The Kid (1921)

It's the fourth and final day of the Nederlands Silent Film Festival (NSFF). On the programme this afternoon is The Kid (1921), one of the greatest films of the silent era. The comedy-drama was written, produced and directed by Charlie Chaplin. He also stars in it with Jackie Coogan as his adopted son and sidekick. Chaplin's first full-length film as a director was a huge success and was the second-highest-grossing film in 1921.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 664/1. Photo: Hansaleih. Charlie Chaplin in The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 664/2. Photo: Hansaleih. Publicity still for The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) with Charlie Chaplin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 721/1. Photo: Hansaleih. Publicity still for The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) with Jackie Coogan.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 721/2. Photo: Hansaleih. Publicity still for The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) with Jackie Coogan.

Abandoned in the back seat of an expensive automobile

The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) starts off with inter-titles, "A picture with a smile - and perhaps a tear," followed by "The woman whose sin was motherhood". An unknown woman (Edna Purviance) leaves a charity hospital carrying her newborn son. An artist (Carl Miller), the apparent father, is shown in the woman's photograph. When it falls into the fireplace, he first picks it up and then throws it back in to burn up. The woman decides to abandon her child in the back seat of an expensive automobile with a handwritten note imploring the finder to care for and love the baby. However, the car is stolen. When the two thieves discover the child, they dump him in a garbage can on the street.

The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) notices the baby wrapped in a blanket. First, Charlie tries to pass it off to someone else, but after stumbling upon a note which reads, "Please love and care for this orphan child", he decides to raise the child himself. He names the boy John. Elsewhere, the woman has an apparent change of heart and returns for the baby, but is heartbroken and faints upon learning of the baby having been taken away.

Five years pass, and the child (Jackie Coogan) becomes the Tramp's partner in a minor crime, throwing stones to break windows that the Tramp, working as a glazier, can then repair. Meanwhile, the woman becomes a wealthy opera star. She spends her spare time with charitable work handing out gifts to the children of poor districts to fill the void left by her missing child. By chance, the paths of the kid and his mother meet numerous times, unaware of each other's identities.

When the boy becomes seriously ill, a middle-aged country doctor comes to see him. He discovers that the Tramp is not the boy's father. The Tramp shows him the note left by the mother, but the doctor merely takes it and notifies the authorities of the County Orphan Asylum to take the child away. Two men take the boy to the orphanage, but after a fight and a chase, the Tramp steals the boy back just before he arrives at the Orphan Asylum. When the woman returns to see how the boy is doing, the doctor tells her what has happened, and then shows her the note, which she recognises.

Now fugitives, the Tramp and the boy spend the night in a flophouse, but the manager (Henry Bergman), having read of the $1,000 reward offered for the child, takes him to the police station to be united with his ecstatic mother. When the Tramp wakes up, he searches frantically for the missing boy, then returns to doze beside the now-locked doorway to their humble home. In his sleep, he enters 'Dreamland', with angels in residence and devilish interlopers. He is awakened by a kind policeman (Tom Wilson), who places the Tramp in a car and rides with him to a mansion. When the door opens, the woman and John emerge, reuniting the elated adoptive father and son. The policeman, who is happy for the family, shakes the Tramp's hand and leaves before the woman welcomes the Tramp into her home.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 664/3. Photo: Hansaleih. Publicity still for The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) with Charlie Chaplin, Lita Grey and Charles Reisner.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 665/1. Photo: Hansaleih. Publicity still for The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) with Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 665/2. Photo: Hansaleih. Publicity still for The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) with Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan.

The first major child star of the cinema

The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) is notable for combining comedy and drama. As the opening title says: "A picture with a smile—and perhaps, a tear". The most famous and enduring sequence in the film is the Tramp's desperate rooftop pursuit of the agents from the orphanage who had taken the child and their emotional reunion. The film made Jackie Coogan, then a vaudeville performer, the first major child star of the cinema. Many of the Chaplin biographers have attributed the relationship portrayed in the film to have resulted from the death of Chaplin's firstborn infant son just ten days before the production began.

J. Spurlin at IMDb: "Jackie Coogan (about five in this film), with his charming manners, his talents as a mimic and his adeptness at physical comedy, is one of the all-time great child actors. Want more evidence of Chaplin's genius? Coogan doesn't steal the film from him. This is true even though Chaplin, as producer, star and director, makes every evident attempt to spotlight the boy's talents. Coogan is even better here than he is in his own vehicles, like My Boy and Oliver Twist."

The portrayal of poverty and the cruelty of welfare workers are also directly reminiscent of Chaplin's own childhood in London. Several of the street scenes were filmed on Los Angeles's famed Olvera Street, almost 10 years before it was converted into a Mexican-themed tourist attraction.

Another IMDb reviewer, Lugonian, notes: "Chaplin, who constructs his gags to perfection, has one difficult scene that comes off naturally, this being where Charlie cuts out diapers from a sheet for the infant as he's lying beside him in a miniature hammock crying out for his milk. The baby immediately stops after Charlie directs the nipple attached to a coffee pot (a substitute for a baby bottle) back into his mouth. Another classic moment, of a serious nature, is when Charlie is being held back by authorities, being forced to watch his crying 'son' taken away from him. Charlie breaks away and goes after the truck as he's being chased by a policeman from the slanted rooftops. The close-up where father and son tearful reunite is as touching as anything ever captured on film."

After production was completed in 1920, the film was caught up in the divorce actions of Chaplin's first wife Mildred Harris, who sought to attach Chaplin's assets. Chaplin and his associates smuggled the raw negative to Salt Lake City, reportedly packed in coffee cans, and edited the film in a room at the Hotel Utah. Before releasing the film Charlie Chaplin negotiated for and received an enhanced financial deal for the film with his distributor, First National Corporation, based on the success of the final film. Twelve-year-old Lita Grey, who portrays an angel in the film, would become Chaplin's second wife from 1924 to 1927. In 1971, Charles Chaplin edited and reissued the film and he composed a new musical score.


Italian postcard. Photo: publicity still for The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) with Jackie Coogan.


Postcard by Palm Pictures, no. C 23. Photo: publicity still for The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) with Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan. Collection: Daniël van der Aa. Tom Wilson is probably the cop in the background.


Jackie Coogan. Modern American postcard by Fotofolio. Photo: James Abbe, 1921.


French postcard by Editions La Malibran, Paris, 1991, no. CA 82. Photo: Bubbles Inc. Charlie Chaplin in The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921).

Sources: J. Spurlin (IMDb), Lugonian (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Marion Davies

On the third day of the Netherlands Silent Film Festival, we want to see Lights of Old Broadway (Monta Bell, 1925). Marion Davies (1897-1961) plays a double role as twins who are separated as babies and grow up in different New York families. Davies shines in this film, which is full of drama, romance, joy, and dancing in a city where anything is possible. The American actress starred in nearly four dozen films between 1917 and 1937, but her once glittering career was later overshadowed by Orson Welles' classic Citizen Kane (1941) which viciously portrayed her as a talentless and sad failure, while in fact, she was one of the great comedic actresses of the silent era.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 113. Co-published by A. Butterworth, Johannesburg.


Romanian postcard. Photo: MGM. Marion Davies and Antonio Moreno in Beverly of Graustark (Sidney Franklin, 1926).


Italian postcard by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (B.F.F. Editore), no. 373. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn, Roma. Publicity still for The Red Mill (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (as William Goodrich), 1927) with Owen Moore.


Promotion card for Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, 2017. Photo: publicity still for The Patsy (King Vidor, 1928) with Marion Davies (middle), Jane Winton, Orville Caldwell, Marie Dressler and Dell Henderson.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4693/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Marion Davies in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (Charles Reisner, Christy Cabanne, Norman Houston, 1929).


British postcard in the Colourgraph Series, London, no. C 35.

The famous Ziegfeld Follies

Marion Davies was born Marion Cecelia Douras in the borough of Brooklyn, New York in 1897. She had been bitten by the show biz bug early as she watched her sisters perform in local stage productions. She wanted to do the same. As Marion got older, she tried out for various school plays and did fairly well. Once her formal education had ended, Marion began her career as a chorus girl in New York City, first in the Pony Follies and eventually in the famous Ziegfeld Follies.

Her stage name came when she and her family passed the Davies Insurance Building. One of her sisters called out "Davies!!! That shall be my stage name," and the whole family took on that name. Marion wanted more than to dance. Acting, to her, was the epitome of show business and she aimed her sights in that direction. She had met newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and went to live with him at his San Simeon castle in California. They would stay together for over 30 years, while Hearst’s wife Millicent resided in New York. Millicent would not grant him a divorce so that he could marry Davies.

San Simeon is a spectacular and elaborate mansion, which now stands as a California landmark. At San Simeon, the couple threw elaborate parties, frequented by all of the top names in Hollywood and other celebrities including the mayor of New York City, President Calvin Coolidge and Charles Lindbergh.

When she was 20, Marion made her first film, Runaway Romany (George W. Lederer, 1917). Written by Marion and directed by her brother-in-law, the film wasn't exactly a box-office smash, but for Marion, it was a start and a stepping stone to bigger things.

The following year Marion starred in The Burden of Proof (John G. Adolfi, Julius Steger, 1918) and Cecilia of the Pink Roses (Julius Steger, 1918). The latter film was backed by William Randolph Hearst. Because of Hearst's newspaper empire, Marion would be promoted as no actress before her. She appeared in numerous films over the next few years, including the superior comedy Getting Mary Married (Allan Dwan, 1919) with Norman Kerry, the suspenseful The Cinema Murder (George D. Baker, 1919) and the drama The Restless Sex (Leon D'Usseau, Robert Z. Leonard, 1920) with Carlyle Blackwell.


Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 399/2. Photo: Fanamet-Film. Marion Davies in Yolanda (Robert G. Vignola, 1924).


Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 578. Photo: Fanamet-Film.


Italian postcard by G.B. Falci Editore, Milano, no. 603. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Films. Marion Davies in Beverly of Graustark (Sidney Franklin, 1926).


Russian postcard by Goznak, Moscow, no. 8, A-16279, 1928. The card was issued in an edition of 30,000 copies. Marion Davies in Quality Street (Sidney Franklin, 1927).


Belgian postcard by P.I.A. Belgaphot, Bruxelles, no. 42. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

A very sharp and savvy businesswoman

In 1922, Marion Davies appeared as Mary Tudor in the historical romantic epic, When Knighthood Was in Flower (Robert G. Vignola, 1922). It was a film into which Hearst poured millions of dollars as a showcase for her. Although Marion didn't normally appear in period pieces, she turned in a wonderful performance, according to Denny Jackson at IMDb, and the film became a box office hit. Marion remained busy, one of the staples in cinemas around the country. Time after time, film after film, Marion turned in masterful performances. Her best films were the comedies The Patsy (1928) also with Marie Dressler, and Show People (1929) with William Haines, both directed by King Vidor.

At the end of the 1920s, it was obvious that sound films were about to replace the silent films. Marion was nervous because she had a stutter when she became excited and worried she wouldn't make a successful transition to the new medium. But she was a true professional who had no problem with the change. In 1930, two of her better films were Not So Dumb (King Vidor, 1930) and The Florodora Girl (Harry Beaumont, 1930), with Lawrence Grant. By the early 1930s, Marion had lost her box office appeal and the downward slide began. Hearst tried to push MGM executives to hire Marion for the role of Elizabeth Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (Sidney Franklin, 1934). Louis B. Mayer had other ideas and hired producer Irving Thalberg's wife Norma Shearer instead. Hearst reacted by pulling his newspaper support for MGM without much impact.

By the late 1930s, Hearst suffered financial reversals and Marion bailed him out by selling off $1 million of her jewellery. Hearst's financial problems also spelt the end of her career. Although she made the transition to sound, other stars fared better and her roles became fewer and further between. In 1937, a 40-year-old Marion filmed her last movie, Ever Since Eve (Lloyd Bacon, 1937) with Robert Montgomery. Out of films and with the intense pressures of her relationship with Hearst, Marion turned more and more to alcohol. Despite those problems, Marion was a very sharp and savvy businesswoman.

When Hearst lay dying in 1951 at age 88, Davies was given a sedative by his lawyer. When she awoke several hours later, she discovered that Hearst had passed away and that his associates had removed his body as well as all his belongings and any trace that he had lived there with her. His family had a big formal funeral for him in San Francisco, from which she was banned Later, Marion married for the first time at the age of 54, to Horace Brown. The union would last until she died of cancer in 1961 in Los Angeles, California. She was 64 years old. Upon Marion’s niece Patricia Van Cleve Lake's death, it was revealed she had been the love child of Davies and Hearst.

The love affair of Marion Davies and Hearst was mirrored in the films Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), RKO 281 (Benjamin Ross, 1999), and The Cat's Meow (Peter Bogdanovich, 2001). In Citizen Kane (1941), the title character's second wife (played by Dorothy Comingore) — an untalented singer whom he tries to promote — was widely assumed to be based on Davies. But many commentators, including Citizen Kane writer/director Orson Welles himself, have defended Davies' record as a gifted actress, to whom Hearst's patronage did more harm than good.


British postcard by Film Weekly. Photo: MGM. Marion Davies as Peg and Robert Greig as butler Jarvis in the Pre-Code movie Peg O'My Heart (Robert Z. Leonard, 1933). Marion Davies stars as a poor Irish girl who stands to inherit a fortune if she satisfies certain conditions. She is taken away from her father and brought to the posh estate of her late grandfather. Within three years she has to learn to become a lady.


Dutch postcard, editor unknown, no. 635. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Gary Cooper and Marion Davies in Operator 13 (Richard Boleslawski, 1934).


Dutch postcard, no. 599, sent by mail in 1934. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Marion Davies and Bing Crosby in Going Hollywood (Raoul Walsh, 1933).


British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. PC 63. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Clark Gable in Cain and Mabel (Lloyd Bacon, 1936).


British postcard. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.


British postcard. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.


French postcard by Europe, no. 666. Photo: Goldwyn Mayer.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3732/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.


Italian postcard. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.


French postcard by Europe, no. 1029. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.


American postcard by C.T. & Co., Chi, in the series Homes of Movie Stars in California. Residence of Marion Davies, Beverly Hills.


American postcard by Tichnor Art Company, L.A., no. T 250. Caption: The Beach home of Marion Davies, Santa Monica, California.

Sources: Nick Enoch (Mail on Line), Denny Jackson (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Directed by John Ford

On the second day of the Netherlands Silent Film Festival, we salute John Ford (1894-1973), one of the most respected directors in American cinema. Along with D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, Ford was one of the first-generation pioneers who created the narrative film in America. In a career of more than 50 years, he directed over 130 films between 1917 and 1970 although most of his over sixty silent films are now lost. The NSSF presents today his silent Western 3 Bad Men (1926).


American postcard by Fotofolio, NY, NY, no. RA26. Photo: Richard Avedon. Caption: John Ford, Director, Bel Air, California, 4-11-72.


Spanish collector card in the 'Escenas selectas de cinematografia' series, series A, no. 12. Harry Carey in Three Mounted Men (John Ford, 1918). 'Cayena' refers to Carey's regular character Cheyenne Harry (Marked Men (1919), A Gun Fightin' Gentleman (1919), Ace of the Dalle (1919), etc.). The Spanish release title Lealtad (Loyalty) refers to this lost Western Three Mounted Men (1918).


Spanish postcard by Dümmatzen, no. 112. Photo: United Artists. Ronald Colman and Helen Hayes in Arrowsmith (John Ford, 1931).


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 797b. Photo: Walter Wanger. John Wayne in Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939).


French postcard by Humour à la Carte, Paris, no. 3400. Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940).

A large, long and difficult production

John Ford was born John Martin Feeney in 1894 in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, which is just south of Portland. His parents, John Augustine Feeney and Barbara Curran, were Irish immigrants who arrived in the United States in 1872. They had 11 children in all, six of whom lived to adulthood. John was their tenth child, born between a girl and a boy who both died as infants. A saloon keeper and an alderman, the Feeney family pater familias was a stereotypical Irish American, dabbling in both booze and politics in Portland, where John attended high school.

John Feeney followed his older brother Frank, who had renamed himself Francis Ford, to Hollywood. Frank, who was 13 years John's senior, had started as a film actor in 1909 and eventually appeared in about 500 films. He also established himself as a film director, helming almost 200 films beginning in 1912, when he shot Western shorts for Thomas H. Ince at Bison Motion Pictures. Ford started in his brother's films as an assistant, handyman, and stuntman. Francis gave his younger brother his first acting role in The Mysterious Rose (1914).

Renaming himself Jack Ford, John Feeney acted in 15 of his brother's pictures from 1914 through 1916. He also appeared as a member of the Ku Klux Klan in D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), the American cinema's first certifiable blockbuster. The film was banned in Boston to forestall the possibility of its inciting racial violence and is still controversial. Young Jack Ford began to exit his brother's orbit and establish himself on his own when he moved from Bison to Universal as a director. It was by directing films from behind the camera instead of acting in them before the camera that he made his reputation.

Ford's first feature-length production was Straight Shooting (1917) with Harry Carey, which is also his earliest complete surviving film as director. He was extraordinarily productive in his first few years as a director — he made ten films in 1917, eight in 1918 and fifteen in 1919. When his Western Hell Bent (1918) for Universal was released, Motion Picture News praised Ford's direction, writing, "Few directors put such sustained punch in their pictures as does this Mr. Ford." It was the ninth in a series of films featuring Harry Carey as Cheyenne Harry. Carey was the star of 25 Ford silent films. His feature Cameo Kirby (1923), starring screen idol John Gilbert - another of the few surviving Ford silents - marked his first directing credit under the name 'John Ford'.

A year later, he directed his first masterpiece, the Western The Iron Horse (1924), an epic account of the building of the First transcontinental railroad. It was a large, long and difficult production, filmed on location in the Sierra Nevada. The logistics were enormous—two entire towns were constructed, there were 5000 extras, 100 cooks, 2000 rail layers, a cavalry regiment, 800 Native Americans, 1300 bison, 2000 horses, 10,000 cattle and 50,000 properties, including the original stagecoach used by Horace Greeley, Wild Bill Hickok's derringer pistol and replicas of the 'Jupiter' and '119' locomotives that met at Promontory Summit when the two ends of the line were joined in 1869. The Iron Horse became one of the top-grossing films of the decade, taking over US$2 million worldwide, against a budget of $280,000. Ford made a wide range of films in this period, and he became well known for his Western and 'frontier' pictures, but the genre rapidly lost its appeal for major studios in the late 1920s. Ford's last silent Western was 3 Bad Men (1926). Only ten of the more than sixty silent films John Ford made between 1917 and 1928 still survive in their entirety.


British postcard. Photo: Columbia. Jean Arthur in The Whole Town’s Talking (John Ford, 1935). Collection: Marlene Pilaete. Passport to Fame was the British premiere title.


British Real Photograph postcard, London, no. FS 121. Photo: Samuel Goldwyn. Jon Hall and Dorothy Lamour for The Hurricane (John Ford, 1937).


British Real Photograph postcard, London, no. FS 108. Photo: 20th Century Fox Film. Shirley Temple, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Scott in Wee Willie Winkie (John Ford, 1937).


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. FS 163. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Richard Greene and Loretta Young in Four Men and a Prayer (John Ford, 1938).


British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. P 289. Photo: Walter Wanger. John Wayne and Claire Trevor in Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939).

Exploding industry prejudices by becoming both a critical and commercial hit

John Ford was one of the pioneer directors of sound films. He shot Fox's first song sung on screen, for his film Mother Machree (1928). In the 1930s, Ford began to create the body of work that established his greatness while working for production chief Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century Fox. Ford worked with the studio's two superstars, Shirley Temple and Will Rogers, the #1 and #2 draws at the box office. He won his first Oscar for R.K.O.'s The Informer (1935). The film also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture and garnered a Best Actor Oscar for long-time Ford collaborator Victor McLaglen. Ford was a master of many genres, and even directed comedies such as Will Rogers's Steamboat Round the Bend (1935).

The politically charged The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936) — which marked the debut with Ford of long-serving 'Stock Company' player John Carradine — explored the little-known story of Samuel Mudd, a physician who was caught up in the Abraham Lincoln assassination conspiracy and consigned to an offshore prison for treating the injured John Wilkes Booth. He directed the South Seas melodrama The Hurricane (1937) and the lighthearted Shirley Temple vehicle Wee Willie Winkie (1937), each of which had a first-year US gross of more than $1 million.

John Ford directed contemporary dramas and historical epics, but strangely, he stayed away from the Western, except for Stagecoach (1939). The genre had fallen out of favour with the big studios during the 1930s and Westerns were regarded as B-grade 'pulp' movies at best. As a result, Ford shopped the project around Hollywood for almost a year. Stagecoach exploded industry prejudices by becoming both a critical and commercial hit, grossing over US$1 million in its first year (against a budget of just under $400,000), and its success helped to revitalise the moribund genre, showing that Westerns could be "intelligent, artful, great entertainment—and profitable". Stagecoach was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won two Oscars, for Best Supporting Actor (Thomas Mitchell) and Best Score. The classic created the cliché of the drunken doctor (Thomas Mitchell) in an action film.

In the 1940s, Ford won back-to-back Best Director Oscars for The Grapes of Wrath (1941), the screen adaptation of John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and How Green Was My Valley (1942), based on Richard Llewellyn's memoir of his youth in the coal-mining region of Wales. Ford had sat out the First World War, the War to End All Wars, but in the 1930s, John Ford had joined the U.S. Naval Reserve as the country once again moved towards participation in a European war that seemed inevitable with the rise of Hitler in Germany. When the U.S. entered World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Ford went on active duty and headed a documentary film unit. For his Navy documentaries, he won back-to-back Academy Awards for The Battle of Midway (1942) in 1943 and for December 7th (1943) in 1944. Thus, from 1941 through 1944, John Ford won an Oscar each year for directing two feature films and two documentaries, a feat which remains unprecedented.

In the mid-1940s, John Ford began to focus on Westerns again, beginning with My Darling Clementine (1946) starring Linda Darnell and Henry Fonda, one of the classics of the genre. In his Westerns, he made frequent use of location shooting and wide shots, in which his characters were framed against a vast, harsh, and rugged natural terrain. Many of his Westerns featured John Wayne, whom he had first worked with on Stagecoach (1939) and who became a superstar in Howard Hawks' classic oater Red River (1948) opposite Montgomery Clift. For Ford, Wayne appeared in Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950), the famous 'Cavalry Trilogy.'


Belgian collectors card. Photo: Argosy / M.G.M. John Wayne in 3 Godfathers (John Ford, 1948).


Mexican collector card. Photo: Pedro Armendáriz in 3 Godfathers (John Ford, 1948).


Spanish postcard by Ediciones Raker, Barcelona, no. 129. Photo: Warner Bros. Jeffrey Hunter in Sergeant Rutledge (John Ford, 1960).


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 3143, 1968. Retail price: 0,20 M. Photo: Carroll Baker in Cheyenne Autumn (John Ford, 1964).


East-German collector card in the 'Neu im Kino' series by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 500/6/68. Carroll Baker, Dolores del Río and Ricardo Montalban in Cheyenne Autumn (John Ford, 1964).

The perfect correlative for Hollywood myth-making

John Ford directed sixteen features and several documentaries in the decade between 1946 and 1956. As with his pre-war career, his films alternated between (relative) box office flops and major successes, but most of his later films made a solid profit. In 1953, Ford won his sixth Best Director Oscar for his paean to the Ireland of his parents, The Quiet Man (1952), starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara.

It's notable that from 1950 through 1959, Ford made only one Western, the classic The Searchers (1956), one of the greatest examples of the genre. Starting with The Horse Soldiers (1959) which he made for the Mirisch Co. at the end of the decade, six of his last eight completed films were Westerns. His final great Western was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) starring James Stewart and John Wayne.

Jon Hopwood at IMDb: "Ford was plumbing the nature of American myth-making, and the creation of history as a historical narrative, that is, the re-creation of history, after the fact, i.e., history as something man-made, thus fallible. He had found the perfect correlative for Hollywood myth-making." The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) took on these issues with a literalness that caused many contemporary critics to dismiss the film. Donovan's Reef (1963) was Ford's last film with John Wayne. Filmed on location on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, it was a morality play disguised as an action-comedy, which subtly but sharply engaged with issues of racial bigotry, corporate connivance, greed and American beliefs of societal superiority. The supporting cast included Lee Marvin, Elizabeth Allen, Jack Warden, Dorothy Lamour, and Cesar Romero. It was also Ford's last commercial success, grossing $3.3 million against a budget of $2.6 million.

Cheyenne Autumn (1964) was Ford's epic farewell to the West, which he publicly declared to be an elegy to the Native Americans. It was his last Western, his longest film and the most expensive movie of his career ($4.2 million), but it failed to recoup its costs at the box office and lost about $1 million on its first release. Ford's last completed feature film was 7 Women (1966), a drama set in about 1935, about missionary women in China trying to protect themselves from the advances of a barbaric Mongolian warlord. Anne Bancroft took over the lead role from Patricia Neal, who suffered a near-fatal stroke two days into the shooting.

Ford's health deteriorated rapidly in the early 1970s; he suffered a broken hip in 1970 which put him in a wheelchair. As befitted his status as America's premier director, in 1973, John Ford was the recipient of the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. President Richard Nixon presented Ford with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the U.S. Ford died in 1973, at Palm Desert and was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. John Ford had one wife, Mary Ford-McBride Smith, a son, Patrick Ford, and a daughter, Barbara Ford. His grandson, Dan Ford wrote a biography on his famous grandfather.


British poster postcard by Pyramid, London, no. PC 8499. Photo: United Artists. John Wayne in the classic Western Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939).


French poster postcard by Edition F. Nugeron, no. E 64. Photo: Belga Films. Belgian poster for the classic Western She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford, 1949) with John Wayne.


Italian collector card by G.B. Pezziol, Padova / Stab. Pezzini, Milano. Photo: Republic Pictures. John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952), released in Italy as Un uomo tranquillo.

Sources: Jon Hopwood (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.