Born Today February 1: John Ford

1894-1973

Born John Martin Feeney, and affectionately known as Jack, directing giant John Ford was born on this day in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.  Both of his parents were immigrants from Ireland (this led to some confusion in regards to his name, as later on in his career/life, he gave Irish variations of names as his birth name).  After graduating from high school, he left his home state for the far reaches of California; there he started in the film business in 1914.  He, in fact, got into the business by following his older brother Francis into the field. Francis had started to use the surname of "Ford" on his own film credits as a director, and so his younger brother followed suit. John was originally credited as "Jack," and we know for certain that his first confirmable film credit came as an actor in the action serial Lucille Love: The Girl of Mystery in 1914, directed by and featuring his older brother in the male lead, and starring Grace Cunard as Lucille (there is a possibility that he had a small role in the 1913 short western The Honor of the Regiment, in which his brother took the lead role).  During his acting career, he almost exclusively had roles in his brother's shorts; though, like so many others in the business at the time, he wound up in the D.W. Griffith's excrescence of a film The Birth of a Nation in 1915. He stayed in the acting business until the year 1917. He also started directing his own pictures that same years, and for a  short time, his acting and directing careers over-lapped with his initially directing himself in short westerns as "Jack Ford." Ford of course, become synonymous with the western genre, a legend in fact, so it is interesting that his start in the field came straight away at the start of his directing career. Of course, it also helped that, once again, his brother Francis had paved the way. It was in fact Francis who became a "western specialist" before Jack and had a production company--Bison--under the Universal umbrella. John's debut  as director came on the Bison short The Tornado in 1917; the film also featured him in the lead role. He directed himself as an actor just two more times, giving up appearing before the camera for the chair behind it after making The Scrapper (1917). Ford wrote scripts/scenarios during this time, something that he had started in 1915 on his brother's film The Doorway of Destruction. By 1918, he was already directing features; and working with Harry Carey. Almost every film that Ford made in 1918 and 1919 had a writing and/or acting association with Carey, culminating with their version of The Three Godfathers in Marked Men in 1919.  In 1920, starting with The Prince of Avenue A, Universal had Ford directing straight-forward dramas, which likely accounts for his leaving that year for Fox after his contract with Universal was up. And it was at Fox that he would become a famous director and did some of his best work.  His first film at Fox was the comedy western Just Pals (November 1920) starring Buck Jones. But...Universal had a number of his films left unreleased and began putting out westerns made with Carey at the same time Ford was making films in other genres for Fox (several of these films featured his brother Frances, who wound up working for him as an actor). Another star is his Universal westerns from this time was Hoot Gibson, who had first worked with Ford and Carey in the late 1910's. By the end of 1921, he started directing a string of romantic dramas at Fox starting with Jackie.   His first really well known film is Cameo Kirby, starring John Gilbert; a melodrama based on a Booth Tarkington play, the film also featured Alan Hale Sr., Jean Arthur in her feature film debut, and Gertrude Olmstead opposite Gilbert. This point in his career marks a substantial upward move in his skill as a director. Ensconched at Fox, he directed North of Hudson Bay (November 1923) with Tom Mix, Hearts of Oak (October 1924) with Hobart Bosworth, Lightnin' (August 1925) with Jay Hunt,  Kentucky Pride (September 1925) with the race horse Man o' War told from the horse's point of view and The Fighting Heart (October 1925); not to mention the epic The Iron Horse (October 1925).  Representing just about every film genre and set in different parts of the country, with both close in-door studio work and field shoots, Ford had firmly established himself as one of Hollywood's major directors. In 1926, he returned to the western genre with 3 Bad Men sporting a triple bill of Lou Tellegen, J. Farrell MacDonald and Tom Santschi with Olive Borden and George O'Brien starring opposite each other. Sticking with O'Brien as a top-biller, he next made Navy drama The Blue Eagle (September 1926).  

 

Still from The Face on The Bar-Room Floor a melodrama directed by Ford in 1923.

 

His first film with sound was the partial silent Four Sons (with MovieTone sound effects and some music); set in World War I Germany, it sports a story that is pretty unusual for Ford, even given his proven bona-fides in multiple genres. The four sons in question are played by George Meeker, Frances X. Bushman Jr., James Hall and Charles Morton--the film is today considered one of Ford's 20's masterpieces.  Ford's first full sound film (unless you count the short Napoleon's Barber--1928) is The Black Watch, another World War I script with British intrigue in India; starring Victor McLaglen and Myrna Loy, it was released in May of 1929 (this another film that had a Marion "Duke" Morrison aka John Wayne as a prop boy; Wayne, of course would go on to be a huge star of Ford's later films).  Ford would not return to the western genre until 1939, in the meantime he made the likes of:  Men Without Women (1930), Arrowsmith (1931), Doctor Bull (1933), The Lost Patrol (1934, with Boris Karloff 😉), The Informer (1935), Mary of Scotland (1936), The Plough and the Stars (1936)...even a Shirley Temple film Wee Willie Winkie (1937). Ford had to get back to westerns to really make his masterpiece of the decade, which he did with the 1939 blockbuster Stagecoach, which famously stars The Duke, along with Clair Trevor, Andy Devine, John Carradine, George Bancroft and Tim Holt.  His films in the early 1940's include some of the most well known of the period: Drums Along the Mohawk (released just before 1940 in November of 1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Tobacco Road (1941) and How Green Was My Valley (1941).  During World War II, Ford served and made actual combat films in really dangerous conditions in both theaters of the conflict.  As a Navy Reservist, he was present on Omaha Beach on D-Day and his The Battle of Midway, a nearly twenty minute films of actual Japanese combat attack, won an Oscar for Best Documentary--Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell narrated. His first post-war film was My Darling Clementine starring Fonda. In 1948, he made 3 Godfathers (a remake of his 1919 Marked Men) with Pedro Armendáriz, Harry Carey Jr. and, of course, John Wayne. Other John Ford classics include She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952), Mogambo (1953), The Searchers (1956), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Donovan's Reef (1963). His last western was Cheyenne Autumn, released in 1964, it was his longest film, and an epic farewell to to his most notable genre.   His last film was 7 Women, by far his most female laden cast by a long-shot (!), it was set in 1930's China and was released in January of 1966.  He started two more film projects, but only one saw any sort of completion, posthumously.  In the early 1970's Ford, approaching 80, had a steady deterioration of his health (a life time of pipe smoking was catching up). He passed away of complications from stomach cancer in Palm Desert on the 31st of August in 1973 at the age of 79. A lifelong Catholic, he was interred at Holy Cross in Culver City. He personally won four Oscars (and was nominated for a further two--this is not counting the Best Documentary Oscar for Midway), the first of which was for Best Director in 1936 for The Informer. For someone who also told his beginnings as a director as a happenstance story, Ford was one of the great innovators of his time. He was also one of the most admired directors by other filmmakers. He is--by his own admission--the most influential director on the work of Orson Welles, who was almost completely obsessed with Stagecoach. At present only about a dozen of his films from the silent era are known to have survived....that is out of more than sixty that he is known for sure to have directed. In the last years of his life, he was promoted to Admiral by President Nixon, the rank appears on his grave marker (which also lists the wrong year of his birth).

 

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Born Today May 18: Frank Capra

1897-1991

One of the giants of American cinema was born Francesco Rosario Capra (who later translated his name into English as Frank Russell Capra) in the Sicilian town of Biscaquino (of course part of Italy) into a family of fruit growers; he was the youngest of 7 children.  In 1903 the entire family immigrated to the United States.  The family was stuffed into the steerage section of the boat, the cheapest way to travel in those times; the journey took 13 days to complete.  For Capra it remained a vivid lifelong memory of a terrible experience.  The family like most Europeans immigrating to the US at the time, came in to the country through New York Harbor (gasping at the size of the Statue Of Liberty on their way in), but promptly made straight for California, settling in the Los Angeles area, in what is today Chinatown.  At that time it was what Capra himself called "an Italian ghetto."  Capra sold newspapers starting at age 10 and continued to do so through high school. His parents convinced him to enroll in college after graduating, instead of going directly to work, which he did.  He also worked through college at Cal Tech and took a slew of odd jobs; AND he worked at night, in clubs playing the banjo--this was his first foray into any sort of entertainment.  In college he studied chemical engineering and graduated in 1918.  Immediately after graduation he was commissioned in the US Army as a second lieutenant (made possible by his ROTC membership in college); he taught math to artillerymen at Fort Scott in San Francisco.  This didn't long; while in the army he caught the "Spanish flu" that was going around (the pandemic would kill millions across the globe); he was discharged and sent home.  With his father having died in an accident in 1916 and he being the only college educated member of the Capra household, it fell to him to provide for the family.  Nonetheless, he was unable to get work, and seeing all of his older siblings gaining steady work, he became depressed and felt a failure; to make matters worse, he discovered that abdominal problems that he had been suffering from was actually from a ruptured appendix.  He then faced another lengthy recovery.  He did managed to become a naturalized US citizen in 1920.  He moved out the house and spent several years living in flophouses in and around San Francisco; also hoping the rails and traveling around the west picking up odd jobs of all sorts.  One of those jobs was acting as an extra in a film; he also supported himself as a poker player.  The one film from the silent era that he is credited as having acted in (there could well be more) The Outcasts of Poker Flats which is listed as having a given year of 1919--it was a Universal production.  It was an early western directed by the great silent western director John Ford--who would go on to direct some Hollywood's golden age Westerns.  Capra's directorial debut came in 1921, when at the age of 24, he directed a short documentary entitled La visita dell'incrociatore italiano Libia a San Francisco...; which documented the arrival of the Italian naval ship the Libia (Libya) in San Francisco bay.  He is also credited with personally working on the intertitles, along with a person credited as "J. J. DeMoro," whose real name was Guilio DeMoro--who was probably a friend.  He then had to take a job as a book seller, which left him nearly broke, and with a fresh sense of defeat--but the venture boldened his moxey.  While selling books, he read an advertisement in a newspaper about a new film studio opening up in San Francisco; he called the number listed and implied a great deal of experience in film and saying that he had recently moved from "Hollywood."  The studio's founder, one Walter Montague, took to Capra and offered him $75 to direct a one-reel silent film.  With the help of the Montague hired cameraman, they managed to make the film in two days, and cast it entirely with amateur actors.  The film was The Ballad of Fisher's Boarding House (1922) (note: this film is sometimes listed as a two-reeler, it's running time is 12 minutes). The film was comedic short, marking the path that his film making career would take off--though Capra could hardly have seen it at the time.  He almost didn't notice that he had actual talent in the field--he saw it more as a way to have gainful employment that didn't involve selling things. After making 3 more pictures at this studio in 1922 (some of which he wrote), he began casting about for other jobs in the industry which lead him to another job working with producer Harry Cohn.  Working for Cohn at first Capra was a jack of all trades, working his way up from property man, to a film cutter, to a title writer and finally to assistant director.  He was then employed as a gag writer by Hal Roach studios; and this is where his narrative film beginnings a comedic writer and director came into it's own.  As a gag writer, he focused particularly on the Our Gang series.  He also wrote scripts for comedian Harry Lagdon as well.  He was in Mack Sennett's world now.  It would, however, be 4 years between full directorial jobs.  When Langdon left Sennett, he took Capra with him to start his own studio/production company, Harry Langdon Corporation.  It was here that returned to directing.  In 1926 directed Langdon in The Strong Man.  It was the first full length film that he had ever worked on in any capacity. He further directed two more films in 1927.  One was with Langdon's company, the other was with First National with Robert Kane Productions, after he was fired by Langdon.  The film was For The Love Of Mike (yet another lost film); it was considered a failure as a film, but it did mark the first time that he directed Claudette Colbert.  His much storied directing career then took off, when he was put under contract with the now transformed Harry Cohn's studio, which became Columbia Pictures.  The first film he made with the historic studio was That Certain Thing.  The first film that he directed that had any type of sound in was Sunshine, which had musical score and sound effects by Western Electric Sound System.  These were only two of the eight films that he directed in 1928.  He would start 1929 off with another partial sound film, that had an alternative silent version:  The Younger Generation.  His next film, The Donovan Affair (1929), was his first full sound film, with the full mono provided by MovieTone.  He would never make a silent film again.  In all 1929 he directed a total of 3 films, all of them in some sort of sound.  For his part, he was glad to see the silent days go; later in life he was quoted as saying "I wasn't at home in silents."  Of course, he would go on to direct some of the most well known and well made early talkies. It Happened One Night (1934), starring Colbert and Clark Gable, won 5 Oscars, including Best Director.  Other films he made during the 1930's include Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1938). During the Second World War, he again enlisted in the Army.  While there, he was assigned to work directly under Chief of Staff George C. Marshall; Capra's job was to turn out a series of propaganda films that is collectively known as the Why We Fight series; with his taking time out in 1944 to direct Arsenic And Old Lace with Cary Grant.  After the war, in 1946, the first post war film that he made was It's A Wonderful Life with James Stewart.  As his themes slowly started to get out of lockstep with the ever modernizing Hollywood; he became increasingly disillusioned with the director's chair.  His last film came in 1964, with a short documentary that was ironically enough to serious look to the future.  Entitled Rendezvous in Space, made for the Martin Marietta Corporation (and produced by Capra's own company), it was about futuristic plans in the United States to build space shuttles and space stations.  It was shown at the New York State Fair in 1965.  He then retired from the movie business.  Capra, however, lived until 1991, long enough to see the shuttle program and Skylab, the first American space station. He had started his directorial career with a documentary short and ended it the same way. Capra died at the age of 94 of heart failure on 3rd September 1991, in La Quinta, CA.  For a person that had so many health problems early in adulthood, that were life-shortening any one of them by themselves, that he lived so long is a bit of a miracle in itself.  He is buried at the Coachella Valley Public Cemetery.

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Born Today September 9: Neil Hamilton

1899-1984

Born James Neil Hamilton on Sept. 9, 1899 in Lynn, Mass., his first film dates from 1918, he is yet another silent actor who got his start in movies in the 1910's that made into television; in his case deep into to television and very early in television history, with his first televised performance coming in 1948 as host of Hollywood Screen Test.  He is most recognizable in his role as Commissioner Gordon in the Adam West Batman series (1966-1968), having first assayed the role in Batman: The Movie earlier in 1966.   He also made multiple appearances on a host of other very well known television series, a short list include (but by no means limited to):  77 Sunset Strip, Perry Mason, Mr. Ed, The Real McCoys and The Outer Limits 1963-1965.  He even made an appearance on one of my all time favorite television programs The Munsters.  Also of note, he was one of the very first actors from the silent era going back into the 1910's to make an appearance on a daytime soap opera, in his case, one appearance in the early days of General Hospital in it's first year of production in 1963 (that show is still going strong). He is also one of the only actors from the silent era that that initially got hired on his looks, and had no acting/theater experience at all, he was a model (not hard to see from his still above), that had a great and long career in talking film and beyond.  That just didn't happen often.  Most stars, no matter how much talent they had in acting in silent style simply could not make the talkie transition.   He retired from acting in 1971, I would guess due to health reasons, as he was asthmatic.  And, unfortunately, it was asthma that claimed his life in 1984, but at the ripe old age of 85!  Incidentally, he was a cousin of Margaret Hamiliton, best known for her performance as The Wicked Witch Of The West in The Wizard Of Oz (1939). He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea.

As Commissioner Gordon with Adam West as Batman

His Silent Era Work

The Beloved Impostor (1918) 

The Great Romance (1920)

The White Rose (1923) (this D.W. Griffith directed drama is considered Hamilton's break out role)

America (1924) (another D.W. Griffith directed film "about" the War Of Independence)

The Sixth Commandment (1924)

The Side Show Of Life (1924)

Isn't Life Wonderful (1924) (D. W. Griffith directed)

Men And Women (1925) (this is a remake,  and was directed was directed by William C. DeMille, older brother of Cecil D. DeMille.)

The Little French Girl (1925)

The Street Of Forgotten Men (1925)

The Golden Princess (1925)

New Brooms (1925)

The Splendid Crime (1925)  (A William C. DeMille remake, of a film he himself first made in 1916 as The Ragamuffin.  Believe his younger brother must have gotten the idea from him...)

Desert Gold (1926)

Beau Geste (1926) (a Beery brother was in this as well)

The Great Gatsby (1926) (one of the most famous of all lost films!  Only the trailer remains.)

Diplomacy (1926)

The Music Master (1927)

Ten Modern Commandments (1927) (Roscoe Karns, born Sept. 7 was also in this female directed comedy.)

The Joy Girl (1927) (an early film to feature two strip technicolor scenes inter cut with the black and white one.)

Spotlight (1927) (a remake)

The Shield Of Honor (1927)

Mother Machree (1928) (one of the early movie directed John Ford though he is not formally credited--has sound effects and original music)

The Showdown (1928)

Something Always Happens (1928) (another production also featuring Roscoe Karns.)

Don't Marry (1928)

The Grip Of The Yukon (1928)

Hot News (1928)

The Patriot (1928) (this is perhaps an even more famous lost film, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, because it won an Oscar.  It features some talking scenes. Again, only the trailer survives.)

Take Me Home (1928)

Three Weekends (1928) (lost Clara Bow film)

What A Night (1928)

Why By Good? (1929) (very early talkie, with dialog by Vitaphone, and sound effects and score by Western Electric, however there was a fully silent alternative version in distribution.)

A Dangerous Woman (1929) (an early full talkie, sound by MovieTone)

The Studio Murder Mystery (1929) (possibly talkie/silent hybrid with sound by Western Electric, or possibly there was a talkie version and a separate silent version.)

The Love Trap (1929) (early talkie/silent hybrid, with mono talking sequences by Western Electric, interestingly, there does not appear to have been an internal soundtrack, so either it was shown without music, or a local organist provided the music --that wouldn't have been easily done-- or maybe the chorus girl parts of them film were a feature that just didn't work.  Later copies in circulation have sound effects, not sure when added--or possibly found--I really need to research this one!  Most people complain about the sound effects....makes me wonder!)

The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929) (early talkie, with sound from both MovieTone and Western Electric)

Darkened Rooms (1929) (early talkie--sound MovieTone)