing $3.3m against a budget of $2.6m.
Cheyenne Autumn
Cheyenne 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...
(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 ($4.2m), but it failed to recoup its costs at the box office and lost about $1m on its first release. The all-star cast was headed by Richard Widmark
Richard Widmark
Richard Weedt Widmark was an American film, stage and television actor.He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film, Kiss of Death...
, with Carroll Baker
Carroll Baker
Carroll Baker is a former American actress who has enjoyed popularity as both a serious dramatic actress and, particularly in the 1960s, as a movie sex symbol...
, Karl Malden
Karl Malden
Karl Malden was an American actor. In a career that spanned more than seven decades, he performed in such classic films as A Streetcar Named Desire, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, On the Waterfront and One-Eyed Jacks...
, Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río was a Mexican film actress. She was a star of Hollywood films during the silent era and in the Golden Age of Hollywood...
, Ricardo Montalbán
Ricardo Montalbán
Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, KSG was a Mexican radio, television, theatre and film actor. He had a career spanning six decades and many notable roles...
, Gilbert Roland
Gilbert Roland
Gilbert Roland was a Mexican-born American film actor.He was born Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and originally intended to become a bullfighter like his father. When the family moved to the United States, however, he became interested in acting when he was...
, Sal Mineo
Sal Mineo
Salvatore "Sal" Mineo, Jr. , was an American film and theatre actor, best known for his performance as John "Plato" Crawford opposite James Dean in the film Rebel Without a Cause...
, James Stewart
James Stewart
James Stewart was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart may also refer to:-Noblemen:*James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland*James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn James Stewart (1908–1997) was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart...
as Wyatt Earp, Arthur Kennedy
Arthur Kennedy (actor)
Arthur Kennedy was an American stage and film actor known for his versatility in supporting film roles and his ability to create "an exceptional honesty and naturalness on stage" especially in the original casts of Arthur Miller plays on Broadway.- Early life and education :Kennedy was born John...
as Doc Holliday, Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson was a Romanian-born American actor. A popular star during Hollywood's Golden Age, he is best remembered for his roles as gangsters, such as Rico in his star-making film Little Caesar and as Rocco in Key Largo...
, Patrick Wayne
Patrick Wayne
Patrick John Morrison, better known by his stage name Patrick Wayne , is an American actor, the second son of movie star John Wayne and his first wife, Josephine Alicia Saenz. He made over 40 films in his career, including nine with his father...
, Elizabeth Allen, Mike Mazurki
Mike Mazurki
Mike Mazurki was an Austrian-born American actor and professional wrestler who appeared in over 100 movies. His towering 6' 5" presence and intimidating face usually got him roles playing tough guys, thugs, strong men, and gangsters.Mazurki was born as Mikhail Mazurkevych in Tarnopol, Galicia,...
and many of Ford's faithful Stock Company, including John Carradine
John Carradine
John Carradine was an American actor, best known for his roles in horror films and Westerns as well as Shakespearean theater. A member of Cecil B DeMille's stock company and later John Ford's company, he was one of the most prolific character actors in Hollywood history...
, Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis was an American singer and actor best known for his role as Festus Haggen on the long-running CBS western television series Gunsmoke.-Early years:...
, Willis Bouchey
Willis Bouchey
Willis Ben Bouchey was an American character actor who appeared in almost 150 films and television shows. He was born in Vernon, Michigan, but reared by his mother and stepfather in Washington State....
, James Flavin
James Flavin
James William Flavin, Jr. was an American character actor whose career lasted nearly half a century.-Life and career:...
, Danny Borzage, Harry Carey Jr, Chuck Hayward
Chuck Hayward
Charles B. Hayward was an American motion picture stuntman and actor. He was associated particularly with the films of John Wayne...
, Ben Johnson
Ben Johnson (actor)
Ben "Son" Johnson, Jr. was an American motion picture actor who was mainly cast in Westerns. He was also a rodeo cowboy, stuntman, and rancher.-Personal life:...
, Mae Marsh
Mae Marsh
Mae Marsh was an American film actress with a career spanning over 50 years.-Early life:...
and Denver Pyle
Denver Pyle
Denver Dell Pyle was an American film and television actor. He is best remembered for playing Uncle Jesse in The Dukes of Hazzard .-Early life:...
. 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
Young Cassidy
Young Cassidy is a 1965 film directed by Jack Cardiff and John Ford, and starring Rod Taylor. The film is a biographical drama based upon the life of the playwright Sean O'Casey.-Plot:...
(MGM), a biographical drama based upon the life of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey
Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.- Early life:...
, but he fell ill early in the production and was replaced by Jack Cardiff
Jack Cardiff
Jack Cardiff, OBE, BSC was a British cinematographer, director and photographer.His career spanned the development of cinema, from silent film, through early experiments in Technicolor to filmmaking in the 21st century...
.
Ford's last completed feature film was 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...
(MGM, 1966), a drama about missionary women in China ca. 1935 trying to protect themselves from the advances of a barbaric Mongolian warlord. Anne Bancroft
Anne Bancroft
Anne Bancroft was an American actress associated with the Method acting school, which she had studied under Lee Strasberg....
took over the lead role from Patricia Neal
Patricia Neal
Patricia Neal was an American actress of stage and screen. She was best known for her film roles as World War II widow Helen Benson in The Day the Earth Stood Still , wealthy matron Emily Eustace Failenson in Breakfast at Tiffany's , middle-aged housekeeper Alma Brown in Hud , for which she won...
, who suffered a near-fatal stroke two days into shooting. The supporting cast included Margaret Leighton, Flora Robson
Flora Robson
Dame Flora McKenzie Robson DBE was an English actress, renowned as a character actress, who played roles ranging from queens to villainesses.-Early life:...
, Sue Lyon
Sue Lyon
- Lolita :Sue Lyon was 14 years old when she was cast in the role of Dolores "Lolita" Haze, the sexually charged adolescent and the object of an older man's obsessions in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film, Lolita. She was chosen for the role partly because her curvy figure suggested an older adolescent...
, Mildred Dunnock
Mildred Dunnock
Mildred Dunnock was an American theater, film and television actress.- Early life :Born in Baltimore, Maryland and graduated from Western Senior High School, Dunnock was a school teacher who did not start acting until she was in her early thirties...
, Anna Lee
Anna Lee
Anna Lee, MBE was an English actress.-Career:Lee studied at the Royal Albert Hall, then debuted with a bit part in the film His Lordship...
, Eddie Albert
Eddie Albert
Edward Albert Heimberger , known professionally as Eddie Albert, was an American actor and activist. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1954 for his performance in Roman Holiday, and in 1973 for The Heartbreak Kid.Other well-known screen roles of his include Bing...
, Mike Mazurki
Mike Mazurki
Mike Mazurki was an Austrian-born American actor and professional wrestler who appeared in over 100 movies. His towering 6' 5" presence and intimidating face usually got him roles playing tough guys, thugs, strong men, and gangsters.Mazurki was born as Mikhail Mazurkevych in Tarnopol, Galicia,...
and Woody Strode
Woody Strode
Woodrow Wilson Woolwine "Woody" Strode was a decathlete and football star who went on to become a pioneering black American film actor. He was nominated for a Golden Globe award for best supporting actor for his role in Spartacus in 1960...
, with music by Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein was an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores. In a career which spanned fifty years, he composed music for hundreds of film and television productions...
. Unfortunately it was a commercial flop, grossing only about half of its $2.3m budget. Unusually 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 Lewis B. Puller
Chesty Puller
Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller was an officer in the United States Marine Corps. Puller is the most decorated U.S...
, 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, and had to move from his Bel Air home to a single-level house in Palm Desert, near Eisenhower Medical Center
Eisenhower Medical Center
The Eisenhower Medical Center is a not-for-profit hospital located in Rancho Mirage, California. It was named one of the top one hundred hospitals in the United States in 2005 and is adjacent to the world-famous Betty Ford Center....
, where he was being treated for cancer. In October 1972 the Screen Directors Guild staged a tribute to Ford and in March 1973 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...
honored him with its first Lifetime Achievement Award at a ceremony which was telecast nationwide, with President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
promoting Ford to full Admiral and presenting him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
.
Ford died on 31 August 1973 at Palm Desert, California, and his funeral was held on 5 September at Hollywood's Church of the Blessed Sacrament. He was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery
Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City
Holy Cross Cemetery is a Roman Catholic cemetery at 5835 West Slauson Avenue in Culver City, California, operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles....
in Culver City, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
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 GreyEarl Grey tea
Earl Grey tea is a tea blend with a distinctive flavour and aroma derived from the addition of oil extracted from the rind of the bergamot orange, a fragrant citrus fruit....
) 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 older brother Francis. He almost never attended premieres or award ceremonies, although his Oscars and other awards were proudly displayed on the mantle in his home.
He was famously untidy, and his study was always littered with books, papers and clothes. He bought a brand new 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 he was John Ford the famous director, and refused to let him in. He 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 F. Zanuck
Darryl Francis Zanuck was an American producer, writer, actor, director and studio executive who played a major part in the Hollywood studio system as one of its longest survivors...
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".
His pride and joy was his 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" (Harry "Dobe" Carey Jr). 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. Some time 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.
Although Ford had many affairs with women, there were occasional rumors about his sexual preferences, and in her 2004 autobiography Tis Herself, 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...
recalled seeing Ford kissing a famous male actor (whom she did not name) in his office at Columbia Studios.
General style
Ford had many distinctive stylistic 'trademarks' and a suite of thematic preoccupations and visual and aural motifMotif (narrative)
In narrative, a motif is any recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story. Through its repetition, a motif can help produce other narrative aspects such as theme or mood....
s recurs throughout his work as a director. Film journalist Ephraim Katz
Ephraim Katz
Ephraim Katz was a writer, journalist, and filmmaker who devoted his life to gathering the information in his book, The Film Encyclopedia, first published in 1979....
summarised some of the keynote features of Ford's work in his Collins Film Enclopedia entry:
Of all American directors, Ford probably had the clearest personal vision and the most consistent visual style. His ideas and his characters are, like many things branded "American", deceptively simple. His heroes .... may appear simply to be loners, outsiders to established society, who generally speak through action rather than words. But their conflict with society embodies larger themes in the American experience.
Ford's films, particularly the Westerns, express a deep aesthetic sensibility for the American past and the spirit of the frontier ... his compositions have a classic strength in which masses of people and their natural surroundings are beautifully juxtaposed, often in breathtaking long shots. The movement of men and horses in his Westerns has rarely been surpassed for regal serenity and evocative power. The musical score, often variations on folk themes, plays a more important part than dialogue in many Ford films.
Ford also championed the value and force of the group, as evidenced in his many military dramas ... (he) expressed a similar sentiment for camaraderie through his repeated use of certain actors in the lead and supporting roles ... he also felt an allegiance to places ...
In contrast to his contemporary Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
, 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 one film, when challenged by a studio executive about falling behind schedule, Ford responded by tearing an entire scene out of the script and declaring "There, now we're all caught up!", and indeed he never filmed the scene. While making Drums Along the Mohawk, Ford neatly sidestepped the challenge of shooting a large and expensive battle scene—he had 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...
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 Expressionistic
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
style, although he often used panning shots and sometimes used a dramatic zoom-in (e.g. John Wayne's first appearance in Stagecoach). Ford is justly famous for his exciting tracking shots, such as the 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 "death hand
Dead man's hand
The dead man's hand is a two-pair poker hand, namely "aces and eights". This card combination gets its name from a legend that it was the five-card-draw hand held by Wild Bill Hickok, when he was murdered on August 2, 1876, in Saloon No. 10 at Deadwood, South Dakota.According to the popular...
"—two eights and two aces, one of them the ace of spades—so-called because Wild Bill Hickok
Wild Bill Hickok
James Butler Hickok , better known as Wild Bill Hickok, was a folk hero of the American Old West. His skills as a gunfighter and scout, along with his reputation as a lawman, provided the basis for his fame, although some of his exploits are fictionalized.Hickok came to the West as a stagecoach...
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?
Shall We Gather at the River?
"Shall We Gather at the River?" is a traditional Christian hymn, written by American poet and gospel music composer Robert Lowry . It was written in 1864....
", 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.
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 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...
. 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 known, 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
Ward Bond
Wardell Edwin "Ward" Bond was an American film actor whose rugged appearance and easygoing charm were featured in over 200 movies and the television series Wagon Train.-Early life:...
was reportedly one of the few actors who were impervious to Ford's taunting and sarcasms.
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 Edmund 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." and 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
2005 in film
- Highest-grossing films :Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top-grossing films that were first released in the United States in 2005...
).
Ford's favorite location for his Western films was southern Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
's 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...
. 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
The Searchers (film)
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...
, Fort Apache
Fort Apache (film)
Fort Apache is a 1948 Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Henry Fonda. The film was the first of the director's "cavalry trilogy" and was followed by She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande , both also starring Wayne...
. A notable example is the famous scene in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is a 1949 Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne. The film was the second of Ford's trilogy of films focusing on the US Cavalry ; the other two films were Fort Apache and Rio Grande...
in which the cavalry troop is photographed against an oncoming storm. The influence on the films of classic Western artists such as Frederic Remington
Frederic Remington
Frederic Sackrider Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of the Old American West, specifically concentrating on the last quarter of the 19th century American West and images of cowboys, American Indians, and the U. S...
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
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...
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 six Academy AwardsAcademy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
. Four of these were for Best Director for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath (film)
The Grapes of Wrath is a 1940 drama film directed by John Ford. It was based on John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F...
(1940), How Green Was My Valley
How Green Was My Valley (film)
How Green Was My Valley is a 1941 drama film directed by John Ford. The film, based on the 1939 Richard Llewellyn novel, was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and written by Philip Dunne. The film stars Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, and Roddy McDowall...
(1941), and The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man is a 1952 American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film. It was directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald. It was based on a 1933 Saturday Evening Post short story by Maurice Walsh...
(1952) - none of them Westerns (also starring in the last two was 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...
, "his favorite actress"). He was also nominated as Best Director for Stagecoach (1939). He won two Oscars for Best Documentary for The Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway is a 1942 American documentary film short directed by John Ford. It is a montage of color footage of the Battle of Midway with voice overs of various narrators, including Donald Crisp, Henry Fonda, and Jane Darwell...
and December 7th
December 7th (film)
December 7th is a propaganda film produced by the US Navy and directed by John Ford, about the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the event which sparked the Pacific War and American involvement in World War II.-Production background:...
. To this day Ford holds the record for winning the most Best Director Oscars, having won the award on four occasions. William Wyler
William Wyler
William Wyler was a leading American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.Notable works included Ben-Hur , The Best Years of Our Lives , and Mrs. Miniver , all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture...
and Frank Capra
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
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
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of All About Eve , which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six. He was brother to screenwriter and drama critic Herman J...
exactly ten years later, when he won consecutive awards for Best Director in 1950 and 1951. As a producer he received nominations for Best Picture for The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man is a 1952 American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film. It was directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald. It was based on a 1933 Saturday Evening Post short story by Maurice Walsh...
and The Long Voyage Home
The Long Voyage Home
The Long Voyage Home is an American drama film and directed by John Ford. It features John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell, Ian Hunter, Barry Fitzgerald, Wilfrid Lawson, John Qualen, Mildred Natwick, Ward Bond, among others....
. He was the first recipient of 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...
Life Achievement Award
AFI Life Achievement Award
The AFI Life Achievement Award was established by the Board of Directors of the American Film Institute on February 26, 1973 to honor a single individual for his or her lifetime contribution to enriching American culture through motion pictures and television....
in 1973. Also in that year, Ford was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
by President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
.
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 Oscar for one of their roles in one of Fords movies.
A television special featuring Ford, John Wayne, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda was broadcast over the CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
network on December 5, 1971 called The American West of John Ford
The American West of John Ford
The American West of John Ford is a 1971 television special about movie director John Ford's career narrated by John Wayne, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda...
, featuring clips from Ford's career interspersed with interviews conducted by Wayne, Stewart, and Fonda, who also took turns narrating the hourlong documentary
Documentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
.
In 2007, Twentieth Century Fox released "Ford at Fox", a DVD boxed set of 24 of Ford's films. Time
Time (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...
magazine's Richard Corliss
Richard Corliss
Richard Nelson Corliss is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment...
named it one of the "Top 10 DVDs of 2007", ranking it at #1.
A statue of Ford in Portland, Maine
Portland, Maine
Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...
depicts him sitting in a director's chair. The statue made by New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
sculptor George M. Kelly and commissioned by Louisiana philanthropst Linda Noe Laine was unveiled on 12 July 1998 at Gorham's Corner in Portland, Maine
Portland, Maine
Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...
, United State, as part of a celebration of Ford that was later to include renaming the auditorium of Portland High School the John Ford Auditorium.
Academy Awards
| Year | Awards | Film | Won |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1932 5th Academy Awards The 5th Academy Awards were conducted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on November 18, 1932 at a ceremony held at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. The ceremony was hosted by Conrad Nagel... |
Outstanding Production Academy Award for Best Picture The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only... |
Arrowsmith Arrowsmith (film) Arrowsmith is a 1931 film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was written by Sidney Howard from the Sinclair Lewis novel Arrowsmith, and directed by John Ford.-Plot:... |
Irving G. Thalberg Irving Thalberg Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff and make very profitable films.-Life and... – Grand Hotel Grand Hotel (film) Grand Hotel is a 1932 American drama film directed by Edmund Goulding. The screenplay by William A. Drake and Béla Balázs is based on the 1930 play of the same title by Drake, who had adapted it from the 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum... |
| 1935 8th Academy Awards The 8th Academy Awards were held on March 5, 1936 at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California. They were hosted by Frank Capra. This was the first year in which the gold statuettes were called "Oscars."... |
Outstanding Production Academy Award for Best Picture The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only... |
The Informer | Irving G. Thalberg Irving Thalberg Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff and make very profitable films.-Life and... – Mutiny on the Bounty Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 film) Mutiny on the Bounty is a 1935 film starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, and directed by Frank Lloyd based on the Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall novel Mutiny on the Bounty.The film was one of the biggest hits of its time... |
| 1935 8th Academy Awards The 8th Academy Awards were held on March 5, 1936 at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California. They were hosted by Frank Capra. This was the first year in which the gold statuettes were called "Oscars."... |
Best Director | The Informer | |
| 1939 12th Academy Awards The 12th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 1939, was held on February 29, 1940, at a banquet in the Coconut Grove at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It was hosted by Bob Hope .... |
Best Director | Stagecoach | Victor Fleming Victor Fleming Victor Lonzo Fleming was an American film director, cinematographer, and producer. His most popular films were The Wizard of Oz , and Gone with the Wind , for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.-Life and career:Fleming was born in La Canada, California, the son of Elizabeth Evaleen ... – Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind (film) Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard... |
| 1940 13th Academy Awards The 13th Academy Awards honored American film achievements in 1940. This was the first year that sealed envelopes were used to keep secret the names of the winners which led to the famous phrase: "May I have the Envelope, please." The accounting firm of Price Waterhouse was hired to count the... |
Outstanding Production Academy Award for Best Picture The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only... |
The Long Voyage Home The Long Voyage Home The Long Voyage Home is an American drama film and directed by John Ford. It features John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell, Ian Hunter, Barry Fitzgerald, Wilfrid Lawson, John Qualen, Mildred Natwick, Ward Bond, among others.... |
David O. Selznick David O. Selznick David O. Selznick was an American film producer. He is best known for having produced Gone with the Wind and Rebecca , both of which earned him an Oscar for Best Picture.-Early years:... – Rebecca |
| 1940 13th Academy Awards The 13th Academy Awards honored American film achievements in 1940. This was the first year that sealed envelopes were used to keep secret the names of the winners which led to the famous phrase: "May I have the Envelope, please." The accounting firm of Price Waterhouse was hired to count the... |
Best Director | The Grapes of Wrath The Grapes of Wrath (film) The Grapes of Wrath is a 1940 drama film directed by John Ford. It was based on John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F... |
|
| 1941 14th Academy Awards The 14th Academy Awards honored American film achievements in 1941 and was held in the Biltmore Bowl at the Biltmore Hotel. The ceremony is now considered notable, in retrospect, as the year in which Citizen Kane failed to win Best Picture. Best Picture of the year was awarded to How Green Was My... |
Best Motion Picture Academy Award for Best Picture The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only... |
How Green Was My Valley How Green Was My Valley (film) How Green Was My Valley is a 1941 drama film directed by John Ford. The film, based on the 1939 Richard Llewellyn novel, was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and written by Philip Dunne. The film stars Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, and Roddy McDowall... |
|
| 1941 14th Academy Awards The 14th Academy Awards honored American film achievements in 1941 and was held in the Biltmore Bowl at the Biltmore Hotel. The ceremony is now considered notable, in retrospect, as the year in which Citizen Kane failed to win Best Picture. Best Picture of the year was awarded to How Green Was My... |
Best Director | How Green Was My Valley How Green Was My Valley (film) How Green Was My Valley is a 1941 drama film directed by John Ford. The film, based on the 1939 Richard Llewellyn novel, was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and written by Philip Dunne. The film stars Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, and Roddy McDowall... |
|
| 1942 15th Academy Awards The 15th Academy Awards was held in the Cocoanut Grove at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Best Picture honors went to the film Mrs. Miniver. The ceremony is most famous for the speech by the film’s Oscar-winning actress Greer Garson... |
Best Documentary | The Battle of Midway The Battle of Midway The Battle of Midway is a 1942 American documentary film short directed by John Ford. It is a montage of color footage of the Battle of Midway with voice overs of various narrators, including Donald Crisp, Henry Fonda, and Jane Darwell... |
|
| 1943 16th Academy Awards The 16th Academy Awards, in 1944, was the first Oscar ceremony held at a large public venue, Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Free passes were given out to men and women in uniform... |
Best Documentary, Short Subjects | December 7th December 7th (film) December 7th is a propaganda film produced by the US Navy and directed by John Ford, about the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the event which sparked the Pacific War and American involvement in World War II.-Production background:... |
|
| 1952 25th Academy Awards The 25th Academy Awards ceremony was held on March 19, 1953. It took place at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, California and the NBC International Theatre in New York City.... |
Best Motion Picture Academy Award for Best Picture The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only... |
The Quiet Man The Quiet Man The Quiet Man is a 1952 American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film. It was directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald. It was based on a 1933 Saturday Evening Post short story by Maurice Walsh... |
Cecil B. DeMille Cecil B. DeMille Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies... – The Greatest Show on Earth The Greatest Show on Earth The Greatest Show on Earth is a 1952 drama film set in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The film was produced, directed, and narrated by Cecil B. DeMille, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture... |
| 1952 25th Academy Awards The 25th Academy Awards ceremony was held on March 19, 1953. It took place at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, California and the NBC International Theatre in New York City.... |
Best Director | The Quiet Man The Quiet Man The Quiet Man is a 1952 American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film. It was directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald. It was based on a 1933 Saturday Evening Post short story by Maurice Walsh... |
|
Politics
Ford's politics were conventionally progressive; his favorite presidents were Democrats Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
and John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
and Republican Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
. But despite these leanings, many thought he was a Republican because of his long association with actors 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...
, James Stewart
James Stewart
James Stewart was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart may also refer to:-Noblemen:*James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland*James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn James Stewart (1908–1997) was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart...
, 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 Ward Bond
Ward Bond
Wardell Edwin "Ward" Bond was an American film actor whose rugged appearance and easygoing charm were featured in over 200 movies and the television series Wagon Train.-Early life:...
. Time
Time (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...
magazine editor Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...
wrote a harsh review of The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath (film)
The Grapes of Wrath is a 1940 drama film directed by John Ford. It was based on John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F...
as left-wing propaganda, assuming Steinbeck, the author, and Ford to be of that political stripe.
Ford's attitude to McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
in Hollywood is expressed by a story told by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of All About Eve , which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six. He was brother to screenwriter and drama critic Herman J...
. A faction of the Directors Guild of America
Directors Guild of America
Directors Guild of America is an entertainment labor union which represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry...
led by Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...
had tried to make it mandatory for every member to sign a loyalty oath
Loyalty oath
A loyalty oath is an oath of loyalty to an organization, institution, or state of which an individual is a member.In this context, a loyalty oath is distinct from pledge or oath of allegiance...
. 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 court stenographer:
My name's John Ford. I make Westerns. I don't think there's anyone in this room who knows more about what the American public wants than Cecil B. DeMilleCecil B. DeMilleCecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...
—and he certainly knows how to give it to them.... [looking at DeMille] But I don't like you, C.B. I don't like what you stand for and I don't like what you've been saying here tonight.
As time went on, however, Ford became more publicly allied with the Republican Party, declaring himself a 'Maine Republican' in 1947. He voted for Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr...
in 1964 and Richard Nixon in 1968 and became a supporter of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. In 1973, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Nixon, whose campaign he had publicly supported.
Ford scholar Tag Gallagher asserts that Ford was "essentially apolitical", although he also notes that the director became an ardent supporter of the Irish Republican Army
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916...
after his first visit to Ireland in the 1920s and that he channelled funds to the IRA for the rest of his career.
Influence
Ford is widely considered to be among the most influential of Hollywood's filmmakers. He was listed as the fifth most influential director of all time by MovieMakerMovieMaker
“Moviemaker” redirects here. For the software, see Windows Movie Maker.MovieMaker is an American magazine focused on the art and business of making movies with a special emphasis on independent film....
. Below are some of the people who were directly influenced by Ford, or greatly admired his work:
- Ingmar BergmanIngmar BergmanErnst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
– Said of Ford, "the best director in the world." - Peter BogdanovichPeter BogdanovichPeter 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...
- Frank CapraFrank CapraFrank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
– Referred to Ford as the "king of directors" - Federico FelliniFederico FelliniFederico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
- Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
– Once compared the ending of The SearchersThe Searchers (film)The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...
to "Ulysses being reunited with TelemachusTelemachusTelemachus is a figure in Greek mythology, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, and a central character in Homer's Odyssey. The first four books in particular focus on Telemachus' journeys in search of news about his father, who has been away at war...
" - Howard HawksHoward HawksHoward Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
- Alfred HitchcockAlfred HitchcockSir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
– "A John Ford film was a visual gratification" - Lloyd KaufmanLloyd KaufmanLloyd Kaufman is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and occasional actor. With producer Michael Herz, he is the co-founder of Troma Entertainment film studio, and the director of many of their feature films, including The Toxic Avenger and Tromeo and Juliet. Kaufman also serves as...
- Elia KazanElia KazanElia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
- Akira KurosawaAkira Kurosawawas a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
– "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 LeanDavid LeanSir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...
took inspiration from The SearchersThe Searchers (film)The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...
for his film Lawrence of ArabiaLawrence of Arabia (film)Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 British film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Sam Spiegel through his British company, Horizon Pictures, with the screenplay by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson. The film stars Peter O'Toole in the title role. It is widely... - Sergio LeoneSergio LeoneSergio Leone was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots...
- Satyajit RaySatyajit RaySatyajit Ray was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Ray was born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature...
– "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 RenoirJean RenoirJean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
– After seeing The Informer, he reportedly told George SeatonGeorge SeatonGeorge Seaton was an American screenwriter, playwright, film director and producer, and theatre director.Born George Stenius in South Bend, Indiana, Seaton moved to Detroit after graduating from college to work as an actor on radio station WXYZ. John L...
: "I learned so much today ... I learned how to not move my camera." - Martin ScorseseMartin ScorseseMartin 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 SpielbergSteven SpielbergSteven 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...
- François TruffautFrançois TruffautFrançois Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
- Orson WellesOrson WellesGeorge 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...
– 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 WendersWim WendersErnst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...
External links
- http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=50:la-furia-umana-nd-3-winter-2010&Itemid=61&layout=default 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
- Ford biography at Yahoo! MoviesYahoo! MoviesYahoo! Movies , provided by the Yahoo! network, is home to a large collection of information on movies, past and new releases, trailers and clips, box office information, and showtimes and movie theater information. Yahoo! Movies also includes red carpet photos, actor galleries, and production...
- "Ford Till '47" by Tag Gallagher, at SensesofCinema.com
- "John Ford" by Richard Franklin, at SensesofCinema.com
- Ford biography (with film poster illustration) at ReelClassics.com
- Biography of Rear Admiral John Ford; U.S. Naval Reserve at Naval Historical CenterNaval Historical CenterThe Naval History & Heritage Command is the official history program of the United States Navy and is located at the historic Washington Navy Yard in the District of Columbia.-Mission :...
- "Oral History – Battle of Midway: Recollections of Commander John Ford" at Naval Historical CenterNaval Historical CenterThe Naval History & Heritage Command is the official history program of the United States Navy and is located at the historic Washington Navy Yard in the District of Columbia.-Mission :...
- John Ford Bibliography at Film.Virtual-History.com
- "John Ford" at TheyShootPictures.com
- John Ford papers at the Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington
- John Ford document collection at the Edmonton Public LibraryEdmonton Public LibraryThe Edmonton Public Library is a publicly funded library in the city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, available for use by any member of the public. Children are eligible for free library cards, while adults pay an annual fee . University of Alberta students can receive free access using the L-Pass...
- Talk on Ford in Portland, Maine, by Michael C. Connolly and Kevin Stoehr, editors of John Ford in Focus
- Ford's Depth by Miguel Marías
- The Eloquence of Gesture by Shigehiko Hasumi
- Lost John Ford movie unearthed in New Zealand, The Guardian, 7 June 2010
- The Influence of Western Painting and Genre Painting on the Films of John Ford Ph.D. Dissertation by William Howze, 1986
|-
! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
|-
|-
! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
|-
|-
! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
|-
|-
! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" | 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...
|-