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 June 30: Madge Bellamy

1899-1990

Actress (and mainstay of the 1940's scandal sheets)  Madge Bellamy (birth name Margaret Derden Philpott) was born on this day in Hillsboro, Texas; she spent her earliest years in San Antonio, eventually growing up in Brownwood, Texas.  Her stage aspirations started when she was just a child and her parents allowed her to take dancing lessons as early as age 6, she made her stage debut at the age of 9 as a dancer in a local operatic production. When she was a teen, the family relocated again; this time out of state to Denver, Colorado. There she acted in local theater as a teen, and married at the age of 18 or 19, his last name was Bellamy (though she later claimed in an autobiography that the marriage had not happened and her agent suggested the name--public records say otherwise--though the marriage year of 1919 may not be correct, her divorce petition is). Realizing this was a mistake and badly wanting to pursue an acting career in New York City, she decided to file (eventually) for divorce and left (reportedly before her high school graduation). She found work on Broadway as a dancer, was noticed by a local theatrical agent, signed by him and began looking for work as an actual actress.  She get a huge break, when she replaced Helen Hays in a major role in a Broadway production of Dear Brutus, she later acted on the stage in Washington D.C. She quickly found her way into film and made her motion picture debut in 1920 in The Riddle: Woman in a named role. She was then signed to a a multi year contract at Triangle Film (Thomas Ince's newly formed venture), and her second film appearance became her first film for them:  The Cup of Life in 1921. Her most well known film while working for Ince was certainly 1922's Lorna Doone in which she starred with John Bowers and was directed by Maurice Tourneur (though her appearance in Hail the Woman in 1921 is also a milestone). Over the next couple of years she made a number of films with Ince affiliated productions, none of them really stand out. Her next big contract came with Fox Films, and her first film with them is actually one for the history books: John Ford's The Iron Horse. Not only did she appear in the film (released in October of 1924), she took the top female bill opposite George O'Brien. She didn't appear in another major production for them for a whole year. In the meantime, she appeared in a few minor films of importance, notably: Secrets of the Night a later Herbert Blaché film with James Kirkwood & Zusu Pitts, The Dancers another film featuring (as mustachioed) O'Brien and directed by Emmett J. Flynn, and the Edward Laemmle melodrama The Men in Blue.  In 1925, she again appeared in a John Ford film Lightnin'; a rare comedy for him starring Jay Hunt.  Though she began to run into difficulty with studio executives who wanted to have full say in how she was placed in films (she was later found to have a fiery temper...but I have to say, I can hardly blame her here, despite that she had an affair with at least one of them). They wanted her to take roles in big films, but she had gotten a taste for the lighter side of acting: not too much effort required--a lot of fun to be had (possibly egged on by her appearance in another Emmett Flynn film set in the modern "jazz age" Wings of Youth).  This is not to say that she was not in some fine Fox films, they were just not the big budget films execs had tried to push her into.  Films like Lazybones, The Golden Strain and Very Confidential had/have a lot to recommend them. The first film with sound that she appeared in was one that actually featured talking sequences, bit rare for its 1928 release--Mother Knows Best--which is believed--though never confirmed--lost in the 1937 Fox Fire. Her next film, Fugitives (1929)--also believed lost--was film with synched music sequences only. Her last film in the 1920's, was made for Universal utilizing the Western Electric Sound System for the full sound experience, had her starring opposite Robert Ellis in Tonight at Twelve, which was released in September of 1929.  She did not show up in another film until 1932, but if you are a classic horror film nut like me, it was quite the reappearance. Bellamy starred as the object of desire in White Zombie, which not only famously starred Bela Lugosi, but also Robert Frazer, with whom she almost shared a birthday. She only appeared in ten more films during the entire decade, after which she only acted in one other film in her lifetime. Notable, because in-between her last appearance in the 1936 Peter Lorre film Crack-Up in an uncredited role and her appearance as Mrs. Yeager in the Canadian Mountie drama Northwest Trail, released in November of 1945, she made headlines like she had never made before. In January 1943 she fired a small hand-gun three times as her former lover, a wealthy lumber executive, in San Francisco. They had indeed been having an affair for over five years, but he broke things off with her and subsequently married a younger model. She was given a six-month suspended sentence and a year's probation on gun possession charges. But...she was not done with him...no; later in 1943 she sued him for divorce in the state of Nevada, basically claiming common-law marriage; though the suit was summarily dismissed--he did eventually give her an undisclosed amount in settlement to end her complaints against him. After her appearance in the 1945 Action Pictures release, she briefly returned to the stage in 1946, after which she retired from show business altogether. She then took up writing, none of which, except for her autobiography (which contained a lot a dubious personal details) was ever published--and that was published posthumously. She also owned some real estate holdings. In later life, she was known to attend screenings of White Zombie after the film had gained cult horror status. Suffering from heart failure, she died at the age of 90 on the 24th of January in 1990.  She was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. 

In Lorna Doone 1922 

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Born Today April 19: George O'Brien

1899-1985

Handsome actor of the silent silver screen George O'Brien was born on this day in San Francisco, California.  His father Dan was a higher up in the San Francisco police department, who would go on to become Police Chief there.  As a matter of trivia from the silent era, it was George's father who ordered the arrest of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.  Before turning his sites to Hollywood, George served in the first World War in the Navy as a submarine chaser.  He also was a volunteer stretcher bearer for wounded Marines during the war and was decorated for that service.  Always an athletic type, he became the Light Heavyweight boxing champion for the Pacific Fleet.  After the war, and in his early twenties, he left for Hollywood with the ambition of becoming a camera man.  And he did work as a assistant camera man at first.  He was known to have worked in that capacity on both Buck Jones and Tom Mix films, but the credits for those appear to be lost.  The one Tom Mix film that he has a credit for is Just Tony (1922), where he served as a Production Assistant; this may or may not be the first film that he ever worked on.  He quickly switched to acting, and the first film that he definitely acted in also came in 1922 as a "Sailor" in White Hands.  Also in 1922 he landed a bit part in a Rudolph Valentino film:  Moran Of The Lady.  Just two years later he was cast in his first starring role in The Man Who Came Back, where he received top billing.  This earned him the attention of director John Ford (who would become a lifelong friend), who cast him in his 1924 western The Iron Horse.  From there on out, O'Brien would enjoy top billing status throughout the rest of the silent era.  His acting took on depth that few would have thought possible when he first arrived in Hollywood, so his roles were quite varied.  In fact, he was chosen to star in a very early talkie in 1928 in duel roles in Noah's Ark, a Michael Curtiz and Darryl F. Zanuck project that starred Dolores Costello.  In the 1930's he mostly began to specialize in westerns, though he did have a few roles in other genres.  In the westerns, he would often appear with his own horse named Mike.  During World War II, he re-enlisted in the Navy, where he served as beachmaster in the Pacific; he was decorated multiple times.  He also remained in the Naval Reserve and in that capacity took on a project by the Eisenhower administration called "People to People" where he was project director for a series of Asian focused films, one of which he teamed with old friend John Ford to make.  He would continue acting until 1964, even at one point appearing in a Three Stooges film.  He retired from acting, with the role of Maj. Braden being his last in Cheyenne Autumn, another John Ford film starring Richard Widmark.  Today O'Brien is probably best remembered for his starring role in F. W. Murnau's Sunrise, one the earliest multiple Oscar winning films dating from the year 1927.  In his retirement, he relocated to Oklahoma, where he lived as a rancher for the rest of his life.  In 1981 he suffered a stroke with a heart event involved, this left him bed ridden for the last four years of his life.  He eventually succumbed to to the disease on the 4th of September.  Par naval tradition, he was buried at sea.  He was 86.

In Murnau's Sunrise along with Janet Gaynor.

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