Ford

A filmmaker friend of mine emailed me recently with the following question:

Driving today by the Larry Flynt building at Wilshire and La Cienega I took note of a giant statue of John Wayne in cowboy attire (circa Rooster Cogburn, I'd guess) astride a steed. Hadn't ever seen it before.

It reminded me, though, of a conversation not long ago in which I posited that perhaps John Ford et al. may have done more harm to this nation than anyone could ever have imagined by perpetuating their mythic and myopic vision of rugged westernhood and gung-ho Americanism.

When you consider the current leadership of this country, and observe our cranky and indignant CEOs on the witness stand in their own fraud trials, you really gotta wonder. Where did all this macho bravado come from? Are those movies merely reflective of our culture or are they affective? Did our leaders act like this before John Wayne did?

Could this be a tog (topic for blog) relevant to both of your stated platforms?

As readers as recently as yesterday know, I'm a sucker for blog topics, especially if you've gotten a sense of my tastes in politics and entertainment. It's especially nice to be responding to a "tog" (a coinage worth disseminating) that, while having some political reference, is less wearyingly about a fine filmmaking artist from our nation's great filmmaking past.

John Ford, born John Martin Feeney in Maine 1894, had probably the greatest directing career in the history of Hollywood, if not the world. He was considered a primary influence by both Orson Welles and Akira Kurosawa. No John Ford, no Seven Samurai. He started working in the silent era as a propman for his older brother, who ended up too unfocused to have a directing career after 1928. Ford was an alcoholic and could be very tough, but what's most blow-away is that he actually directed feature films in each of six decades. If Steven Spielberg lives another twenty active years, he'll match Ford's temporal range, and even with his tremendous output he will have match John Ford's 145 directing credits on IMDB (currently Spielberg has 48).

But I wouldn't respect Ford if I didn't love his movies, the fraction that I've seen, and here's my response:

When I was a kid I hated John Wayne and I'm still pretty much against what he represents. That said, I'm a big fan of his performances in Stagecoach (especially -- wild to see that young talent get introduced), The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Which leads right to John Ford.

I used to feel the same way about Ford, that he was another Indian-killer racist fascist bastard. But starting around film school and then when I moved here and watched a ton of Westerns for Bad Girls which I was working on, I got to appreciate Ford bigtime. He's kind of the gold standard for Hollywood filmmaking, and the crispness of Stagecoach and My Darling Clementine is kind of unmatched. He also treated Westerns as historical pictures rather than shoot 'em ups, and although he's obviously mythmaking, he's also in touch with something real about that era. I like the story he told about Wyatt Earp visiting his brother's sets because he was old pals with the stuntmen, and telling Ford how the OK Corral really went, which Ford says he put into the Clementine picture. I also love pics like Wagonmaster, which feels more like a real pioneer tale than any other I can think of.

I also think Ford acquitted himself well against Cecil B. DeMille during the Blacklist Era. I'm guessing you've read about that. It speaks well of Ford that he hated DeMille's movies as much as his politics.

Ford's politics are a kind of great Americanism, and as he got some sort of honorary tribal membership out there in Monument Valley, I'm guessing he was pretty good on race for his time. Like when he told Woody Strode he could make him a movie actor and did, although he knew the limits of how far he could go into stardom. And I get very choked up every time I watch the classroom scene in Liberty Valance, the whole common man understanding of democracy and what this nation strives for.

When my grandmother on my mom's side was on her last wheelchair in the nursing home, I asked her if she believed America was really "with liberty and justice for all". She had been a schoolteacher for several decades after her husband died, and her reply has always stuck with me. She said it wasn't, not exactly, but it was something we were always striving for; the founders had laid out the ideals and it was up to us to keep working towards them, even if we never reach a perfect place.

That's kind of how I imagine Ford. He famously made 1 pic for himself, 1 for the studio. He controlled his vision by cutting in his head and going on remote location. He made you pay money into a cookie jar if, at one of the set meals, you mentioned the movie you were working on or any of his past work. He had maybe the best pictorial sense of any American director ever. Orson Welles used Stagecoach as his textbook and took Gregg Toland (the cinematographer on Stagecoach) for Citizen Kane. That's a big tribute. And How Green Was My Valley is a very moving picture, even if we all wish Kane had beat it for the Oscar.

So I think there's a depth of feeling and humanity in Ford, an understanding of time passing and regret, of the heroes left behind, the drunks, the democracy that is very much the big vision. To reduce it all to an advertisement for machismo or jingoism is a major disservice.

His last two pictures were about female empowerment and a story similar to the tragic Native American Trail of Tears, so I think you've got kind of a Franklin Roosevelt Democratic liberal in Ford, which may not be as warm and fuzzy as the post-Vietnam liberals, but maybe that's what's missing on the middle-left today. I can't imagine Ford would approve of any of these scoundrels running things now. He may have been a booster of dominant culture, but he was never a company man. A drunk, maybe. An artist but one who would never ever let on about that. The old kind of modest strength that doesn't get celebrated in our Fox News world of today.

How's that for an answer?

My buddy responded kindly, but not exactly in agreement.

Your points are all well-taken. But I can't help feeling something went awry between his printing the legend--or the truth as he saw it--and what's going on in the heads of the American chest beaters of today. I agree that he wouldn't much appreciate them, any more than they can appreciate a good artist.

Since I can get the last word on my blog, I'll end with a message of hope. I disagree that folks would have a hard time appreciating a good artist like John Ford. Back in his day he was well-loved by audiences, not always the biggest but with some breakout hits, including Liberty Valance late in his career. He's the #1 Academy Award winning director, with 4 wins -- on 5 nominations (nice percentage; lost his Stagecoach nom to Victor Fleming for Gone with the Wind) with all the wins for his social conscience pictures, not his Westerns.

And, when given a chance, some of his movies still work for audiences today. About four years ago I brought a DVD of Stagecoach to a warehouse in San Francisco where a group of normally Battlefield 1942 playing dudes sat rapt. The story is still sharp and the images exhilarating. John Wayne was only 31 when it was made and Ford was 44. It more than holds its own.