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).
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| 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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