Binging on John Ford: Part 4

The fifth season of TCM's The Plot Thickens podcast focuses on Ford and I recently finished the last episode. The series exposed more details about the complex father figure. A beloved bully. A raging alcoholic who often drank to avoid dealing with his problems. (In later-life interviews, he would slur his words.) He would often chew on a handkerchief on set like a baby with a security blanket. His infamous fist fight with Henry Fonda on Mr. Roberts came about through a lack of communication. Fonda had played Mr. Roberts on Broadway for over a year and knew where the laughs were. Ford was racing through the dialogue and Fonda felt the audience would cover too much of the words with laughter. (If you notice several film versions of hit stage comedies have long pauses to allow for moviegoers' giggling reaction. Auntie Mame comes to mind.) Fonda grumbled between takes. Ford called him to his office and asked if his star had any complaints. The actor began by praising Ford and telling him how he was perfect for this picture due to his Navy experience, but the star objected to racing the dialogue. As soon as Fonda began stating his objections, Ford sucker punched him, knocking a surprised Fonda to the floor. Ford evidently could not handle an actor challenging his absolute authority and rather than discuss the situation calmly, he resorted to violence. 

After that, Ford did apologize but was soon replaced by Mervyn LeRoy, allegedly for health reasons. (Ford did have a gall bladder operation and showed his incision to Betsy Palmer.) The close relationship between the director and the actor, who worked together on Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk and The Grapes of Wrath, was shattered. They were also pals off-screen, Fonda being a frequent guest on Ford's yacht. The two did not speak for decades, but did reconnect towards the end of Ford's life. There are different versions of the background of this incident. Ben Mankiewicz of TCM points out on The Plot Thickens that Fonda fought to have Ford helm Roberts, while Peter Bogdanovich in Who the Hell's In It says Ford equally insisted Fonda repeat his Broadway role when the studio didn't want him. 

To continue with viewing Ford's oeuvre, I found a DVD collection of five Ford films for Columbia Studios on Ebay for $20 and several of his works are on YouTube in their entirety. 

The Iron Horse (1924, YouTube): The silent film that put Ford on the map and established many of the repeated tropes of the Western genre--the cattle drive, the Indian attack, the cavalry to the rescue, even Abe Lincoln makes an appearance. The visuals are exciting and transcend the script's melodrama. 

Three Bad Men (1926, YouTube): Another silent work dripping with sentiment, but brilliantly paced so that you fall for the obvious manipulations despite yourself. A trio of desperadoes are transformed into guardian angels by the charms of a young girl whose father is killed in an attempted robbery. The Iron Horse focused on the building of the transcontinental railroad, here the centerpiece is the Dakota Gold Rush. The highlight is the mad dash of settlers racing to stake a claim. Hundreds of extras, horses and covered wagons recreate the mayhem of gold-lust. In one famous shot, a baby is right in the path of a frenzied frontier mob about to be run over, only to be snatched to safety in the nick of time by a stunt rider. Ford placed an actual infant in harm's way in order to get this breathtaking shot. This shows you where his priorities lay, with the picture, not with safety. 

The Long Voyage Home (1940, Max): Based on Eugene O'Neill's series of one-act plays about the lost-

John Wayne and Mildred Natwick in
The Long Voyage Home.

soul crew of a freighter and how the sea negatively impacts their lives since they have no real home on land. Dudley Nichols' screenplay neatly tied together the episodic adventures of the hard-drinking seamen and Ford provides a strong through-line: the search for an identity and homeland of the drifters, focusing on getting the naive young Swede Oly Olsen back to his family farm when the voyage is over. Just a year after his breakthrough in Ford's Stagecoach, John Wayne plays Oly stiffly. He has not yet grown into the "John Wayne" persona which centered his later Ford Westerns. Here the emotional freight is carried by shipmates Thomas Mitchell, Ward Bond, and John Qualen. Barry Fitzgerald provides his usual Irish blarney comic relief. Ian Hunter is supposed to be the center as an English officer hiding from disgrace as a lowly deckhand. Wayne has one prolonged scene totally stolen Mildred Natwick as a bar wench, out to get him drunk and shanghaied. Wayne as Oly reminisces about his mother and Swedish homeland and the actor has no connection to these memories or what they mean to the character. Natwick is clear in her intention and she feels conflicted in the conspiracy to get him on board another vessel. You can see her regret and guilt while Wayne is a blank slate. In a brilliant detail, Natwick asks if she can have Oly's bird after his kidnappers succeed in knocking him out.

Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly (giving Clark the stink eye)
and Clark Gable in Mogambo.

Mogambo (1953, DVRed from TCM): Clark Gable is a Hemingway-esque big game hunter in this lush remake of Red Dust. Lucky Clark is caught between earthy Ava Gardner and high-class Grace Kelly. The Technicolor cinematography is indeed breathtaking, but the love-triangle story is forgettable. Gardner received her only Oscar nomination for the simmering sexpot Honeybear Fitzgerald. Her sensual tension is beautifully symbolized by her pacing like the caged cheetah right behind her. I can see why audiences would love this color-saturated escapist fare in the midst of the drab 1950s. Ford treats the Africans like the Indians in most of his Westerns: colorful extras. Donald Sinden is delightfully clueless as Grace's bloodless anthropologist husband.

Behind the scenes: Frank Sinatra, then married to Gardner, visited the set. His career was at a nadir, his wartime crooner popularity at an ebb and this was before his Oscar for From Here to Eternity resurrected his image. It must have been difficult for him to be an observer of his wife's stardom.

The Long Grey Line (1955, Ford at Columbia DVD collection): In his introduction to this bio-pic, Leonard Maltin explains if you have a high tolerance for blarney, it's an okay picture. My tolerance for blarney is not very high. Tyrone Power stars as Martin Maher, the real-life athletics instructor at West Point who wrote a book about his tenure at the military academy. It's essentially a love letter to the institute as Martin rises from Irish immigrant fresh off the boat to waiter to beloved surrogate father for the cadets including young Peter Graves and Martin Milner. Maureen O'Hara delivers fine comic moments as Martin's fiery wife. Donald Crisp is once again the gruff but cuddly father, repeating his characterization from How Green Was My Valley.

Gideon's Day (1958, Ford at Columbia DVD collection): I enjoyed this one a lot. It's a sort of British Dragnet, depicting a typical day in the life of tough-as-nails but family-oriented Chief Inspector Gideon (a bristly Jack Hawkins) of Scotland Yard. The film was released in the US as Gideon of Scotland Yard to make the picture seem more exciting. Several cases including the hit-and-run death of a crooked cop, the sex murder of a young woman, a heist of valuables at a ritzy safe deposit, a series of bank robberies, and a curate proving his manhood are all resolved in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, Gideon deals with boring relatives, his daughter's violin concert, and getting a salmon for dinner. The cast is stuffed with reliable British character actors. Cyril Cusack is a Cockney snitch instead of his usual Irishman. An actress named Maureen Potter has a particularly funny scene as the blathering wife of Cusack.

Publicity photo for
Donovan's Reef.

Donovan's Reef (1963, Pluto) I found this John Wayne vehicle on Pluto and suffered through the commercial interruptions and Ford's oozing sweetness. A silly comedy set on a fictitious Polynesian island with Wayne as Donovan holds sway over the titular drinking establishment where good-natured brawling is a regular feature. The plot, such as it is, is set in motion with the visit of the straight-laced daughter of Wayne's pal, the island's saint-like doctor (Jack Warden). The daughter is there to reunite with and investigate her dad whom she hasn't seen since she was a baby. In the interim Daddy has had three kids by a local princess, conveniently passed away. The doc is conveniently out of town and in order to avoid the daughter's assumed prejudice against biracial siblings, Donovan pretends the doc's offspring are his. Of course, the young lady falls for the rough-tough-but-tender-inside barkeep. They hitch up after the usual bickering and Wayne spanking her for being such a high-spirited filly. The female love interest is played by Elizabeth Allen who is also manhandled in Ford's Cheyenne Autumn. I saw her later as Paul Lynde's beard, I mean wife, on the comedian's short-lived 1970s sitcom and in the lead in 42nd Street towards the end of the show's Broadway run.

Lee Marvin, Dorothy Lamour, Cesar Romero, Mike Mazurki, Edgar Buchanan of Petticoat Junction, and Jon Fong provide much needed comedy relief. Reef is a treacly excuse for fist fights, horse play and physically abusing Elizabeth Allen who gets dunked in the Pacific, bounced off the back of a jeep onto her ass and finally spanked before Wayne consents to marry her. Ford's health was bad or his drinking was heavy during the shoot and Wayne reportedly shot most of the picture himself.

Side note: Many years ago, I saw Jack Warden on the street in Times Square just after watching this movie on TV and I told him so. He smiled.