105 Facts About John Ford

1.

John Martin Feeney, known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director.

2.

John Ford was one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation.

3.

John Ford is renowned for Westerns such as Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, Rio Grande, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

4.

John Ford's father, John Augustine, was born in Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland, in 1854.

5.

John Ford earned the nickname "Bull" because, it is said, of the way he would lower his helmet and charge the line.

6.

John Ford later moved to California and in 1914 began working in film production as well as acting for his older brother Francis, adopting "Jack Ford" as a professional name.

7.

John Ford married Mary McBride Smith on July 3,1920, and they had two children.

8.

The marriage between John Ford and Smith lasted for life despite various issues, one being that John Ford was Catholic while she was a non-Catholic divorcee.

9.

John Ford began his career in film after moving to California in July 1914.

10.

John Ford followed in the footsteps of his multi-talented older brother Francis Ford, twelve years his senior, who had left home years earlier and had worked in vaudeville before becoming a movie actor.

11.

John Ford started out in his brother's films as an assistant, handyman, stuntman and occasional actor, frequently doubling for his brother, whom he closely resembled.

12.

John Ford's films used a 'stock company' of actors, far more so than many directors.

13.

Many famous stars appeared in at least two or more John Ford films, including Harry Carey Sr.

14.

Likewise, John Ford enjoyed extended working relationships with his production team, and many of his crew worked with him for decades.

15.

John Ford directed around 36 films over three years for Universal before moving to the William Fox studio in 1920; his first film for them was Just Pals.

16.

The pre-1929 John Ford, according to Andrew Sarris, seemed to deserve "at most a footnote in film history".

17.

John Ford's brother Eddie was a crew member and they fought constantly; on one occasion Eddie reportedly "went after the old man with a pick handle".

18.

John Ford made a wide range of films in this period, and he became well known for his Western and "frontier" pictures, but the genre rapidly lost its appeal for major studios in the late 1920s.

19.

The Black Watch, a colonial army adventure set in the Khyber Pass starring Victor McLaglen and Myrna Loy is John Ford's first all-talking feature; it was remade in 1954 by Henry King as King of the Khyber Rifles.

20.

John Ford's output was fairly constant from 1928 to the start of World War II; he made five features in 1928 and then made either two or three films every year from 1929 to 1942, inclusive.

21.

John Ford's three films of 1930 were Men Without Women, Born Reckless and Up the River, which is notable as the debut film for both Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart, who were both signed to Fox on Ford's recommendation.

22.

John Ford confirmed his position in the top rank of American directors with the Murnau-influenced Irish Republican Army drama The Informer, starring Victor McLaglen.

23.

In making Stagecoach, John Ford faced entrenched industry prejudice about the now-hackneyed genre which he had helped to make so popular.

24.

Stagecoach became the first in the series of seven classic John Ford Westerns filmed on location in Monument Valley, with additional footage shot at another of John Ford's favorite filming locations, the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Calif.

25.

John Ford skillfully blended Iverson and Monument Valley to create the movie's iconic images of the American West.

26.

John Ford is credited with playing a major role in shaping Wayne's screen image.

27.

William Wyler was originally engaged to direct, but he left the project when Fox decided to film it in California; John Ford was hired in his place and production was postponed for several months until he became available.

28.

John Ford was named Best Director by the New York Film Critics, and this was one of the few awards of his career that he collected in person.

29.

John Ford was commissioned as a commander in the United States Navy Reserve.

30.

John Ford filmed the Japanese attack on Midway from the power plant of Sand Island and was wounded in the left arm by a machine gun bullet.

31.

John Ford observed the first wave land on the beach from the ship, landing on the beach himself later with a team of Coast Guard cameramen who filmed the battle from behind the beach obstacles, with Ford directing operations.

32.

John Ford eventually rose to become a top adviser to OSS head William Joseph Donovan.

33.

John Ford survived "continuous attack and was wounded" while he continued filming, one commendation in his file states.

34.

In 1945, John Ford executed affidavits testifying to the integrity of films taken to document conditions at Nazi concentration camps.

35.

John Ford created a part for the recovering Ward Bond, who needed money.

36.

John Ford repeatedly declared that he disliked the film and had never watched it, complaining that he had been forced to make it, although it was strongly championed by filmmaker Lindsay Anderson.

37.

John Ford returned to active service during the Korean War, and was promoted to Rear Admiral the day he left service.

38.

John Ford directed sixteen features and several documentaries in the decade between 1946 and 1956.

39.

John Ford's first postwar movie My Darling Clementine was a romanticized retelling of the primal Western legend of Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the OK.

40.

John Ford reportedly considered this his best film but it fared relatively poorly compared to its predecessor, grossing only $750,000 in its first year.

41.

Fort Apache was followed by another Western, 3 Godfathers, a remake of a 1916 silent film starring Harry Carey, which John Ford had himself already remade in 1919 as Marked Men, with Carey and thought lost.

42.

In 1949, John Ford briefly returned to Fox to direct Pinky.

43.

John Ford's only completed film of that year was the second installment of his Cavalry Trilogy, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, starring John Wayne and Joanne Dru, with Victor McLaglen, John Agar, Ben Johnson, Mildred Natwick and Harry Carey Jr.

44.

Republic's anxiety was erased by the resounding success of The Quiet Man, a pet project which John Ford had wanted to make since the 1930s.

45.

The Sun Shines Bright, John Ford's first entry in the Cannes Film Festival, was a western comedy-drama with Charles Winninger reviving the Judge Priest role made famous by Will Rogers in the 1930s.

46.

John Ford later referred to it as one of his favorites, but it was poorly received, and was drastically cut by Republic soon after its release, with some excised scenes now presumed lost.

47.

In 1955, John Ford made the lesser-known West Point drama The Long Gray Line for Columbia Pictures, the first of two John Ford films to feature Tyrone Power, who had originally been slated to star as the adult Huw in How Green Was My Valley back in 1941.

48.

Production was shut down for five days and John Ford sobered up, but soon after he suffered a ruptured gallbladder, necessitating emergency surgery, and he was replaced by Mervyn LeRoy.

49.

John Ford made his first forays into television in 1955, directing two half-hour dramas for network TV.

50.

John Ford was devastated by the accident and lost interest in the film, moving the production back to Hollywood.

51.

John Ford scrapped the planned ending, depicting the Marlowe's triumphant entry into Baton Rouge, instead concluding the film with Marlowe's farewell to Hannah Hunter and the crossing and demolition of the bridge.

52.

John Ford's work was restricted by the new regime in Hollywood, and he found it hard to get many projects made.

53.

John Ford visited the set of The Alamo, produced, directed by, and starring John Wayne, where his interference caused Wayne to send him out to film second-unit scenes which were never used in the film.

54.

Wayne had already played Sherman in a 1960 episode of the television series Wagon Train that John Ford directed in support of series star Ward Bond, "The Coulter Craven Story", for which he brought in most of his stock company.

55.

Also in 1962, John Ford directed his fourth and last TV production, Flashing Spikes a baseball story made for the Alcoa Premiere series and starring James Stewart, Jack Warden, Patrick Wayne and Tige Andrews, with Harry Carey Jr.

56.

In 1965 John Ford began work on Young Cassidy, a biographical drama based upon the life of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey, but he fell ill early in the production and was replaced by Jack Cardiff.

57.

John Ford's last completed feature film was 7 Women, a drama set in about 1935, about missionary women in China trying to protect themselves from the advances of a barbaric Mongolian warlord.

58.

Unusual for John Ford, it was shot in continuity for the sake of the performances and he, therefore, exposed about four times as much film as he usually shot.

59.

Anna Lee recalled that John Ford was "absolutely charming" to everyone and that the only major blow-up came when Flora Robson complained that the sign on her dressing room door did not include her title and as a result, Robson was "absolutely shredded" by John Ford in front of the cast and crew.

60.

John Ford's last completed work was Chesty: A Tribute to a Legend, a documentary on the most decorated US Marine, General Lewis B Puller, with narration by John Wayne, which was made in 1970 but not released until 1976, three years after Ford's death.

61.

John Ford's health deteriorated rapidly in the early 1970s; he suffered a broken hip in 1970 which put him in a wheelchair.

62.

John Ford had to move from his Bel Air home to a single-level house in Palm Desert, California, near Eisenhower Medical Center, where he was being treated for stomach cancer.

63.

John Ford died on August 31,1973, at Palm Desert and his funeral was held on September 5 at Hollywood's Church of the Blessed Sacrament.

64.

John Ford was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

65.

John Ford was renowned for his intense personality and his many idiosyncrasies and eccentricities.

66.

John Ford always had music played on the set and would routinely break for tea at mid-afternoon every day during filming.

67.

John Ford rarely drank during the making of a film, but when a production wrapped he would often lock himself in his study, wrapped only in a sheet, and go on a solitary drinking binge for several days, followed by routine contrition and a vow never to drink again.

68.

John Ford was extremely sensitive to criticism and was always particularly angered by any comparison between his work and that of his elder brother Francis.

69.

John Ford rarely attended premieres or award ceremonies, although his Oscars and other awards were proudly displayed on the mantel in his home.

70.

John Ford was untidy, and his study was always littered with books, papers, and clothes.

71.

John Ford bought a brand new Rolls-Royce in the 1930s, but never rode in it because his wife, Mary, would not let him smoke in it.

72.

John Ford was highly intelligent, erudite, sensitive and sentimental, but to protect himself in the cutthroat atmosphere of Hollywood he cultivated the image of a "tough, two-fisted, hard-drinking Irish sonofabitch".

73.

Sometime later, John Ford purchased a house for the couple and pensioned them for life.

74.

When Baker related the story to Francis John Ford, he declared it the key to his brother's personality:.

75.

John Ford couldn't have stood through that sad story without breaking down.

76.

John Ford brought out Wayne's tenderness as well as his toughness, especially in Stagecoach.

77.

John Ford had many distinctive stylistic trademarks and a suite of thematic preoccupations and visual and aural motifs recurs throughout his work as a director.

78.

John Ford championed the value and force of the group, as evidenced in his many military dramas.

79.

In contrast to his contemporary Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford never used storyboards, composing his pictures entirely in his head, without any written or graphic outline of the shots he would use.

80.

John Ford hated long expository scenes and was famous for tearing pages out of a script to cut dialogue.

81.

John Ford is famous for his exciting tracking shots, such as the Apache chase sequence in Stagecoach or the attack on the Comanche camp in The Searchers.

82.

John Ford was legendary for his discipline and efficiency on-set and was notorious for being extremely tough on his actors, frequently mocking, yelling and bullying them; he was infamous for his sometimes sadistic practical jokes.

83.

John Ford once referred to John Wayne as a "big idiot" and even punched Henry Fonda.

84.

Stock Company veteran Ward Bond was reportedly one of the few actors who were impervious to John Ford's taunting and sarcasms.

85.

John Ford usually gave his actors little explicit direction, although on occasion he would casually walk through a scene himself, and actors were expected to note every subtle action or mannerism; if they did not, John Ford would make them repeat the scene until they got it right, and he would often berate and belittle those who failed to achieve his desired performance.

86.

John Ford typically shot only the footage he needed and often filmed in sequence, minimizing the job of his film editors.

87.

John Ford was nominated as Best Director for Stagecoach.

88.

John Ford was the first director to win consecutive Best Director awards, in 1940 and 1941.

89.

In 1955 and 1957, John Ford was awarded The George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.

90.

John Ford was the first recipient of the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1973.

91.

Also in that year, John Ford was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon.

92.

At a crucial meeting of the Guild, DeMille's faction spoke for four hours until John Ford spoke against DeMille and proposed a vote of confidence in Mankiewicz, which was passed.

93.

Mankiewicz's account gives sole credit to John Ford in sinking DeMille.

94.

John Ford's opening was that he rose in defense of the board.

95.

John Ford claimed a personal role in a vote of confidence for Joseph Mankiewicz.

96.

John Ford then called for an end to politics in the Guild and for it to refocus on working conditions.

97.

John Ford said that Mankiewicz had been vilified and deserved an apology.

98.

John Ford feared that DeMille's exit might have caused the body to disintegrate.

99.

John Ford's second move was to have the entire board resign, which saved face for DeMille and allowed the issue to be settled without forced resignations.

100.

At a heated and arduous meeting, John Ford went to the defense of a colleague under sustained attack from his peers.

101.

John Ford stared down the entire meeting to ensure that DeMille remained in the guild.

102.

John Ford said he voted for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 United States presidential election and supported Richard Nixon in 1968 and became a supporter of the Vietnam War.

103.

John Ford is widely considered to be among the most influential of Hollywood's filmmakers.

104.

John Ford was listed as the sixth most influential director of all time by Flickside.

105.

John Ford's Westerns had a great influence on me, as I think they had on everybody.