Director John Ford once said to a reporter, “Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it’s not an art.” And yet he is considered one of the greatest directors to work in Hollywood, heaped with honors, profoundly influencing the work of those who came after him.

“I try to run a John Ford film, one or two before I start every movie simply because he inspires me, and I’m very sensitive to the way he uses his camera to paint his pictures and the way he frames things,” Steven Spielberg said in a John Ford documentary. Ingmar Bergman considered him ‘the greatest director in the world.’ Frank Capra called him ‘the king of directors.’ And Akira Kurosawa said of him, “I have respected John Ford from the beginning. Needless to say, I pay close attention to his productions, and I think I am influenced by them.” When Orson Welles was asked who his favorite directors were, he answered, “I prefer the old masters. By which I mean John Ford, John Ford and John Ford.”

Over the course of 150 films starting in the silent era, Ford developed a signature style. Cameras in those days were heavy and clunky and Ford didn’t use many close-ups. When he moved his camera, it was for a very specific reason, often using dollies for tracking shots in dramatic sequences such as chase scenes. His use of light and shadow within a carefully composed shot is also notable. Ford was also a pioneer of location shooting and shot grand vistas: most of his Westerns were shot in Utah’s Monument Valley, juxtaposing his cast against breathtaking vistas in carefully composed long shots.

The frame inside the frame, shooting from the dark into the light, most notably in the last scene of The Searchers when John Wayne is framed by a doorway as he walks away into the light, has been used as an homage in many films, including those of Sam Peckinpah. David Lean was a great fan of The Searchers, watching it several times before shooting Lawrence of Arabia. And Welles is said to have watched Stagecoach forty times before he made Citizen Kane.

 

Ford defined the American Western, but that was not the only genre he mastered. His forte was portraying the human condition, his characters were mostly loners who fought not just their antagonists, but societal wrongs, embodying virtues like courage and perseverance.

He ‘cut’ his films in the camera, never used a storyboard, never did more than two takes if he could help it and didn’t leave much film on the cutting room floor. This was so the studios couldn’t edit his films without his approval.

His antagonism to studio executives is well recorded. He once hired a guard to keep studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck away from his set. When he was shooting Rio Grande, a visiting studio executive pointed out that it was 10 am and asked when Ford was going to start work. Ford snapped, “Just as soon as you get the hell off my set.” On the set of Mogambo, when producer Sam Zimbalist complained about being three days behind schedule, Ford ripped three pages out of the script and said, “Now we’re on schedule.”

He didn’t suffer fools gladly and was very hard on his actors if they were unprepared. Most of them were intimidated by his bullying and public humiliations, yet he worked with many actors and crew over and over, creating a kind of stock company. He sported an eye patch on one eye due to a cataract operation that went wrong and was always smoking a pipe and chewing a handkerchief. Drinking binges always followed the end of production.

Ford won four Oscars, two back-to-back, an accomplishment not yet bested, for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952). None were for his Westerns, though he was nominated for Stagecoach (1939), the only time he lost. He also received two Academy Awards for war documentaries he made – The Battle of Midway and December 7^th. “I didn’t show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars. Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk,” he is reported to have said.

 

Ford was born John Martin Feeney on February 1, 1894, in Cape Elizabeth, Maine to Irish immigrant parents, one of eleven children. He followed his older brother Francis to Hollywood in 1914; Francis would become a successful actor and director in silent films and gave his younger brother bit roles in his films as well as crew positions. Ford also had a bit role as a Klansman in D.W. Griffiths’ Birth of a Nation in 1915.

Ford soon started directing silent shorts for Universal Pictures, making more than 60 between 1917 and 1928, a lot of them Westerns, of which most are now lost. He began a collaboration with actor Harry Carey for over 25 films starting in 1917 with his first feature film Straight Shooting.

He moved on to the Fox Film Corporation where his first success was the silent film The Iron Horse in 1924, which dealt with the construction of the transcontinental railway. The film was plagued with difficulties due to the logistics of 5,000 extras, 2,000 rail layers, a cavalry regiment, 800 Indians, 1,300 buffaloes, 2,000 horses, 10,000 cattle and 50,000 props including stagecoaches, according to Tag Gallagher’s 1984 book “John Ford: The Man and His Films.” There was no script; Ford was writing by night and shooting by day, ignoring the Fox executives who sent endless telegrams demanding answers. The picture was a success, earning more than $2 million worldwide, one of the most profitable of the decade.

 

Ford’s first sound movie was Mother Machree in 1928 which featured a song sung on camera, and also featured one John Wayne as an extra. Several films followed that included comedies and dramas, with big-name stars like Ronald Colman, Helen Hayes, Boris Karloff, Victor McLaglen, Will Rogers and Edward G. Robinson, and the comedy Up the River in 1930 in which Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart made their film debuts. His first directorial Oscar came in 1935 for The Informer with McLaglen as an IRA informer.

Ford moved on to the dramas The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), Mary of Scotland (1936) with Katharine Hepburn with who he had a passionate six-month affair, and The Hurricane (1937). He worked with Shirley Temple in Wee Willie Winkie (1937) and Gary Cooper in The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938), then finally went back to directing his first Western in 13 years, Stagecoach, which finally established Wayne as a movie star. Wayne had been in some forty Westerns so far but had yet to make a name for himself. Ford insisted on casting him over the studio’s objections (they wanted Joel McCrea), starting their 35-year collaboration which consisted of 24 films. Claire Trevor got top billing; Wayne was second-billed.

Director Peter Bogdanovich recounted a story at an appearance at Hillsdale College about the two of them. “Wayne once told me his response to Ford on Stagecoach. It had made him a major star. After Wayne had seen the rushes for the first time, Ford asked him how he liked himself. Wayne shrugged and said, ‘Well, you know what that is? I’m just playing you.’ There was a similarity in many of their mannerisms, especially the graceful way both gestured with their hands and arms. The famous rolling John Wayne walk was Jack Ford’s walk. Wayne’s brusque screen character was Ford in real life.”

Stagecoach was a seminal film, revitalizing the Western which had gone out of favor with the advent of talkies, grossing over $1 million in its first year. The film received seven Oscar nominations including Best Director and Best Picture.

Then Ford started a collaboration with Henry Fonda that would last for several films. Young Mr. Lincoln and Drums Along the Mohawk (Ford’s first color film) were both released in 1939, followed by The Grapes of Wrath in 1940 which would bring Ford his second directing Oscar. The Long Voyage Home in 1940, a non-Western with Wayne, Tobacco Road in 1941 and How Green Was My Valley (1941), marked a prolific period in Ford’s life, the last film winning him his third directing Oscar, his second in two years.

When the US joined WWII, Ford joined the US Navy Reserves as a commander and became the head of the photographic unit for the Office of Strategic Services. Two documentaries he made during his service won Oscars. Ford was present at Omaha Beach during D-Day. He stayed with the Navy Reserves after WWII and left the service with the rank of Rear Admiral.

My Darling Clementine (1946), again with Henry Fonda, was made after the war and told the story of Wyatt Earp. Ford teamed up again with Fonda to make The Fugitive in 1947, then made the Cavalry Trilogy – Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950) — with Wayne. But his best work with Wayne was yet to come with The Quiet Man in 1952, a film that Ford had been wanting to make for twenty years. It was his most successful movie at the box office and earned him his fourth Oscar for Best Director.

Other highlights in his career that decade include Mogambo (1953) with Ava Gardner and Clark Gable and Mister Roberts (1955) with Fonda. According to Bogdanovich, Ford told Gardner to her face that he wanted Maureen O’Hara in the role. Gardner told him, “Well, you got me so go shit in your hat.” After that, the two got on very well. As for Mister Roberts, Fonda and Ford battled over the script, Fonda thinking it wasn’t as good as the original play. At one point, Ford punched Fonda in the face, then made a tearful apology, then shut down production to get drunk. Then Ford was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery and Mervyn LeRoy finished the picture. Ford and Fonda never worked together again.

 

But despite this low period professionally and personally, Ford’s next film was his masterpiece, the one he is best known for, the critical and commercial hit The Searchers in 1956, again with Wayne, the one film that most filmmakers point to when asked about the influences on their careers. Based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, the story is about a Civil War veteran (Wayne) who spends years looking for a niece (Natalie Wood) who has been abducted by the Comanche.

Ford’s last notable film was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in 1962, starring Wayne and James Stewart, a black and white film about the outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) and the young lawyer (Stewart) who takes him on with the help of a local (Wayne) in the town of Shinbone, a frontier town. The film was shot in black and white, something Ford had to fight for, and earned $3 million in its first year of release. It was also Ford’s most expensive movie, even though it was shot mostly on Paramount soundstages.

Ford would make several more films, but the years of hard work, hard-drinking and war injuries caught up with him. He broke his hip in 1970 and was confined to a wheelchair. Before he died in 1973 of cancer, President Richard Nixon promoted him to full admiral and bestowed on him the Presidential Medal of Freedom at an American Film Institute event where he was the first recipient of AFI’s Lifetime Achievement Award. John Wayne gave the eulogy at his funeral. He is interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, CA.

Eleven of his films are in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.