Since four of the five films in last week’s profile of Maureen O’Hara were directed by John Ford, it seems fitting to profile the great director himself this week.

When asked by a reporter to name the three greatest directors, Orson Welles famously said “John Ford, John Ford, John Ford.” Still today considered the great American director, Ford was born in Cape Elizabeth, Maine in 1894. One of eleven children of Irish immigrants, he followed his brother, actor/director Francis Ford, to Hollywood, appearing as an actor in sixteen films including D.W. Griffith’s 1915 epic, The Birth of a Nation.

He directed his first film, The Tornado, in 1917 and made his first masterpiece, The Iron Horse in 1924. A four-time Oscar winner (with two documentaries he directed winning Oscars that went to the film’s producers), Ford remains the only director to win the Best Director prize four times. In addition, he directed ten actors (Victor McLaglen, Thomas Mitchell, Edna May Oliver, Jane Darwell, Henry Fonda, Donald Crisp, Sara Allgood, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly and Jack Lemmon) to Oscar nominations and four of them (McLaglen, Mitchell, Darwell and Lemmon) to wins.

Because he was close friends with John Wayne, James Stewart and Ward Bond, it is often assumed that he, too, was a conservative Republican. Nothing could have been further from the truth for the liberal Democrat activist. His favorite presidents were Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Kennedy.

The first recipient of the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1973, the Rear Admiral was promoted to full Admiral for the evening by then President Nixon. He died later that year at 79.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

PILGRIMAGE (1933)

Although not as well known as some of his other films, this little gem about redemption and forgiveness is one of his finest efforts.

Character actress Henrietta Crosman (The Royal Family of Broadway, Charlie Chan’s Secret) plays an unforgiving mother whose son (Norman Foster) takes up with a woman (Heather Angel) from the wrong side of the tracks. Unable to get leave, he is killed in action in World War I before he is able to marry the pregnant girl. The scandalized mother refuses to have anything to do with the girl or her son, wonderfully played by Jay Ward (later the creator of TV’s Rocky & Bullwinkle).

Designated a Gold Star mother by the U.S. State Department, she reluctantly joins other mothers on a pilgrimage to France to visit her son’s grave. While there she meets a young couple in the same situation as her late son and his girl and has a long overdue epiphany. Sentimental, sure, but not maudlin, and beautifully done. The film’s final scenes contain some of the finest moments of Ford’s career.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)

Ford’s film of John Steinbeck’s masterwork of the Great Depression is a masterpiece in its own right. There are a few changes in Nunnally Johnson’s screenplay, most notably the film’s hopeful ending, but by and large it is a faithful translation.

Henry Fonda is “everyman” Tom Joad who joins his Oklahoma family led by Pa (Russell Simpson) and Ma (Jane Darwell) as they go from camp to camp looking for work in California. Great performances all around, especially by Oscar-nominated Fonda, Oscar winning Darwell and Oscar-ignored John Carradine as an itinerant preacher.

THE SEARCHERS (1956)

After decades of making westerns in which the Indians were the bad guys, Ford’s generally regarded “greatest film” seems to be headed in the same direction, but instead makes its square-jawed hero (John Wayne) the film’s bad guy for much of the film.

The most imitated film of the last fifty-five years, Taxi Driver and Star Wars are among the films that have copied entire sequences.

Wayne is the Civil War veteran out to avenge the deaths of his brother, sister-in-law and young nephew, as he heads a seven-year search for his missing nieces with the aid of his “half-breed” adopted nephew, Jeffrey Hunter. The entire cast is first rate with Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood, John Qualen and Olive Carey among those in key supporting roles.

THE LAST HURRAH/ (1958)

Ford’s “old man’s movie” stars Spencer Tracy as the aging New England mayor who runs for re-election one last time. Ford surrounds Tracy with a who’s who of great character actors including Jeffrey Hunter, Pat O’Brien, James Gleason, Donald Crisp, Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, Jane Darwell and more.

Tracy, who gives one of his finest performances, even has a last line reminiscent of Robert Donat’s in Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

7 WOMEN (1966)

The film’s working title was Chinese Finale, a more appropriate title in that this was Ford’s last film. The film is unusual for Ford in several ways. While most of his films center on men with women as peripheral characters, this one puts the seven women (rigid missionary Margaret Leighton and company, and doctor Anne Bancroft) front and center while a cruel warlord in 1935 China is the main male character.

Another departure for Ford is in the positioning of the missionary as the villain while the non-religious doctor is the heroine. Bancroft is outstanding in her best non-Oscar-nominated performance and Leighton is almost as good.

JOHN FORD AND OSCAR

• The Informer (1935) (Best Director) [Oscar]
• Stagecoach (1939) (Best Director)
• The Grapes of Wrath (1940) (Best Director) [Oscar]
• How Green Was Valley (1941) (Best Director) [Oscar]
• The Battle of Midway (1942) ([Oscar] for Best Documentary Short Subject. Award given to United States Navy)
• December 7th (1943) ([Oscar] for Best Documentary Feature. Award given to United States Navy)
• The Quiet Man (1952) (Best Director) [Oscar]