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Searching for John Ford: A Life

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As a fan of the master filmmaker John Ford, I was enthralled to find this wonderful biography. It is both entertaining and scholarly, filled with fascinating anecdotes that provide the reader with an in-depth view of Ford's complex personality. In spanning Ford's life and career, this book also provides a panoramic overview of Hollywood itself and the dramatic changes it went through over the years, many of which are reflected in Ford's work. I really enjoyed the analyses of Ford's films which provide many new insights and perspectives. A must-read for anyone interested in film.

I don't know why anyone interested in the seminal American director, John Ford, would not find this book utterly fascinating. McBride illuminates Ford's early life and the beginnings of his long career with detailed care. He explores his problematic character with skill, compassion and insight without ever being patronizing and without ever holding back about the darkest aspects of Ford's personality and behavior. For instance, McBride makes it very clear that Ford does not deserve as much credit as he usually gets for what was really an ambivalent attitude toward the notorious Hollywood "blacklist" during the anti-communist hysteria of the 1940s and '50s.

McBride's book is packed with vivid anecdotes from associates, observers of Ford and members of the legendary "Stock Company" (Harry Carey, Jr.'s stories are really wonderful!), and his own critiques of the films are sophisticated and augmented by quotes and assessments by other major "Fordians." McBride is generous with his inclusion of other critics' views and when he disagrees he himself is never mean or dismissive. His illuminations of the significance of the post-WWII western, his accounts of the intricacies of the "blacklist" and his sympathetic understanding of Ford's last films and what they represented are especially valuable.

There may indeed be other biographies just as good as McBride's but this is a captivating, comprehensive and intellectual volume for the Ford aficionado. It is immensely satisfying!

This is a very good biography of Ford. Yes, McBride relies on Sarris and Carey Jr. a good bit of the time, yet this book remains very interesting and does a thorough job covering the many films Ford made.

Strengths of the book include an eye-opening look at Ford's WWII service, (How many other guys were at both Midway and D-Day and managed to get to Burma and Yugoslavia as well?) a clear presentation of Ford's relations with the different studios (the list of "better" titles for The Quiet Man the head of Republic tried to force on Ford is hysterically funny) and an evenhanded evaluation of Ford's behavior during the blacklist era.

Perhaps the evenhandedness of McBride's tone is what I liked the most about the book. One could take Ford's life and turn it into a straightforward case of hero-worship, or one could take an axe to him up and down the line, pointing out his failures in family life, his bigoted comments, his questionable actions in some controversial issues. McBride avoids falling into either extreme camp. We get Ford warts and all here, and it is left up to us to decide.

My only complaint is that the book is too short. I would have liked more discussion on a few films, and I would have liked a chapter on Ford's posthumous reputation. McBride raises the issue in his introduction that Ford is being forgotten by the new generation of writers and filmmakers, but he never quite tells why.

Still, this was a fine book, one that I read quickly despite its length.

John Ford, born Sean Aloysius O'Fearna in Cape Elizabeth, Maine in 1895, hasn't lacked for biographers since his death in 1973, but he remains an extremely difficult subject, for several reasons. One is the sheer sweep of his career, which, spanning 1917 to 1970, roughly paralleled that of American cinema itself and witnessed massive societal changes and world wars. More problematic is Ford himself, a man with a multiplicity of nicknames: Boss, Pappy, Jack. Joseph McBride, in Searching for John Ford, quotes Reverend Clayton (Ward Bond) in The Searchers telling Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) "You fit a lot of descriptions," a statement that nicely summarizes Ford's own elusiveness.

In this rock-solid, 800-plus-page biography, McBride shows that this exceptionally powerful but also deeply flawed man hid behind his films and behind a carefully constructed identity that was always in danger of cracking, and sometimes did. A sensitive, culturally literate, poetically inclined man, he pretended (in his own phrase) to be "illiterate" and called assessments of his status as the master of the western saga "horsehit." A passionate defender of family values in his films, he was also, frequently, a sadist on the set. The book shows him as a poisonous presence to actors like Jimmy Cagney (who called him "truly a nasty old man") and Henry Fonda (who may or may not have knocked him down) but particularly to his treasured stock company members Ward Bond and John Wayne. Without being overly psychoanalytical, McBride shows how Ford's personal behavior was often a projection of his anxieties. On the set of Stagecoach, he was publicly merciless to Wayne: "I really should get Gary Cooper for this part. Can't you walk, for Chrissake, instead of skipping like a goddam fairy." The irony here was that Wayne was apparently copying Ford's own much-noted "feminine" walk. The book also documents Ford's endless practical joking, much of it aimed at Bond, a rabid anticommunist whom Ford considered "stupid."

Searching for John Ford documents every phase of his life and career, from his early missteps to his canonization as one of the greatest -- and most widely influential -- directors in world cinema. The book gives what are most likely definitive answers to some nagging questions in this history, one of them Ford's alleged affair with Katherine Hepburn. McBride sifts methodically through every shred of evidence, including questionable portrayals by Hepburn biographer Barbara Leaming and Ford's grandson Dan, and a mysterious letter found among Ford's papers that purports to reproduce a conversation between Hepburn and an unidentified "Miss D" on the subject of her involvement with Ford. He makes an entirely credible case that this relationship was not physical, based on Ford's Catholic inhibitions and marriage vows. At any rate, despite Ford's wife Mary's willingness to let him have a private life outside his beloved home and marriage, alcohol had a stronger lure for him, eventually causing drastic problems on the set of such films as Mr. Roberts, which had to be finished (and perhaps was finished off) by Mervyn Leroy.

The Ford of this book is a charismatic but also authoritarian figure who used his gifts in ways that can only be described as schizoid. In a remarkably brave move documented in one of the most dramatic sections of the book, he publicly excoriated red-baiter Cecil B. DeMille over demands that the directors' guild members sign a loyalty oath. But typically, the next day he sent a fawning letter of apology to DeMille. The book also reveals that when actress Anna Lee, a friend of Ford's and one of his actors, was blacklisted by mistake (there was apparently another, more left-leaning Anna Lee around), he simply made a phone call to Washington to clear things up. McBride wonders, as will the reader, how Ford could so easily cut through such a monolithic force as HUAC to spare a friend, and sees this as a typically problematic act on Ford's part, showing both his loyalty and a power he could use for his own ends.

Of course, Ford was also a heroic, larger-than-life character who generated enormous loyalty among those who worked with him, even those who were the target of his insults. His friendships were both loving and long-lasting. Claire Trevor, who worked with him on Stagecoach, recalled him as both "absolutely wonderful to me" and a master on the set, whose sometimes unsettling decisions on the set -- in this case throwing out what Trevor thought was a crucial romantic scene -- invariably improved the film. He was also capable of transformation. He railed against being called a racist, a charge leveled at him off and on throughout his career (and one that McBride explicates evenhandedly). "When I landed at Omaha Beach there were scores of black bodies lying in the sand. Then I realized that it was impossible not to consider them full-fledged American citizens."

Searching for John Ford is arguably the most rounded portrait to date of this complicated man who transformed American history into cinematic art. McBride exhaustively examined the mountain of interviews, memoirs, and analyses relating to Ford, and fortunately the book documents all of these. It also contains cogent critiques of the films themselves. McBride is especially good on the seminal Searchers, interspersing a compelling production history with analysis and irresistible anecdotes from some of its contributors. (Henry Worden, an actor of German heritage who played Chief Scar, is particularly witty in his reminiscences.) If Ford remains an enigma at the end, it's less a criticism of this book, which is both substantive and a wonderful read, than a tribute to its subject's skill in camouflaging the depths of his personality and keeping the world safely at bay.

This might be the definitive(if that makes sense...)biography of the American Renoir (according to François Truffaut, who eventually came to understand and appreciate the director's work after years of disdain...contrary to Rohmer who never changed his mind), even if thoroughly researched works, among which quite recent ones, are already available: Tag Gallagher's, among others, seemed to embody the bulk of what could be said today of the "greatest poet of the western saga"( "horseshit", according to the guy himself...) or even the "Shakespeare of cinema"...until the release of Joseph Mc Bride's Searching for John Ford.
Mc Bride, with Michael Wilmington, had already explored with sympathy and insight the rich complexity, destructive contradictions and inner conflicts building up the director's work in their 1974 John Ford. The book was an assumed reading of the films in the light of Ford's search for allegiance as a first generation Irish-American, progressively doomed by disappointment and bitterness.The analyses of movies such as Straight Shooting (maybe Ford's first, with most of his themes already in...),The Searchers or The Man who Shot Liberty Valance conveyed a sense of poetry owing as much to the authors as to the soul of the works studied.
This new biography is a thirty-years job, exploring deeper than ever the interconnections between the director's inner life and his films. Nothing is here anecdotal,all is but aimed at understanding a man. As Martin Scorcese puts it on the huge volume backcover: Searching for John Ford should be compulsory reading. And even if Renoir did deserve a pretty good amount of good critical studies, the French John Ford has never been paid such a tribute.

This is a definitive biography of John Ford and an account of his work. It begins with his childhood in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where his father owned a tavern and the family actually lived a genteel life. His older brother, Francis, scandalized the family by running away with a circus and, eventually, ended up as a silent film actor. His brother changed his name from Francis Feeney to Francis Ford and John followed suit a few years later when he joined "the business." He began as a prop man and minor figure but eventually he was able to direct the silent films that they were turning out by the thousands of forgettable two reelers. Peter Bogdanivich's book, Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors, has most of the story in a more compact package. If you really want all the details of John Ford's life, this is your book. It can get a bit dull at times but it does the job. I actually know a few stories about John Ford that aren't in the book but this complete version of his life is as good as you will find.

McBride's biography of John Ford's life is an attempt to find the person, not merely the director. As such, a good deal of the time is spent on his personal life, such as it was, and film fans who are looking for detailed dissections of Ford's films may find the book less than satisfactory. Indeed, some of his more well known films are clearly glossed over while films that McBride believes portray Ford's personal qualities are analyzed extensively (e.g., "Mary of Scotland").

The paradox for this book is that McBride is not particularly well equipped to analyze Ford's personality, so his psychological research reads more like movie reviews, while his movie reviews often read more like pop psychology. At some level this is fine, but the effect will be to alienate film fans with so much psychology and psychology fans with too little analysis.

That being said, McBride writes well and offers lots of anecdotes and side stories that will interest fans of "Pappy". There isn't a lot here that can't be found elsewhere, but there also isn't a lot elsewhere that isn't covered here.

I wouldn't recommend this as an initial book for fans of Ford's films - it's much too long and much too concerned with Ford's personal life. But for the person who wonders about Ford the person who made films, this is an ideal book.

Joseph McBride, like Kevin Brownlow has a talent for the written word. Their style is easy, conversational, humorous and impeccably researched. Other authors such a Christopher Frayling while in command of their subject cannot write about it well.

Searching for John Ford is a brilliant work and the authoritative study of the man. This brick of a book is very hard to put down and I recommend it to any fan of early cinema, the western genre or the man himself.

The one element that could be considered as lacking is the investigation into Ford's repressed sexuality. As this book is as much about the man as his films, the subject is valid.

Joseph McBirde touches upon the subject early on with a tantalising tale of John Ford kissing Harry Carey Jr. When this moment finally arrives it is a drunken desperately yearning paternal kiss on the cheek with the words "My son, my son!"

Maureen O'Hara in her shallow autobiography Tis Herself: An Autobiography (2005) states that she walked in on Ford while he was kissing a young male actor. This testimony is notably lacking in McBrides biography.

If it is true that John Ford was a homosexual, how would that alter the study of his work?

Assuming, for arguments sake that Ford was indeed a repressed homosexual, it could explain his constant desire for male company, his tendency to treat preferred women as one of the guys, his lack of understanding of heterosexual relationships, his depiction of women in his movies and possibly his acidic verbal abuse of those closest to him.

While McBride does explore Ford's intense relationship with Katherine Hepburn, it is still unclear if any sexual interaction was involved.

Ford was most certainly confused sexually and Joseph McBride makes this clear but this superb portrait only heightens the fact that Ford was possessed by many internal demons. Possibly denying his homosexuality because it did not correspond with his ideals of himself could have been the greatest demon of them all.

This book was an amazing summer read for me, after having finished a college course on the master and his Western films. My only complaint is some bad sentences here and there. Oh well, if you want to know the workings of the greatest master of cinema, trust this, McBride is the expert.

McBride has assembled a huge amount of material on John Ford which makes for some interesting reading and certainly adds to the myths of the man. The problem with the book is that while all this material is sourced in quite extensive details, the formatting and function of the sourcing seems to be intended to obfuscate the source of the material rather than enlighten. The book is also written with the author as a component of the book, not just a reporter of Ford's life but it makes it very hard to separate Mr McBride's personalisations from factual material.

There is some interesting material that appears from not so regular contributors to the Ford mythology and provides some excellent reading. However it appears that much of the material, from the usual sources is pulled from other biographies and articles and is not first hand and this makes one question the general content and portraits. It is noticeable from having read this source material in this book, in other publications it appears selected to promote Mr McBride's view rather than give a balanced portrait of John Ford. It is impossible not to agree with Mr McBride's conclusions about Ford because he offers little evidence for alternative viewpoints. Mr McBride has been one of the most regular commentators on Ford mythology over the years, appearing in any number of documentaries. He earned himself a part in the mythology by being the interviewer about whom Ford took great delight in telling Henry Fonda in the American West of John Ford "I didn't tell him anything" apparently annoyed at McBride's lack of transparency in organising the interview. Given the imbalances in this book, Ford may have had good reasons to be reticent, other than a desire to be cantankerous.

Mr McBride is clearly a devotee of Ford's work and offers some very good analysis of the films and some entertaining and considered insights. The discussions of the films are clearly his own views.Those views cannot help but reflect his appreciation of Ford's work. This is in contrast to the personal material which tends to present views as facts, particularly regarding Ford's Catholicism and attitudes to sex.

This book is not recommended to anyone who is a John Wayne fan. Mr McBride is one of those Fordian writers who has trouble reconciling Wayne's politics with his place as the ultimate Fordian hero which is also the case with many of the more leftist biographers. Most separate personal issues from the performances. Mr McBride whilst clearly enamored by many of the characters played by Wayne does not seem able to do this. Mr McBride seems very bitter that the characters he loves are played by Wayne and when he writes of Wayne outside the roles, in a number of instances, he seems to be running a personal vendetta, taking a Schadenfreudian pleasure in reporting controversial events, reporting his personal efforts to undermine Wayne, and appearing to believe without exploring the belief that without Wayne's influence Ford would have been a socialist hero.

This book has a huge amount of material on John Ford which is of interest to anyone wanting to know about Ford but it is a flawed and biased account without acknowledging that bias and should not be viewed as anything like the ultimate biography of John Ford. Hopefully that is yet to be written.