Binging on John Ford, Part 5: Silents, Shirley Temple, and Others

I found a cache of Ford's silent films on YouTube. These early Westerns blurred together and after a few days their plots jumbled in my mind and I couldn't tell one from the other. Many starred Harry Carey, Sr., as a grizzled cowboy. Carey's son Harry, Jr. later appeared in many of Ford's films, and his wife Olive had a significant role in The Searchers.

Straight Shooting (1917): According to many sources, Ford's first film. The ranchers and the settlers battle for dominance. For all its shooting and stunt riding, the highlight of the film is the silent acting of Molly Malone (that can't have been her real name). She plays the daughter of the crusty old farmer harassed and terrorized by the malignant rancher. Her brother has just been murdered and she is putting away the breakfast dishes he ate from that very morning. You can read the emotions on her face as she handles the bowl and slowly puts it away.

Bucking Broadway (1917): Cowboy Harry Carey Sr. goes to the big city to rescue rancher's daughter Molly Malone from the evil clutches of an alcoholic, sweet-talkin' slicker. You can trace the roots of the Beverly Hillbillies humor this far back.

Hell Bent (1918): Harry falls for Bess, a good gal forced to work in a dance hall cause her no-count brother cain't support her. After a bank robbery and kidnapping, he saves her from death in the desert. 

Just Pals (1920): Anticipating Chaplin's The Kid, Just Pals idolizes the bond between the town tramp and an adorable runaway rugamuffin. Romantic rivalries, kidnapping, embezzlement, and other melodramas figure in this kitchen-sink sentimental drama.

Victor McLaglen and Shirley Temple in
Wee Willie Winkie

Wee Willie Winkie (1937): Ford's style doesn't seem evident in this Shirley Temple vehicle, there are no fascinating shots and the humor is broad and child-like, appropriate for a film starring a precocious tot, then the reigning box-office queen. It's just a studio programmer following the Temple trope: Cute little Shirley is placed in a foreign environment with no daddy and a lonely mommy, charms the pants off the stuffy old grown-ups (especially blustery blowhard Victor McLaglen and veddy proper C. Aubrey Smith), and brokers a peace deal between the occupying Brits and Cesar Romero's cutthroat Indians. McLaglen does his usual strongman stuff of knocking down his fellow soldiers for laughs, one even ends up in a headstand. Constance Collier whom I recall from Stage Door, steals her every scene as a miserable old biddy jealous of the attentions little Shirley receives from the officers. Shirley's mommy is as stiff as cardboard. The plot reminded me of an early SNL skit where Larraine Newman played Shirley as an ambassador to an African country solving a war by tap dancing with the combatants' leaders played by guest host Elliott Gould and Garrett Morris. This played on the adult Shirley Temple's career as a diplomat. (YouTube)

Ward Bond, Charlie Grapewin, William Tracy,
Elizabeth Patterson, and Gene Tierney
in Tobacco Road

Tobacco Road (1941): THIS was one of the longest-running straight plays in Broadway history? The film version of the stage play which was in turn derived from a best-selling novel takes a crude look at dirt-poor Georgia farmers and gets its jollies from their misery. Evidently the play was a lot more explicit sexually and was more serious which may account for its longevity. The novel was even bleaker and starker with the characters sporting facial deformities and the grandma getting run over by her grandson's brand-new automobile. The film cleaned up the novel and the play's more carnal aspects and it played mostly for laughs at the rascally machinations of Jeeter Lester, played by Charley Grapewin, best known as Uncle Henry in The Wizard of Oz. What was a searing indictment of poverty becomes a comedy with a banjo-plucking score. Ford does achieve some evocative effects such as the dark shadows of the Lesters' ramshackle hovel as the mother is packing her few meager belongings for the trip to the poor house. This scene is reminiscent of Ford's work in The Grapes of Wrath. Elizabeth Patterson, later to play Mrs. Trumble on 11 episodes of I Love Lucy, is especially moving here. A young Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews are in supporting roles. Tierney plays Ellie Mae, a name later used in the Beverly Hillbillies, another Hollywood stereotyping of rural citizens. It's significant that in the novel and the play Ellie Mae is deformed but in the movie she's played by the stunningly beautiful young Tierney. (YouTube)

The Wings of Eagles (1957): Back to the navy and John Wayne indulging in pathos and good-natured brawlin'. I found this Ford oddity in the 42nd Street branch of the New York Public Library in the DVD collection on the mezzanine level. Wings is based on the life of Navy pilot and Ford pal Frank "Spig" Wead who survived a broken neck and paralysis to become an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and active-duty naval commander during World War II. Wead wrote the script for Ford's Air Mail and They Were Expendable, as well as George W. Hill's Hell Divers with top-billed Wallace Beery and then unknown Clark Gable (a clip is included). Before the accident, comedy is emphasized as Spig (which I'm guessing is short for spigot cause he likes to drink a lot) and his pals slug it out with army rivals over which branch is superior in aviation. After his spine-shattering fall down the stairs at home, the tone shifts to drama with Wayne bravely conquering his infirmity with the aide of ever-loyal Dan Dailey and several bottles of smuggled booze. Once again, the superb Maureen O'Hara is the ultimately supportive wife who likes to knock back a few herself. The highlight is Ford's self-parody with Ford perennial Ward Bond as John Dodge (instead of Ford, get it?). Wead visits Dodge (Ford) in his hyper-macho Hollywood office complete with saddles, firearms, whiskey and cigars as Bond as Ford (Dodge) is sleeping off a hang-over.

Edward Brophy, Spencer Tracy, Jeffrey Hunter, 
Ricardo Cortez, and Pat O'Brien in
The Last Hurrah

The Last Hurrah (1958): A rare departure for Ford from Westerns, war pictures and period pieces, this political satire pits old-time, patronage-oriented mayor Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy, brilliantly understated as usual) against the forces of slick, cynical rich folks like dried-up John Carradine as a  bigoted newspaper publisher and Basil Rathbone as a covetous banker. The villains are so heinous as to be unbelievable (Carradine's character is revealed to be a former Klansman) and Skeffington is a saint, almost. The mayor is not above employing blackmail to get what he wants--always in the interest of the people, of course. Ford regulars Jeffrey Hunter, Donald Crisp, Jane Darwell as a gleefully ghoulish funeral fan, Ken Curtis (Ford's son-in-law), and Carleton Young are seen to advantage (Ford at Columbia DVD collection)

Once again Ford cherishes the past over the present. He laments the passing of old-fashioned handshaking and baby-kissing as it gives way to TV slickness. Skeffington's opponent McCluskey is portrayed as a vacuous boob presenting a shallow front. The young idiot's TV interview is a comic parody with a hired dog barking at all the wrong times. Crisp's archbishop states about the younger generation "Is this the best we've got?" and Skeffington's son Junior is a feckless party boy only interested in gorgeous dames and cha-cha music. But it's clear the father had little time for the son, resulting in the latter's dissipation. Rathbone's son is another jerk, an easily manipulated comic-relief fop played O.Z. Whitehead (I love that name). Only Hunter as Skeffington's journalist nephew comes across as a youngster worthy of his elders' trust and confidence. (Ford at Columbia DVD collection)