John Ford

gigatos | March 15, 2022

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Summary

John Ford (Cape Elizabeth, Maine, February 1, 1894-Palm Desert, California, August 31, 1973) -baptized as John Martin Feeney and who began his film career under the name Jack Ford- was an American actor, director and film producer, four-time Academy Award winner. With a professional career spanning more than 50 years, in which he participated in nearly every facet of film art before turning to directing, Ford directed more than 140 films, many of them silent films, and is widely considered one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. Filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman and Orson Welles considered him one of the greatest film directors of all time.

He was also a sailor and military man. He participated in World War II as an officer in the film services of the United States Navy and was wounded in combat during the Battle of Midway. After the end of the war he remained a reservist, collaborated in the making of documentaries during the Korean War and the Vietnam War and reached the rank of rear admiral.

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Birth and childhood

The future John Ford was born on February 1, 1894 (although many times I would say 1895) on a farm in Cape Elizabeth (Maine) and was baptized with the name John Martin Feeney, son of two Irish emigrants who passed on to him their native Gaelic and their love for their native Ireland. His father, Sean A. Feeney, was a native of Galway, as was his mother, Barbara “Abbey” Curran, although her family came from the Aran Islands. It was probably his mother who inspired the permanent association of the home with the figure of a woman present throughout his filmography. There are doubts about the little boy”s real name, as the Irish “Sean” seems to have been replaced by the Anglo-Saxon equivalent “John”, which led to him being familiarly known as “Jack”. As for the surname, it is spelled in various ways, such as O”Fienne or O”Fearna. In addition, Ford himself said many times that his middle name was Aloysius. All this caused many controversies among his biographers.

He was the youngest of eleven or thirteen children. At the age of four, the family”s economic difficulties forced him to move to Portland (Maine), replacing the family farm with an apartment, where he completed his high school studies without showing any artistic interest other than a skill for caricature that was much appreciated by his friends. He began working in the advertising department of a shoe factory, and it seems that he tried in vain to enter the Naval Academy in Annapolis; in any case, Ford would later show his love for the Navy.

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First contact with the film industry

His older brother, Frank O”Feeney, had moved to Hollywood in 1911. There, under the stage name of Francis Ford, he began a promising career in the nascent film industry. Young Jack would join him in 1913, working under him in various capacities: regisseur, stuntman, props man, assistant to his brother and actor. He soon adopted the artistic surname of Francis and became known as Jack Ford, much to the chagrin of his parents, who did not like this professional activity. These years served the young Jack to become familiar with cinema from different angles and in different genres. His brother was not only the first influence, but perhaps the most important in his way of making films, which always provoked some envy in Jack. Outside the tutelage of his brother, Ford participated as an extra in the filming of The Birth of a Nation (1915), which allowed him to get to know the way of working of David W. Griffith, a director for whom Ford always felt respect. These years with his brother helped him to get to know the industry, but he was not yet aware of the real possibilities of film directing.

Ford”s move to directing seems a logical evolution in his career, although chance had a lot to do with it. It is usually considered that his first film as a director was The Tornado (1917), in which he also appears as a screenwriter. It was a short and silent western, starring his brother Francis, and it is doubtful whether John was already the director or whether he was still just helping his brother by assuming more and more responsibilities. The film, of which no copy has survived, must have been limited to a succession of stunts made by the stuntmen, but it was the beginning of a long and brilliant professional career. Of the 62 films of varying lengths that Ford shot during the silent period, only fifteen to twenty (some of them mutilated) have survived, making it difficult to make an overall assessment of his work during this formative period.

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Universal and Harry Carey

Fortunately for Ford, Westerns were not very prestigious at the time and Universal studio directors were reluctant to direct them. This created a vacuum that his brother Francis took advantage of by recommending him to the studio. Ford would shoot a total of 37 films for Universal in five years, which led to a professional relationship and friendship between John Ford and actor Harry Carey, who together would shoot a total of twenty-five silent films that were hastily made and increasingly profitable. Carey was Universal”s answer to actors like Tom Mix or Broncho Billy and, with Ford”s help, he composed a hero far from traditional archetypes. His usual character was called Cheyenne Harry (Cayena, in certain Spanish versions), although he was not very different when he was called by other names. The actor was the second most important influence on Ford”s films after his brother Francis. Carey”s box-office success allowed Ford”s salary to rise little by little. It seems that the films had excellent cinematography and outdoor settings that highlighted the violent plot. Only Straight Shooting (Bulletproof, 1917) and Hell Bent (The Avenging Cowboy or Devil”s Gulch, 1918) are preserved.

In January 1920, Ford shot The Prince of Avenue A, notable for being his first film not related to westerns. In the summer of that year, Ford married Mary France McBride Smith, with whom he would have two children: Patrick (and Barbara (1922), who would eventually work as an editor. That same year, his brother Francis definitively abandoned directing and focused on his work as an actor.

Fox Pass

At the end of 1920, Ford filmed Just Pals, his first work with the Fox production company, with which he would maintain an almost exclusive relationship until 1931 and with which he would shoot more than fifty films throughout his life. It is a “modern” western set in his own time and tells the story of the relationship between a drifter and a boy in a comedic tone. Although Ford continued to shoot some films with Universal and Carey, the new production company also allowed him to work with Tom Mix. Around this time he made a trip to Ireland, where he established contact with Sinn Féin and the Anglo-Irish conflict. He returned home having strengthened his ties with the land of his parents.

In 1923, he shot his biggest budget film until then: Cameo Kirby (Sota, caballo y rey), starring the star John Gilbert and colored in some sequences. The importance of the assignment probably motivated him to sign for the first time with his definitive name of John Ford.

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A blockbuster

In 1924, Ford filmed his biggest production to date, the epic western The Iron Horse. The film was not initially conceived as a blockbuster, but Fox spared no expense as filming progressed during the first quarter of the year. The film narrates in an epic tone the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies between 1863 and 1869, a plot accompanied by a sentimental relationship between the main characters, played by George O”Brien and Madge Bellamy.

The filming took place under difficult conditions, as the large crew did not go to Nevada prepared for the harsh climate of the season. Suitable accommodations had to be improvised for the large crew. The production company made an important economic effort to enhance the epic tone. Two entire towns had to be built for the general shots. Since one of the Fox executives had become infatuated with the leading actress, scenes shot without Ford were later added to enhance her role.

The Iron Horse may not be Ford”s best film of the silent era, but the director proved he knew how to cope with adversity and direct a large crew under difficult conditions. The result was a box-office success that allowed the company to more than recoup its high investment. It strengthened Ford”s position at Fox and in the Hollywood industry in general. The film”s grandiose tone is offset by a certain irony, aided by the characters of three old Irish drunks (a type that would become common in the director”s later films).

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Diversity of genres

The success of The Iron Horse guaranteed Ford”s continuity as a director, and he went on to make films with different themes in which he experimented with genres other than westerns. After the disappeared Hearts of Oak, a melodrama with a maritime atmosphere, Ford shot Lightnin” (Don Pancho), an unpretentious but excessively long comedy, whose action takes place in the peculiar Hotel Calivada, located right on the border between the States of California and Nevada. The location will give rise to various comic situations, in which the couple who run the hotel stand out, characters that foreshadow others that would later populate Ford”s work (such as Jeeter Lester in Tobacco Road).

Kentucky Pride allowed Ford to introduce himself into the atmosphere of horse racing. The comedy begins from the subjective point of view of the equine protagonist until it goes on to tell the parallel stories of his owner, a wealthy man who loses his fortune and his mount, and the stable boy, an Irishman played by J. Farrel McDonald, who anticipates future Ford characters. The Fighting Heart is a faded melodrama that revolves around the consequences of alcoholism, notable for being the first appearance of a young Victor McLaglen in Ford”s films, of which the actor would become an emblem.

The Shamrock Handicap allows Ford to revisit the theme of horsemanship. It tells the story of a kindly Irish aristocrat ruined by being generous to his tenants. This forces him to sell his best horse to compete in the United States. What could have been a tragedy becomes an optimistic story of self-improvement in which the nobleman, his daughter and his best jockey will emigrate to America, triumph in the races and return home victorious. A very pleasing theme for a second-generation emigrant like Ford. Also narrating an emigration from Ireland is Mother Machree, a film with which Fox experimented with the synchronization of music and images and whose release was delayed for two years. Only partially preserved, the film is overly sentimental and discursive and, although close to Ford”s usual subject matter, it is far off in result.

Return to the western

3 Bad Men is considered by many critics to be the best film of Ford”s silent period. Based on a historical event, the race for the dispute over the free lands of the Dakota Territory, it could have given rise to another epic blockbuster like The Iron Horse. However, while the memorable race sequence is in keeping with that approach, the rest of the film departs from it. Skillfully oscillating between comedy and drama, the film features three good-hearted outlaws who decide to defend a young orphan girl and take on an evil sheriff. The outlaws, aware that their time has passed, will sacrifice themselves for the girl and her boyfriend, whom they themselves have helped to choose, in what is an undoubted foretaste of the twilight western.

The film was not a box-office success, despite being included in the genre in which Ford began his career and with which he had achieved his greatest success. It would be years before the director turned his gaze back to the west.

Success in drama

After the corseted The Blue Eagle, a film with a military atmosphere, Ford”s greatest success of the silent era came with the war drama Four Sons, in which audiences and critics alike considered it a great film. In this case, audiences and critics walk hand in hand in considering it a great film. Although today it is almost forgotten, it was Ford”s rise to the same level as figures of the time such as Griffith himself. The film deals with common themes in Ford, such as war, nostalgia for the lost homeland (Bavaria in this case replaces the usual Ireland) and emigration as a way to rebuild one”s own life.

End of an era

Ford would say goodbye to silent films with three very different movies. The Hangman”s House (The Tragic Legacy) is a return to Ireland from the nationalist perspective that characterized him after his contact with the IRA, as well as to horse racing. The film is noteworthy for being the first credited collaboration of John Wayne under Ford”s orders, in addition to having Victor McLaglen again. Riley the Cop, again starring J. Farrell McDonald, is an unpretentious slapstick comedy about an officer who boasts of never having made an arrest and is sent on a mission abroad. Strong Boy (Long Live Ambition!) also starred McLaglen and seems to have been lost. The latter two films were released as silent films but with musical synchronization, a technique used by the studios in the transition to sound.

Ford directed more than sixty films during the silent era. Even if his career had been cut short with the advent of sound, as happened with great creators such as D. W. Griffith, Erich von Stroheim or Buster Keaton, his work would be worthy of consideration in the history of cinema. But Ford still had much more to contribute.

Napoleon”s Barber is Ford”s first contact with sound films. It is a short film by Fox that deals with a fictitious anecdote: on his way to Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte stops at a barber”s shop to be shaved; the barber, who does not recognize him, explains at length what he would do to the Emperor if he had him in front of him… until he finally recognizes him. Now lost, the film seems to have no greater interest than Ford”s experimentation with sound, arguing with the technicians about the limits of the new technique.

Years later, Ford told Peter Bogdanovich how the production companies fired him and other directors with the advent of sound and replaced them with theatrical directors. When they failed at a job they were completely unfamiliar with, Ford and the others were rehired at a raise. According to him, having the actors declaim their dialogue during filming was not new, since it was already done during the silent era by the audience who could read lips. In any case, Ford was one of the directors who survived the technical development; and he did it thanks to assuming his condition as a salaried employee who had to obey the rules imposed by the boss.

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First sound works

The director”s first serious challenge was The Black Watch (known as Shari, la hechicera or Shari, la hechicera oriental in Spanish). Fox was looking for an exotic adventure show with British colonialist overtones that bore certain similarities to The Four Feathers, of which a new version had been filmed that same year, 1929. Once again it is one of Ford”s favorite actors, Victor McLaglen, who plays the leading officer, seconded by Myrna Loy in the female role. The film is weighed down by the desire to exploit the possibilities of sound to the fullest, so there is an abundance of songs, military music and war cries. In addition, the producers hired a theatrical director to shoot new and false scenes with the protagonists, in which the camera was placed in fixed shots and the actors declaimed theatrically, to Ford”s displeasure. Despite this, the film has some positive visual notes that led the critic Tag Gallagher to define it as a neo-Wagnerian melodrama.

The previous film met the economic expectations, and Ford received a new commission from Fox: Salute (known in Spanish as El triunfo de la audacia or La audacia triunfa, 1929). Perhaps the lower ambition of the assignment made him think that he would receive less pressure; or perhaps it was the expectation of filming in a pleasant environment (the military installations of Peaks Island) in the company of his friends Ward Bond and John Wayne that attracted him. The film, starring George O”Brien again, narrates in a comedy tone the rivalry between members of the Army and the United States Navy (two institutions very dear to the director) that will culminate in a soccer game.

Men Without Women (Submarine Tragedy) was the Maine director”s first collaboration with writer Dudley Nichols, a fruitful union that would last for fourteen more films. Nichols himself would later recount the experience, admitting his initial total ignorance about how to write a screenplay and how Ford taught him, but Nichols did know how to tell stories and soon mastered the cinematographic technique. Their work together would inspire some of his best films. Since the screenwriter had served in the Navy, he proposed a naval theme for his first film, something easily accepted by the director. The film chronicles the tragedy of the trapped crew of a hopelessly sinking submersible and their desperate efforts to survive. The oppressive atmosphere is softened by the usual use of humor in small situations collateral to the main plot. Ford would later recall that this was the first film shot on a real submarine. Technically it is still a silent film but with synchronized sound, including music (including some singing), sound effects and some dialogue.

In Born Reckless, again with the help of Nichols, Ford assumed the opposite role to the one he had suffered in The Iron Horse or The Black Watch, as he had to finish a film commissioned to another director. Since he did not like the project, he opted to introduce a baseball game as a comic element, similar to what he had done in Salute. Something similar happened with Up the River, which had a prison script that Ford disliked. He and comedian Bill Colliér rewrote the script into a hilarious hit comedy in which the main characters were constantly in and out of prison. The result is a strange mix of genres that brought fame to an unusual pairing of near-debuts Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart, but the original screenwriter was very upset with Ford.

More interesting is Seas Beneath, a new maritime adventure by Dudley Nichols and with the collaboration of George O”Brien. On this occasion, it tells the story of the performance of the crew of a “submarine hunter” ship during the Great War. Although some critics highlight expressive findings that give great “physicality” to the action, such as the placement of a camera in the stern of the submarine during its emersion, Ford was annoyed by the studio”s imposition of a leading actress whom he considered incapable.

Much less remarkable is The Brat (La huerfanita), a comedy of which Ford only remembered years later an energetic fight between two women.

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First approach to medicine

Arrowsmith (released in Spain as El doctor Arrowsmith and in Argentina as Médico y amante) is an interesting film for several reasons. First, it is Ford”s first work with a production company other than Fox Film Corporation after a long relationship of exclusivity with the latter; collaborating with producer Samuel Goldwyn in an ambitious work was not easy for the director. Secondly, it constitutes the first approach to a subject that would later reappear in Ford, medicine, this time through the adaptation of a prestigious novel by the recent Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis, a book that had been, in turn, awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Finally, it is Ford”s first serious effort to describe in depth a complex character.

Although critics have subsequently considered it a failure in several respects, it received four Academy Award nominations in 1932, including Best Picture, the first time a Ford film had received such recognition.

The film had other consequences. Ford breached the contract signed with Goldwyn that forbade him to drink during filming, which caused him to be sanctioned by Goldwyn and Fox subsequently terminated the exclusive contract he had enjoyed for years. From that moment on, although Ford continued to collaborate with Fox, he was free to develop projects with other studios. This meant an important change in the way of working for a director who had previously been used to being on the payroll of one company.

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Free lance

Ford returned to work with the company of his beginnings, Universal, in the filming of Air Mail (Men Without Fear, 1932). There he met Commander Frank W. Spig Weady, a decorated Navy aviation pilot who collaborated as a screenwriter on this and other films (among them, They Were Expendable, again with Ford), with whom he would become close friends. The film is set in the world of airmail pilots, and its subject matter resembles that of Howard Hawks” later great film Only Angels Have Wings (1939). However, Ford lacks the personal experience that Hawks did have and that allowed him to imbue the film with verisimilitude, so the Fordian film is much colder than that of the filmmaker-aviator.

Flesh (1932) was Ford”s first collaboration with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In this drama, a strong Wallace Beery must face both a gang of gangsters and a fearsome femme fatale. Ford”s name does not appear in the credits.

With Pilgrimage (Pilgrims or Pilgrimage in its Hispanic releases, 1933) Ford returned to work with Fox Film Corporation. The film is based on a story by I.A.R. Wylie, the same author of the story that gave rise to Four Sons, Ford”s biggest hit in the silent film era. Again the story is about mother-son relationships, but in this case the mother is a tough woman who refuses to let her son marry and breaks up with him. The son will die in the war and the mother will only reconcile with her daughter-in-law and grandson after meeting another soldier who has had a similar experience to her late son.

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A new icon

In 1933, Ford accepted the commission to make a film starring the very popular actor Will Rogers. The success of Doctor Bull would lead to the making of two more films, Judge Priest (1934) and Steamboat” Round the Bend (1935), composing a cycle that, because it gathered a series of characteristics of its own, is sometimes called the Will Rogers trilogy.

New jobs

He recaptures Dudley Nichols for The Lost Patrol, which RKO stages in 1934 with Victor McLaglen, to whom he would offer another great role in Hangman”s house. Ford will always hate his next film The World on the March set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century despite having several very realistic war scenes.More successful was Judge Priest with Dudley Nichols in the script and actor Will Rogers who had directed the year before in Doctor Bull and who would again direct in 1935 in the film Steamboat round the bend, just before he died in a tragic plane crash. This film is one of the director”s favorites. A remake was made in 1952 entitled The Sun Shines for the Whole World.

In 1934, Ford began to participate financially in his films. He bought a yacht that he baptized “L”Araner” in homage to Ireland, which he would keep until 1970. He would shoot two more films and would begin to have problems due to pressure from Hollywood. He continued his friendship with John Wayne, who worked with him as an extra in his first films, in The Informer.

In 1935 he founded, with King Vidor, Lewis Milestone, William A. Wellman, Frank Borzage and Gregory La Cava, the Directors” Association, thus replacing the Motion Picture Directors” Association. The Whistleblower, made very quickly for RKO, allowed him to tackle the subject of British Ireland. His sympathy for the IRA is no mystery. In this film we discover the Ford of the interior sets, it is far from his great productions and classic western sets.with this work, inspired by the expressionist cinema he receives his first Oscar for best director that would go to the Directors Association founded earlier.

In 1935, 20th Century Pictures absorbed Fox, and was renamed 20th Century Fox, owned by Darryl F. Zanuck. Together with his new producer, a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln, he made Prisoner of Hate. The problems between Ford and Zanuck began because of a clash over Warner Baxter”s southern accent. Ford was on the verge of leaving 20th Century Fox, but finally acceded to Zanuck”s wishes. Since then they maintained a close friendship and admiration.

He directed Katharine Hepburn in Mary of Scotland for RKO in 1936. He also directed Hurricane on the Island in 1937, produced by Samuel Goldwyn.

In 1937 he enlisted in the Film Committee of Aid to the Spanish Republic to help the Republican combatants in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). He was personally in charge of sending an ambulance with the International Brigades and was also very active in the fight against Nazism. In 1938 he defended the blockade of Nazi Germany and was appointed member of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. The signing of the German-Soviet pact earned him the criticism of the communists who accused him of “war propaganda”.

From Stagecoach to The Fugitive

With Stagecoach, Ford returned to the western. In this film, John Wayne gets the opportunity of a lifetime and becomes a big star. The exteriors were shot in Monument Valley.The film was nominated for eight Oscars, of which he won the supporting actor with Thomas Mitchell and the soundtrack, and Ford received the New York Film Critics Award.Stagecoach is considered the best Western film of all time.

Afterwards and together with Zanuck, he resumed his passion for Lincoln and together they shot The Young Lincoln with Henry Fonda, who would be the protagonist of his next two films: The Grapes of Wrath (collaboration number twelve with screenwriter Nunnally Johnson) and Indomitable Hearts, and in 1941 he again won the Oscar for best director for The Grapes of Wrath. His talent was finally recognized by professionals and critics alike.

He worked again with John Wayne in The Long Voyage Home. Ford”s last film before the war (How Green Was My Valley) was a great success with audiences and critics. It received five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director (taking it away from Orson Welles” Citizen Kane).

In 1939 Ford had the intuition that America would soon enter World War II. He headed a group of filmmakers who petitioned Franklin Roosevelt to boycott Nazi Germany and founded a group of Hollywood people in the service of the U.S. Navy, called the Naval Field Photographic Unit. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, two other similar groups were founded.

During the war, Ford and his crew toured theaters of military operations. In early 1942 they went to the Pacific front and made for the Navy the documentaries December 7 (about the attack on Pearl Harbor) and The Battle of Midway (a decisive battle from which the United States gradually began to win the war). The images of the Japanese attack on Midway Island were shot by Ford himself. The two reports won him an Oscar for best documentary. He also made a short film for the families of the Midway victims called Torpedo Squadron. In 1942 he moved to North Africa to cover the landing. During 1943 he covered multiple foreign operations as well as the Allied victories in Victory in Burma. He also covers the Normandy landings in 1944. He also follows the army during the preparation of the Nuremberg Trial.

From February to June 1945 he shot They were expendable for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with John Wayne, Robert Montgomery and Donna Reed. This is, along with Fearless Men (1940) the only Ford film about World War II in which he was so actively involved. The money raised by this film went to the veterans of the Field Photo Unit and the Field Photo Farm.

After the war he returned to Hollywood and filmed again in Monumental Valley: Passion of the Strong. In The Fugitive (1947) he worked again with Henry Fonda, whom he allowed to play with total freedom.

The quiet man

He directed it in 1952, again in the company of his favorite actor, John Wayne. The film is about an American boxer, Sean Thorton (played by Wayne), who returns to his native Ireland to reclaim his farm and escape his past. There he falls in love with a cheerful girl, although to win her he must contend with local customs, including the payment of a dowry and the opposition of his fiancée”s temperamental brother.

The film received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and was awarded two. One of the statuettes went to Ford and the other to cinematographers Winton C. Hoch and Archie Stout. It is considered one of the best films in the history of cinema.

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Cinema

In the 2019 movie, Midway (2019 movie), he was played by actor Geoffrey Blake.

Sources