“My name’s John Ford.
I make westerns,” he said.
Although he directed many incredible western films, he managed to transcend every label
to become a unique filmmaker.
His career started with the beginning of cinema and lasted until the 1960s, when he made the
most of it by telling a mythical version of the United States’ history.
Thanks to him, John Wayne became the actor we all know, and today he’s admired by giants
such as Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.
Today in Masters of Cinema: John Ford.
John Ford was born John Martin Freeney in 1894, in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
His parents were Irish immigrants who taught their thirteen children to love and respect
their origins, as well as to show devotion to the Catholic faith.
John was the most influenced by this, and with time, he preferred to adopt the Irish
equivalent of his name: Sean Aloysius O'Feeney.
That attitude reflects what later would be two constants in his work: how important the
lands of one’s ancestors are, and the urge to rewrite history.
During the first years in Cape Elizabeth, the family owned a farm.
His father worked farming and fishing, just as he did in their homeland.
On the other hand, his mother was in charge of raising their children.
Her person inspired John to later portray in his filmography women that could support
a home through determination and love, or that helped the protagonists staying down
to earth, much more than just supporting characters.
Economic problems forced them to move to Portland, to live in an apartment.
Young John could adapt and finish his studies.
When he was young, cinema —rising entertainment back then— wasn’t a big part of his life.
He did watch a movie from time to time, as most people did, but his artistic inclination
was on drawing.
His drawing skills helped him get a job in advertisement for a shoe factory.
However, he had other ambitions: as passionate as he was about the Navy, he wanted to join
the United States Naval Academy.
He didn’t make it as he had problems with his eyesight; however, he never fell out of
love for the Navy.
He tried studying in the University of Maine, but soon realized that he hated the programs
and the whole perspective of an academic life.
So, he moved to Arizona and worked taking care of cows.
He became a true cowboy.
But was it a decisive factor for him to make westerns later on in his career?
According to the director himself, no.
Those kinds of statements help us comprehend that it wasn’t easy to interview him.
He hated public life, he hated to be considered an artist, he hated explaining his films,
and before the press, he showed a steely attitude: half natural antipathy, half act.
In fact, in an interview he was asked what brought him to Hollywood, and he replied “the
train."
But for that train ride to happen, something else important had to occur before.
Frank, one of his brothers, had left home to work on Broadway and then Hollywood.
From 1911, under the name of Francis Ford, he worked as a stuntman, actor, and director
of movies and series.
Productions like Custer’s Last Fight, from 1912, placed him as a prominent talent.
John left Arizona in 1913 and joined Frank, who he admired.
He worked as his assistant, as a stuntman, actor and as prop-man behind the camera.
The series Lucille Love: The Girl of Mystery, from 1924, starred and directed by Francis
Ford, appears as the first production ever where he was accredited.
Then came The Doorway of Destruction, from 1915, also directed by Francis, where he was
promoted to screenwriter and assistant director.
Little by little, John started learning the profession, and benefiting from his brother’s
fame, he used a similar artistic name: Jack Ford.
The fact that both their children used a last name different from the one given at birth,
struck a chord on their parents.
They altogether disapproved of their lives in show business.
Besides watching and helping Francis, Jack admired other directors that had been working
around at the same time as they did.
For starters, David Wark Griffith, Hollywood’s most outstanding filmmaker back then.
In 1915, it was premiered The Birth of a Nation, one of the first big productions of the history
of cinema, in which young Jack participated playing the role of a member of the Ku Klux
Klan.
He didn’t mind getting left out from the credits as long as he worked with one of the
Fathers of Cinema.
His experience gained over the years allowed Jack Ford to direct.
The short film, The Tornado, from 1917, appears as his first credit in this line of work,
but the material is lost (as the majority of his work from the silent era) and there's
still some doubts about if he actually directed it.
It is, however, certain that it was a western, very popular genre back then but that wasn’t
taken very seriously by the executives in Universal, the company for which Ford was
working.
The Ford brothers exploited the genre and its possibilities to solidify their positions
as filmmakers.
John also used its scenarios and concepts to mold his own vision of US history, focusing
more on myth than reality.
In The Soul Herder, also from 1917 and his fourth work as director, Jack started his
society with whom he considered his other referent: actor Harry Carey, who was Universal’s
answer to western stars, Tom Mix and Gilbert M. Anderson, better known as Broncho Billy.
In five years, Ford and Carey made 37 films.
John didn’t stop growing as a director, and his colleagues valued his ability to make
exciting sequences and make the best out of exterior stages.
In 1920, after working for Universal, Jack was hired by the Fox Film Corporation (later
called 20th Century Fox).
He left the studio in 1931, but not before making more than fifty movies.
There, he could develop all his potential as a filmmaker.
In 1923, Cameo Kirby was released, a film in which he signed for the first time as John
Ford.
But his biggest challenge was in The Iron Horse, a film with a generous budget about
the construction of the transcontinental railway between 1863 and 1869.
It was a laborious task for the director and his crew, who had to deal with the adverse
weather of the state of Nevada and build entire cities for the set.
As if it wasn’t enough, Ford wanted to get train shots, but from beneath the rails.
So, he had people digging holes to place the camera under the rails to obtain unusual shots
until then.
The sacrifice was worth it: released in 1924, The Iron Horse, was a hit in the box office,
and it consolidated the director’s career.
In his silent era, John Ford had the liberty to direct movies from different genres: comedy,
drama, biopic and even sports films.
But he still felt at home while filming a western.
According to Ford, in those productions they used to work on big sets made out of planks
on the ground, and had to place cardboards over themselves to protect them from the light.
Besides, there were as many as six productions at the same time, next to each other, from
different companies.
That way, all filmmakers helped each other and even exchanged cast members.
Ford developed a filmmaker instinct and knew how to overcome himself.
This last aspect helped him before a new technological advance that changed the industry: sound cinema.
Napoleon's Barber, short from 1928, was his first experiment in the field.
The director passed the test, but the studios had other plans.
As well as many of his colleagues, he was fired and replaced by theater directors.
That methodology would be proven wrong, since those professionals weren’t familiarized
with the means.
That’s how Ford, and many of his co-workers were requested again to work behind the camera,
with a raise included.
Apart from his occupation in cinema; in the meantime, Ford tried to work on his private
life.
In 1920, he married Mary France McBride Smith and had two children: Patrick and Barbara.
However, the director still preferred the cameras, the desert and the horses.
His true family was in the film set, together with a group of actors, and technicians that
conformed to a strong companionship.
John Ford enjoyed making westerns, but not just for its characters and plots.
Actually, it was because those movies allowed him to shoot in exteriors, in open spaces,
far from the craziness and pollution of the cities.
He also enjoyed working with his cinematographic family and loved the routine: getting up early,
working all day and sleeping like a baby at night.
Thus, he was far from considering westerns his favorite genre, and he believed his best
works had nothing to do with cowboys.
For example, Mother Machree, from 1927, about the setbacks of an Irish immigrant.
It was precisely in the shooting of Mother Machree that Ford met a young boy who practiced
American football and was taking his first steps on films after Tom Mix advised him to.
He was Marion Robert Morrison, later known as John Wayne.
The emerging actor had a role as extra and didn’t appear in the credits, but from there
he became one of the most important members of Ford’s cinematographic family.
And as he continued working on films, he also gained notoriety.
The first big production the Ford-Wayne duo made, and that everyone remembers is Stagecoach.
Released in 1939, it showed the stagecoach of the title in an odyssey through the West.
Ringo Kid, Wayne’s character, was an outlaw seeking vengeance, but ended up helping the
travelers.
This role of antihero, someone who represents part of the old world and has a hard time
adapting to the new one, would become the director’s signature feature, and Wayne,
its perfect personification.
The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are two other excellent cases.
Besides the antihero figure, Ford immortalized in his westerns the scenarios in which the
characters existed.
More precisely, Monument Valley, located between Utah and Arizona.
It had already been used in two previous films from different directors, but it was John
Ford, in Stagecoach, who captured and promoted its monumental nature, which transformed it
in the best location to shoot cowboy movies.
In fact, nowadays you can find John Ford’s Point there.
When it came to directing actors, Ford could be harsh, very harsh.
Henry Fonda even hit him in the face during the shooting of Mister Roberts, and James
Stewart admitted that there was a constant tension while working with him.
Nonetheless, no one denied his talent as narrator.
Ford wasn’t far from eccentricities.
Since 1934 he started wearing a patch on his left eye.
The problem, apparently: cataracts that make him very sensible to light.
The director found out it wasn’t indispensable for him to use it, but he liked it and kept
it for his image.
He sometimes used it in his right eye, which confused people and caused a few laughs.
Apart from his work in cinema, Ford never let go of his passion for the military, and
even found a way to bring them together.
When World War II started in 1939, the director figured the United States would intervene
eventually; therefore, he founded Hollywood’s professionals association to the service of
the Navy, known as the Naval Field Photographic Unit.
The purpose of this initiative was to photograph and shoot documentaries.
Ford was so committed that in 1942, he went to Midway Atoll, in Hawaii, to shoot a potential
Japanese attack.
This attack actually occurred and meant the first victory for the United States army during
the war.
Ford shot the feat from a privileged, yet lethal, position, since he was wounded from
a machine gun.
It resulted in The Battle of Midway, a documentary that impressed the Academy.
From then on, the category for Best Documentary Feature was created for the ceremony of the
Oscars.
Ford was also responsible for shooting Operation Overlord, but the experience was so shocking
that once it finished, he spent the next three days drinking.
World War II ended in 1945, and even though Ford went back to Hollywood, he made time
to participate in the Korean War, and in Vietnam, where he shot more documentaries.
Unlike contemporaries such as Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, Ford was recognized by critics
of his country and won many awards.
He won four Oscars for The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley and The
Quiet Man.
None of those films were westerns, but most of them had elements related to his Irish
origins.
John Ford grew professionally from the heart of Hollywood, he started from the bottom up
to become a director.
From there he rose to become one of the biggest names in cinema worldwide.
His vehemence was key in the evolution of the industry’s rhythm, and also for him
to participate in wars.
John Ford died in 1973, but his influence will last forever.
Even in his last days he stated that, to him, cinema was just a way to earn a living.
Without a doubt, a way to earn a living that still leaves a mark on current generations
and will do the same on the ones to come.