JOHN FORD
INFORMATION FROM IMDb
Date of birth
1 February 1894
Cape Elizabeth, Maine, USA
Date of death
31 August 1973
Palm Desert, California, USA. (stomach cancer)
Birth name
John Martin Feeney
Nickname
Pappy
Coach
Uncle Jack
Height
6' (1.83 m)
Spouse
Mary McBryde Smith (3 July 1920 - 31 August 1973) (his death)
Trade mark
Regardless of where his westerns were set, most of the exteriors were filmed in Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah, USA.
Funerals goers in his movies usually sing the hymn "Shall We Gather at the River."
If a doomed character plays poker, the last hand he plays before going to his death will be the "death hand" (two aces, one of them the ace of spades, and two 8s; so-called because Wild Bill Hickock held this hand when he was murdered). The hand will be shown in close-up.
Trivia
There was a group of actors, known informally as the John Ford Stock Company (John Wayne, Harry Carey, John Carradine, Henry Fonda, etc.) that turned up regularly in Ford's films. They knew how to work with Ford and with each other, which suited Ford's directing style: "I tell the actors what I want and they give it to me, usually on the first take."
Father of Barbara Ford.
John Wayne called him by the nickname "Coach."
First recipient of the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award [1973]
Brother of actor-director Francis Ford.
Supporting members of Ford's "Stock Company" include Ward Bond, Ken Curtis, Jane Darwell, Francis Ford, Ben Johnson, Victor McLaglen, Mae Marsh, Mildred Natwick, John Qualen, Woody Strode, Tom Tyler, and Patrick Wayne.
The character "John Dodge" in Ford's movie The Wings of Eagles (1957) is a spoof of Ford.
Ford often used members of his family (including his two brothers, Francis Ford and Edward O'Fearna) in his films, but only in subordinate roles. Patrick Ford recalled, "My conversations with him, as his only son -- that I know of -- were always 'Yessir', until one day I said 'no sir', and then I was no longer around. Our family life was pretty much that of a ship master and his crew, or a wagon master and his people. He gave the orders, and we carried them out".
His tombstone is marked 'Admiral John Ford'.
Served as actress Anna Massey's Godfather
John Wayne called him by the nickname "Pappy."
He has referred to English director Brian Desmond Hurst as his "cousin".
He was an infamously prickly personality, having constantly mocked John Wayne as a "big idiot" and having punched an unsuspecting Henry Fonda during the shooting of Mister Roberts (1955).
Was voted the 3rd Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly, right after Orson Welles, who himself considered Ford to be the best director of all time.
Embarrassed Jean-Luc Godard, then a young journalist for Les Cahiers du Cinema, during an interview. When Godard asked the famous question: "What Brought you to Hollywood ?" Ford replied: "A train".
Personal quotes
[Darryl F. Zanuck on The Grapes of Wrath (1940)] "It's a good picture. It's meaty and down-to-earth. But I think it needs a happier ending."
"I love making pictures but I don't like talking about them."
"Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes."
"It is easier to get an actor to be a cowboy than to get a cowboy to be an actor."
"It's no use talking to me about art, I make pictures to pay the rent."
"I didn't show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars. Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk."
"For a director there are commercial rules that it is necessary to obey. In our profession, an artistic failure is nothing; a commercial failure is a sentence. The secret is to make films that please the public and also allow the director to reveal his personality."
[On John Wayne] "Duke is the best actor in Hollywood."
Mini Biography
The most honored of all American movie directors, John Ford was lauded by critics for his poetic vision, but he always insisted he was simply "a hard-nosed director" and that filmmaking was just "a job of work" to him. In truth, Ford had a singular vision which he brought to a vast body of work; most of his films (excepting routine studio assignments) are immediately recognizable as his and his alone-a remarkable achievement in a time when most films conformed to a studio's "personality," not a director's. There is continuity in Ford's work, as well, not just in his use of a familiar stock company of actors, or in revisiting favorite locations like Utah's Monument Valley, but in recurring themes and a distinctive point of view. Few filmmakers in the history of the medium have left their mark so indelibly on so many outstanding films; and, to Ford buffs, even his minor films have much to offer.
His brother Francis took "Ford" as a stage name and entered pictures in 1907. Young Jack (as he came to be known) joined Francis and his costar/partner Grace Cunard at Universal in 1914, first working as a prop man, then as an actor in Francis' starring serials The Broken Coin (1915) and The Purple Mask (1916). Although Francis frequently quarreled with Universal executives and eventually left the studio, Jack remained; he directed his first two-reeler, The Tornado in 1917, and his first feature, Straight Shooting later that same year. Many of Ford's early films were Westerns, and most of them starred Harry Carey. His already apparent talent for pictorially striking compositions made Ford a natural for horse operas (with their outdoor action scenes, magnificent vistas, etc.), and he worked with top screen cowboys Hoot Gibson, Buck Jones, and Tom Mix at Universal and Fox.
Formalizing his screen billing to John Ford in 1923 (an allusion to the Elizabethan playwright of the same name), the director scored with his handling of the John Gilbert vehicle Cameo Kirby (1923), but really shot to the top rank with The Iron Horse (1924), an epic Western detailing the building of the transcontinental railroad, filmed on location under arduous conditions. Another large-scale Western, Three Bad Men (1926), used the Oklahoma land rush as its backdrop; its somewhat lesser reputation stems mainly from the fact that was out of circulation for many years. Its story and characterizations presaged Ford's 1948 production of 3 Godfathers Ford's late silents-especially Four Sons 1928)(-were influenced by the Germanic style of filmmaking then prevalent in Hollywood, but he soon abandoned that highly impressionistic (and to many, highly pretentious) approach to moviemaking. The early talkie days saw Ford, like many other directors, groping for a command of the new storytelling techniques imposed by the addition of sound. He reunited with George O'Brien, the burly, brash young star of Iron Horse and Three Bad Men for Salute (1929) and The Seas Beneath (1931); both films were moderately successful, and Ford maintained his position as one of the top Hollywood directors.
The 1930s found Ford further developing a distinctive style, which he honed both on commercial, work-for-hire movies and on modest, more personal productions. Critics lauded The Informer (1935), a highly stylized story of betrayal during the Irish Revolution for which Ford won a Best Director Oscar; in retrospect, though, it may be that Ford's best work of the period is found in less pretentious efforts including his Will Rogers vehicles (1933's Dr. Bull 1934's Judge Priest 1935's Steamboat 'Round the Bend) and The Whole Town's Talking. By this time he was already one of Hollywood's most colorful and irascible filmmakers. Although publicity shots often showed him clad in tweed jacket, colorful ascot, and neatly creased fedora, he was more comfortable in untied sneakers, a khaki shirt, and a baseball cap. Often when he was nervous, or in deep concentration, Ford would chew on a corner of his handkerchief and let it hang from his mouth. He was contemptuous of authority, and could be vicious in his sarcasm to those he found pretentious, but he was also intensely loyal to his "stock company," and in turn inspired loyalty from cast and crew.
The single most important year of Ford's career was undoubtedly 1939, which saw the release of Drums Along the Mohawk (a stirring drama of colonial America starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert), Young Mr. Lincoln (an inspiring biopic with Fonda as the beloved president), and Stagecoach the latter a milestone not only because it made a star of John Wayne (who'd been an extra for Ford in 1928's Mother Macree, Hangman's House and Four Sons, but because it revitalized a genre long since abandoned to the producers of low-budget, Saturday-matinee "horse operas." Stagecoach which netted Ford another Oscar nomination, sparked interest in big-budget, "adult" Westerns-to which the director would return throughout the remainder of his career. He won back-to-back Oscars for The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1941), both of which centered on tight-knit families surviving in the face of adversity. Vastly different from his previous films, they showed a more mature talent at work behind the camera. World War 2 intervened and Ford, serving in the Field Photographic Branch of the OSS, turned out several documentaries; two of them, The Battle of Midway (1942) and December 7th (1943), were awarded Oscars. After the war, Ford returned to Hollywood and demonstrated that he hadn't forgotten how to make compelling entertainments: They Were Expendable (1945) vividly chronicled the exploits of PT-boat crews in the South Pacific, and My Darling Clementine (1946), an elegiac Western with some of the director's most memorable images, starring Henry Fonda as a considerably whitewashed Wyatt Earp.
In the late 1940s Ford and producer Merian C. Cooper formed Argosy Productions, a partnership that produced some of his best (and most personal) pictures.Fort Apache (1948)She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949),and Rio Grande (1950) comprised Ford's unofficial Cavalry trilogy; John Wayne starred in all three, supported by many Ford regulars including George O'Brien, Victor McLaglen, and Ward Bond. Wagon Master (1950) repackaged elements from My Darling Clementine and was more notable for its western characters and atmosphere than for its story or action. The Quiet Man (1952), which starred Wayne as an American of Irish ancestry who settles on the Emerald Isle, gave Ford ample opportunities to trumpet his own Irish heritage; this stirring, beautiful film (much of it shot on location) won him an unprecedented fourth Oscar.
His other 1950s films vary in quality, although many film fans and critics single out The Searchers (1956), starring Wayne as a single-minded zealot who spends years pursuing the Indians who killed his relatives and kidnapped their young daughter, as the definitive Ford film. Still contentious, Ford was replaced as director of Mister Roberts (1955) by Mervyn LeRoy, reportedly because he quarreled with star Henry Fonda (who'd played the role on Broadway). To many, Ford's later films-including The Last Hurrah (1958), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964)-seemed increasingly sentimental and derivative of earlier, better films. His final feature film, 7 Women (1966), was an odd and unsuccessful throwback to the 1930s both in story and in technique. Although the aging and ill Ford delivered a curmudgeonly "performance" in Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 documentary, Directed by John Ford it is obvious even in his last years that the director's crusty exterior concealed a sentimental heart. Ford was the first recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award.
OTHER FILMS INCLUDE: 1931: Arrowsmith 1932: Air Mail, Flesh 1933: Pilgrimage 1934: The Lost Patrol, The World Moves On 1936: The Prisoner of Shark Island, Mary of Scotland, The Plough and the Stars 1937: Wee Willie Winkie, The Hurricane 1938: Four Men and a Prayer, Submarine Patrol 1940: The Long Voyage Home 1941:Tobacco Road 1947: The Fugitive 1952: What Price Glory? 1953: The Sun Shines Bright, Mogambo 1955: The Long Gray Line1957: The Wings of Eagles, The Rising of the Moon 1959: Gideon of Scotland Yard The Horse Soldiers 1960: Sergeant Rutledge 1961: Two Rode Together 1963: Donovan's Reef
Copyright © 1994 Leonard Maltin
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