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Searching For John Ford: A Life Hardcover – June 23, 2001

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 77 ratings

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Hollywood has given us no greater director than John Ford. Between 1917 and 1970, Ford directed and/or produced some 226 pictures, from short silent films to ambitious historical epics and searingly vivid combat documentaries. His major works-- such as Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, They Were Expendable, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance-- are cinematic classics. Ford's films about American history are profound explorations of the national character and the crucibles in which that character was forged. Throughout his long and prolific career, Ford became best known for redefining the Western genre, setting his dramas about pioneer life against the timeless backdrop of Monument Valley.

Ford's films earned him worldwide admiration. As a man, however he was tormented and deliberately enigmatic. He concealed his true personality from the public, presenting himself as an illiterate hack rather than as the sensitive artist his films show him to be. He shrewdly guided the careers of some of Hollywood's greatest stars, including John Wayne, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Maureen O'Hara, and Katharine Hepburn, but he could be abusive, even sadistic, in his treatment of actors. He began his life steeped in the lore of Irish independence and progressive politics; by the end a hawkish Republican and rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, he was lionized by Richard Nixon for creating films that extol the "old virtues" of heroism, duty, and patriotism. Little wonder that those who have written about Ford have either strained to reconcile the daunting paradoxes of his work and personality or avoided them entirely. They have printed the legend and ignored the facts-- or printed the facts and obscured the legend.

In its depth, originality, and insight,
Searching for John Ford surpasses all previous biographies of the filmmaker. Encompassing and illuminating Ford's complexities and contradictions, Joseph McBride comes as close as anyone ever will to solving what Andrew Sarris called the "John Ford movie mystery." McBride traces the whole trajectory of Ford's life, from his beginning as "Bull" Feeney, the near-sighted, football-playing son of Irish immigrants in Portland, Maine, through to his establishment as America's most formidable and protean filmmaker. The author of critically acclaimed biographies of Frank Capra and Steven Spielberg, McBride interviewed Ford in 1970 and co-wrote the seminal study John Ford with Michael Wilmington. For more than thirty years, McBride has been exploring the interconnections between Ford's inner life and his work. He interviewed more than 120 of the director's friends, relatives, collaborators, and colleagues. Blending lively and penetrating analyses of Ford's films with an impeccably documented narrative of the historical and psychological contexts in which those films were created, McBride has at long last given John Ford the biography his stature demands. Searching for John Ford will stand as the definitive portrait of an American genius.
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After being called the "greatest poet of the Western saga," film director Ford responded, "I am not a poet, and I don't know what a Western saga is. I would say that is bullshit." Yet Ford--who made such classic westerns as Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--helped define the idea of the western as a quintessential American story for audiences around the world. This first full-length critical biography presents a complex, fascinating portrait of a troubled and conflicted artist and man. Born John Feeney, he was an Irish outsider in Yankee New England. He began working in the film industry in 1914 as a studio ditch digger, but was soon acting in films and, a few years later, directing them. By the early 1930s, he had achieved considerable artistic and commercial fame with The Informer. McBride (Frank Capra) elegantly and cogently weaves Ford's personal life into the fabric of his career. He is at his best describing how Ford's political sentiments emerged in his work (especially the antiracism of Steamboat Round the Bend and The Searchers) as well as the director's move from liberal to conservative politics during Hollywood's red-baiting years and the HUAC hearings. He gives an equally astute delineation of Ford's emotional life--a tempestuous marriage, a possible affair with Katharine Hepburn, his reputation as a tough guy and his alcoholism. Drawing upon a wealth of critical material plus more than 125 interviews with Ford's colleagues, family and friends, McBride has produced a fine, long-needed biography of a pivotal American artist.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

"My name's John Ford. I make Westerns." Ford preferred to let his work speak for itself, and his abrasive encounters with film scholars have become legendary. In fact, "Pappy" Ford, who fancied himself a journeyman director, would probably have been perplexed by these two recent additions to the rapidly growing library of Ford film criticism. Arriving hard on the heels of Scott Eyman's comprehensive Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford (LJ 10/1/99), McBride's weighty tome, several decades in preparation, paints a similar portrait: Ford was an insecure alcoholic whose gruff, even sadistic treatment of family, friends, cast, and crew masked his sensitive, sentimental nature. Complex and contradictory like many of his films Ford was a man who stood up to McCarthyite blacklisters but later churned out crude propaganda in support of the Vietnam war. He celebrated tradition, family, and community but was a miserable failure as husband and father. As Eyman did, McBride (Frank Capra; Steven Spielberg) draws on exhaustive research and interviews, but he has the advantage of a few memorably brief meetings with the Great Man himself. Ford left an impressive if uneven body of work, and McBride does it justice, examining each film in illuminating detail. Still, although McBride's book is very deserving, public and academic libraries that cannot collect both biographies should stick to Eyman's more streamlined telling. Studlar (film and English, Univ. of Michigan) and Bernstein (film, Emory Univ.) take readers into academic territory, offering nine essays on the work plus a "dossier" of articles on the man and filmmaker. Robin Wood leads off with a classic critique, questioning whether Ford's late films measure up to his early work. Other essays discuss the role of women and religion in Ford's film universe, and the hotly disputed controversy about whether his last epic Cheyenne Autumn was a "mea culpa" for previous insensitive portrayals of the American Indian. Westerns is recommended for academic collections. Stephen F. Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PA.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Martin's Press; First Edition (June 23, 2001)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 838 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312242328
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312242329
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.8 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.28 x 2.2 x 9.64 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 77 ratings

About the author

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Joseph McBride
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Joseph McBride is an American film historian, biographer, screenwriter, and professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University. McBride has published twenty-four books since 1968, including acclaimed biographies of Frank Capra, John Ford, and Steven Spielberg. His most recent work is Political Truth: The Media and the Assassination of President Kennedy (2021), a study of how the mainstream media have distorted the truth about the assassination since it happened in 1963, in contrast to the genuine investigative work of many independent researchers. McBride previously published Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit (2013); both epic and intimately personal, that book was the result of McBride's thirty-one-year investigation of the case up to that time. Into the Nightmare contains many fresh revelations from McBride's rare interviews with people in Dallas, archival discoveries, and what novelist Thomas Flanagan, in The New York Review of Books, called McBride's "wide knowledge of American social history," which also informs his work in Political Truth, which draws on and amplifies his prior research into the assassination.

McBride's other recent works include the critical studies Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge (2021) and How Did Lubitsch Do It? (2018), as well as Frankly: Unmasking Frank Capra (2019), a memoir of the obstacles he faced and overcame in writing his 1992 Capra biography, and his collection Two Cheers for Hollywood: Joseph McBride on Movies (2017). The Broken Places: A Memoir (2015) deals with his childhood abuse in Catholic schools and an alcoholic family, his breakdown as a teenager, and his triumphant recovery; the book tells the story of his relationship with a troubled young Native American woman who helped teach him to live but could not survive herself.

McBride's Writing in Pictures: Screenwriting Made (Mostly) Painless (2012) draws from his long experience as a screenwriter and as a teacher of screenwriting. Also in 2012, McBride published an updated third edition of his 1997 book Steven Spielberg: A Biography. The American second edition of the Spielberg book was published in 2011 by the University Press of Mississippi, which also reprinted his biographies Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (1992; 2000) and Searching for John Ford (2001). McBride's other books include: Orson Welles (1972; 1996), Hawks on Hawks (1982), The Book of Movie Lists: An Offbeat, Provocative Collection of the Best and Worst of Everything in Movies (1999), and What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career (2006; an updated edition of that book will be published in 2022). Also forthcoming in 2022 is his critical study The Whole Durn Human Comedy: Life According to the Coen Brothers. McBride wrote the 1974 critical study John Ford with Michael Wilmington.

McBride's screenwriting credits include the movies Rock 'n' Roll High School and Blood and Guts and five American Film Institute Life Achievement Award specials on CBS-TV dealing with Fred Astaire, Frank Capra, Lillian Gish, John Huston, and James Stewart. He also was cowriter of the United States Information Agency worldwide live TV special Let Poland Be Poland (1982). McBride plays a film critic, Mister Pister, in the legendary Orson Welles feature The Other Side of the Wind (filmed 1970-76, completed and released in 2018). McBride is also the coproducer of the documentaries Obsessed with "Vertigo": New Life for Hitchcock's Masterpiece (1997) and John Ford Goes to War (2002).

McBride received the Writers Guild of America Award for cowriting The American Film Institute Salute to John Huston (1983). He has also received four other WGA nominations two Emmy nominations, and a Canadian Film Awards nomination. The French edition of Searching for John Ford, A la Recherche de John Ford, published in 2007, was chosen the Best Foreign Film Book of the Year by the French film critics' association, le Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma.

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, McBride grew up in the suburb of Wauwatosa. He attended Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, where he received a National Merit Scholarship, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and worked as a reporter for The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison before departing for California in 1973. A documentary feature on McBride's life and work, Behind the Curtain: Joseph McBride on Writing Film History, written and directed by Hart Perez, had its world debut in 2011 at the Tiburon International Film Festival in Tiburon, Marin County, CA, and was released on DVD in 2012.

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4.2 out of 5 stars
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Customers find the book's research thorough and insightful. They appreciate the visual content that documents John Ford's life and art in a visually engaging way. The book provides a comprehensive overview of his life and work, providing a valuable perspective on his personal events and historical context.

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5 customers mention "Research quality"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book's research thorough and excellent. They appreciate the thoughtful analysis and interesting idiosyncratic details about Ford. The book provides a comprehensive biography of John Ford and an account of his work.

"...It is thoroughly researched and takes its time in exploring a very complicated artist...." Read more

"A critical biography with consistently interesting idiosyncratic details about Ford..." Read more

"This is a definitive biography of John Ford and an account of his work...." Read more

"...almost impossible to put down-- a biography supported with thorough academic research and thoughtful analysis...." Read more

3 customers mention "Visual content"3 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the well-documented visual content of John Ford's life and art. They find it a great visual experience of film exploration and appreciate his colorful personality.

"...In doing so I not only had a great visual experience of film exploration--but I have a better grasp of America's legacy as a nation." Read more

"Colorful personality, to say the least. I've only become interested in John Ford through reading about about John Wayne...." Read more

"You can watch John Ford's life and art in welldocumented and amazing way. I've enjoied inmensly readingf this book." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2024
    Joseph McBride has written what may be the last word on one of America's greatest and most influential movie directors. While brevity is not conspicuous in McBride's wheelhouse, this volume does not read to me as overly repetitive or in need of judicious editing. It is thoroughly researched and takes its time in exploring a very complicated artist. The emphasis is on the life, not on the work (though the latter is not ignored). Highly recommended.
  • Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2018
    A critical biography with consistently interesting idiosyncratic details about Ford (and his films, McBride has been around a long time and has personally interviewed a lot of people associated with Ford's career, including Ford himself), a man on pretty much every "Greatest filmmakers of all time" list, a genuine artist who was a dominant filmmaker for almost 50 years, a crazy run. McBride's critical takes on the films are always interesting and generally spot on and the long section on Ford's silent films contains a lot of information I'd never heard before (it's amazing how many of Ford's silent films are lost). To say he was a complex individual doesn't fully do him justice, he was often cruel, especially on set, and he seemingly spared no one. He was also capable of truly crappy work, it depended upon how engaged by the material (so you get a travesty like "Two Rode Together," one of the worst films of his career, followed by "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" which is at least in the running for the greatest film of his career). And Ford was one of those artists who constantly makes you at least ponder the question of how enthusiastic we want to be about a man who was so consistently a negative force on a human scale. Is great art worth that? The answer is of course, but it doesn't mean you can't have serious reservations.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2009
    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.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2020
    Joseph McBride is the foremost authority on John Ford and his contributions to American cinema and culture. McBride has written an enjoyable book, almost impossible to put down-- a biography supported with thorough academic research and thoughtful analysis. McBride also has an uncanny gift as a writer to distance himself from his subject matter and in doing so, pursue Ford's life in an unbiased fashion. McBride reveals both the creativity of Ford, the visionary director of American westerns, and Ford the flawed human being. Despite the latter portrayal of Ford, McBride has chronicled the John Ford who should be cherished as one of the leading founders of a pure American art--and puts him in company with other American artists, such as, James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Frederic Remington, Irving Berlin.....As I read the McBride book, I spent the summer re-watching the great Ford films. In doing so I not only had a great visual experience of film exploration--but I have a better grasp of America's legacy as a nation.
  • Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2021
    This book was a nightmare of superfluous information. It was Tedious reading and poorly written. This book could have been easily done in 375-400 pages not 700 plus pages. It seems like the author simply added in his vacation travels with the book, a travel log with some tedious writings. Casual interviews and personal travel “research. A boondoggle of book.
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Joseph Myren
    5.0 out of 5 stars AWESOME
    Reviewed in Canada on October 17, 2022
    AWESOME
  • Giovanni Arpaia
    5.0 out of 5 stars All you need to know about one of the most important directors of all time
    Reviewed in Italy on May 3, 2023
    Best book in english about the great director John Ford!
  • Steve Mayhew
    5.0 out of 5 stars My friend is very impressed
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2021
    This is probably one of the best biographies ever written on a Hollywood director.
  • 本を読むひと
    5.0 out of 5 stars この本とのつきあいは長くなりそうである。
    Reviewed in Japan on June 26, 2013
     ジョン・フォードに関する最大の書物であり、分量においてこれを越えるものは今後刊行されそうにない。小さな文字で組まれた本書は、本文にはさまれた32ページの写真を含むと870ページになる。とりかかってから30年の歳月がかけられており、フォードの映画と生涯について書かれたものの渉猟は当然として、彼にかかわった多くの人々への取材、また彼の父祖の地ほか現場への訪問も十二分になされているようだ。本文と同じ用紙に印刷されているため鮮明度は欠けるものの、写真ページにはフォードの父親が生まれ、暮らしたアイルランドの家の崩落跡の写真、そこに佇む著者の写真が載っている。
     2001年に刊行されたこの本が邦訳されないのは残念だが、フォードの映画をまとめて観る準備ができたので、購入してあった本書にとりかかることにした。全部を読むのは難しそうだが、部分的に拾い読みしただけで、その緻密な取材に圧倒される。
     つまみ食い的に読んでいたのを改め、関心のあるキャサリン・ヘブバーンとのことが書かれている7章「ショーンとケイト」を読んだ。『男の敵』『スコットランドのメアリー』『鋤と星』にふれられている他、ヘブバーンとの関係が微細に描かれている。二人のかかわりの終わりを告げた叙述の後、ボグダノヴィッチのエッセイを引用し、『静かなる男』のタイトルを登場させたときは思わず涙がにじんだ。
     その『静かなる男』だが、かつて1960年代にリバイバル公開されたときに、ある名画座で観た色つやの感触を忘れられない。近年テレビで放映されたものが、その感触とほど遠いので、観るのをやめたことがある。
     膨大なジョン・フォード映画だが、今はいい時代で数年前に発見された失われたフォードのサイレント映画をYouTubeで鑑賞できた。1927年の『アップストリーム』であり、本書の著者も未見のせいか、この大部の本の本文にタイトルさえ登場していない。
     フォードの最初の長編といっていい『誉の名手』は失われていないため、ある程度詳しくふれられているが、私は今回フォード23歳のときのこの映画を観て(以前フィルムセンターで観たことがあったかもしれないが)、最初期のフォードについて漠然と思っていた気持ちを改めた。すごい映画だと思う。
  • Bruno Parfait
    5.0 out of 5 stars Horseshit saga
    Reviewed in France on April 22, 2004
    La bibliographie fordienne , déjà pléthorique, s'est récemment enrichie du travail de fourmi de Joseph Mc Bride, Searching for John Ford. En 1998, John Ford, a Bio-Bibliography, de Bill Levy, établissait quelque chose comme mille références...dont bientôt près de la moitié dateront des vingt dernières années. Disparu en 1973, avant cela déjà hors du monde (plus de travail depuis Seven Women en 1966, et ce n'est pas les projets qui lui manquaient, ni l'acharnement à les proposer...Hawks devait tenir jusqu'en 1970 mais Rio Lobo est tristement loin de l'invention dont fait encore preuve le vieux borgne dans son dernier opus...), il semble maintenant hanter la conscience du cinéma américain, si tant est qu'il puisse en exister une hors le cercle restreint des indépendants.
    Jean Mitry, Bertrand Tavernier, Peter Bogdanovitch, Lindsay Anderson, Tag Gallagher...Scott Eyman il y a deux ans : personne ne démérite (à chacun son Ford d'ailleurs, les chef d'œuvres de l'un ne sont pas systématiquement ceux de l'autre, les derniers films illustrent ici un déclin, là l'accomplissement d'un génie de plus en plus désenchanté ).Mais la somme (plus de 800 pages) de Mc Bride doit être mise à part. Le livre complète, prolonge et approfondit un travail que l'auteur avait accompli avec Michael Wilmington et publié en 1974. Déjà l'accent etait mis sur l'une des dimensions les plus fascinantes de l'œuvre du cinéaste : le travail continu , pernicieux, du désenchantement, tant à l'égard de mythes soi-disant fondateurs qu'à l'égard de soi même, mieux encore l'exacte conjugaison-juxtaposition des deux. Sans lourdeur, sans démonstration, avec une fluidité dont on ne sait si elle décline le poème ou si c'est l'inverse...Tom, Ranse et Hallie sont des êtres de chair vivant dans l'ici et le maintenant avant d'emblématiser la loi naturelle ou la loi sociale, l'est ou l'ouest, le passé ou le futur...Quant à John Wayne, James Stewart et Vera Miles (on peut en dire autant de Thomas Mitchell ou Lee Marvin...), ils disparaissent derrière leur personnage. C'est dire la mise en scène... (The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962) . Joseph Mc Bride explore justement cela en tout premier lieu, un Ford de chair et de sang à retrouver dans les films, puisqu'il y est ,souvent, complètement, alors que les entretiens relevaient de la farce/camouflage : « with a camera » ...réponse grognée à une question de Bogdanovitch sur le tournage du landrush dans 3 Bad Men...
    Mieux que jamais avant lui, Joseph Mc Bride immerge le lecteur dans ce qu'il pressentait du mystère fordien (the « John Ford Mystery », expression toute faite outre-atlantique) : la décrépitude physique et morale alcoolisée depuis longtemps, terrible les quinze dernières années , non seulement n'a pas compromis , mais a nourri , presque en vrac : The Searchers, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, Two Rode Together (pourtant atrocement dévalué par son auteur) et Seven Women. Rien que ça. Joyce, Bekett, Mc Lowry, Huston, Ford...les Irlandais...
    « You say someone's called me the greatest poet of the western saga.I am not a poet, and I don't know what a Western saga is. I would say that is horseshit »