John Ford won four directing Oscars, none of them for a Western
John Ford is remembered for Monument Valley vistas and John Wayne in the saddle, yet his record four Best Director Oscars went to dramas like The Grapes of Wrath and The Quiet Man. Born to Irish immigrants in Maine, he made more than 130 films across half a century.
He started life as John Martin Feeney on February 1, 1894, in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, although he sometimes claimed 1895, and that wrong year ended up carved on his gravestone. His father came from Spiddal in County Galway and his mother from Inishmore in the Aran Islands. The family lived in Portland's Irish neighbourhood of Munjoy Hill, where his father farmed, fished, kept a saloon and served as an alderman. John was one of eleven children, several of whom died in infancy.
At Portland High School he played football and was nicknamed Bull for the way he lowered his head and charged. In July 1914 he followed his brother Francis, twelve years older and already a busy actor-director at Universal, to California. Working as Jack Ford, he acted and learned production, and even turned up uncredited as a Klansman in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation.
Between 1917 and 1970 he directed over 130 pictures, though most of his silents are lost. His Westerns, among them Stagecoach and The Searchers, framed small figures against vast, harsh landscapes shot on location. He also made comedies, period pieces and documentaries, and helped launch John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara and James Stewart.
Fellow directors revered him. Kurosawa, Welles and Bergman all counted him among the very best, and many New Hollywood filmmakers cited his influence. The Harvard Film Archive has argued that his skill as a visual stylist is still rarely appreciated in full. His private life was more complicated: he married Mary McBride Smith in 1920 and stayed with her for life, despite his affairs and the question of how a Catholic reconciled himself to marrying a divorcée. He died on August 31, 1973.
Source: John Ford
