John Ford: 1968, BBC Interview

Re-posted by N.S.





You have to take most of what Ford (1894-1973) said with a grain of salt. A couple of minutes before he said it, I said aloud, “A job of work.” That was a favorite b.s. line of his. Of course, he thought of himself as an artist; he just didn't like to admit it.

John Wayne in Stagecoach (1939): The old man spent years planning out John Wayne’s career in A-pictures. They’d get together weekends (when they weren’t on shoots) and drink and have reading marathons of plays and such, but as Scott Eyman wrote, Ford refused to help Wayne’s career, until he needed him for his own career. That's when Ford got back into Westerns. (Eyman wrote beautiful biographies of both men that were monumental, and yet had the detail work of a Pieter Bruegel the Elder.)

And then, when Wayne was the brightest star in the universe, Ford stabbed him in the back, just as he’d stabbed Fonda (and Harry Carey Sr., and George O'Brien) in the back, though not as clumsily or as violently. He’d have stabbed Bond in the back, too, but Bond died too early.