John Martin Feeney, known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director and producer. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and was one of the first American directors to be recognized as an auteur. In a career of more than 50 years, he directed over 130 films between 1917 and 1970, and received six Academy Awards including a record four wins for Best Director for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952).
Monument Valley is a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by a cluster of sandstone buttes, with the largest reaching 1,000 ft (300 m) above the valley floor. The most famous butte formations are located in northeastern Arizona along the Utah–Arizona state line. The valley is considered sacred by the Navajo Nation, the Native American people within whose reservation it lies.
The Horse Soldiers is a 1959 American adventure war film set during the American Civil War directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, William Holden and Constance Towers. The screenplay by John Lee Mahin and Martin Rackin was loosely based on the Harold Sinclair (1907-1966) 1956 novel of historical fiction of the same name, a fictionalized version of the famous Grierson's Raid by Federal cavalry in April–May 1863 riding southward through Mississippi and around the Mississippi River fortress of Vicksburg during the Vicksburg campaign to split the southern Confederacy by Union Army Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.
Rio Grande is a 1950 American romantic Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. It is the third installment of Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy", following two RKO Pictures releases: Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). Wayne plays the lead in all three films, as Captain Kirby York in Fort Apache, then as Captain Nathan Brittles in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and finally as a promoted Lieutenant Colonel Kirby Yorke in Rio Grande. Rio Grande's supporting cast features Ben Johnson, Claude Jarman Jr., Harry Carey Jr., Chill Wills, J. Carrol Naish, Victor McLaglen, Grant Withers, the Western singing group the Sons of the Pioneers and Stan Jones.
Henry DeWitt Carey II was an American actor and one of silent film's earliest superstars, usually cast as a Western hero. One of his best known performances is as the president of the United States Senate in the drama film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He was the father of Harry Carey Jr., who was also a prominent actor.
Henry George Carey Jr. was an American actor. He appeared in more than 90 films, including several John Ford Westerns, as well as numerous television series.
Benjamin Franklin "Frank" McGrath was an American television and film actor and stunt performer who played the comical, optimistic cook with the white beard, Charlie B. Wooster, on the western series Wagon Train for five seasons on NBC and then three seasons on ABC. McGrath appeared in all 272 episodes in the eight seasons of the series, which had ended its run only two years before his death. McGrath's Wooster character hence provided the meals and companionship for both fictional trail masters, Ward Bond as Seth Adams and John McIntire as Christopher "Chris" Hale.
Two Rode Together is a 1961 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring James Stewart, Richard Widmark, and Shirley Jones. The supporting cast includes Linda Cristal, Andy Devine, and John McIntire. The film was based upon the 1959 novel Comanche Captives by Will Cook.
Fort Apache is a 1948 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Henry Fonda. The film was the first of the director's "Cavalry Trilogy" and was followed by She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950), both also starring Wayne. The screenplay was inspired by James Warner Bellah's short story "Massacre" (1947). The historical sources for "Massacre" have been attributed both to George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn and to the Fetterman Fight.
3 Godfathers is a 1948 American Western film in Technicolor directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz and Harry Carey Jr.. The screenplay was written by Frank S. Nugent and Laurence Stallings based on the 1913 novelette The Three Godfathers by Peter B. Kyne. The story is a loose retelling of the biblical Three Wise Men in an American Western context.
Winton C. Hoch, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer. He was earlier a lab technician who contributed to the development of Technicolor before becoming a cinematographer in 1936. His understanding of the color process quickly led to his being hailed as one of Hollywood's premier color cinematographers. Hoch never made a film in black and white.
Sergeant Rutledge is a 1960 American Technicolor Western film directed by John Ford and starring Jeffrey Hunter, Constance Towers, Woody Strode and Billie Burke. The title was also used for the novelization published in the same year. Six decades later, the film continues to attract attention because it was one of the first mainstream films in the U.S. to treat racism frankly and to give a starring role to an African-American actor. In 2017, film critic Richard Brody observed that "The greatest American political filmmaker, John Ford, relentlessly dramatized, in his Westerns, the mental and historical distortions arising from the country’s violent origins—including its legacy of racism, which he confronted throughout his career, nowhere more radically than in Sergeant Rutledge."
Archibald Job Stout, ASC was an American cinematographer whose career spanned from 1914 to 1954. He enjoyed a long and fruitful association with John Ford, working as the principal cinematographer on Fort Apache (1948) and second unit cinematographer on She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and The Quiet Man (1952), becoming the only 2nd unit cinematographer to receive an Oscar. In a wide-ranging career, he also worked on such films as the original version of The Ten Commandments (1923) and several Hopalong Cassidy and Tarzan films. His last film was the airborne disaster movie The High and the Mighty in 1954.
James Warner Bellah was an American Western author from the 1930s to the 1950s. His pulp-fiction writings on cavalry and Indians were published in paperbacks or serialized in the Saturday Evening Post.
The John Ford Stock Company is the name given to the large collection of actors used repeatedly in the films of American director John Ford. Most famous among these was John Wayne, who appeared in twenty-four films and three television episodes for the director.
Wagon Master is a 1950 American Western film produced and directed by John Ford and starring Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr., Joanne Dru, and Ward Bond. The story follows a Mormon pioneer wagon train across treacherous desert to the San Juan River in Utah. The film inspired the US television series Wagon Train (1957–1965), which starred Bond until his death in 1960. The film was a personal favorite of Ford himself, who told Peter Bogdanovich in 1967 that "Along with The Fugitive and The Sun Shines Bright, Wagon Master came closest to being what I wanted to achieve." While the critical and audience response to Wagon Master was lukewarm on its release, over the years numerous critics have come to view it as one of Ford's masterpieces.
Warpath is a 1951 American Western film directed by Byron Haskin and starring Edmond O'Brien, Polly Bergen, Dean Jagger, Forrest Tucker and Harry Carey Jr. The film was released as a Fawcett Comics Film #9, in Technicolor, in August 1951.
Pillars of the Sky is a 1956 American CinemaScope Western film directed by George Marshall and starring Jeff Chandler, Dorothy Malone and Ward Bond. It was produced and distributed by Universal Pictures.
Jack Murray was an American film editor with about 55 feature film credits between 1929 and 1961. Fifteen of these films were with the director John Ford. Their credited collaborations commenced with The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), which was produced when both men were working at the 20th Century Fox studio. It encompassed such well-known films as The Quiet Man (1952) and The Searchers (1956), and ended only with Murray's death in 1961.
Quincannon, Frontier Scout is a 1956 American Western film directed by Lesley Selander and written by John C. Higgins and Don Martin. The film stars Tony Martin, Peggie Castle, John Bromfield, John Smith and Ron Randell. The film was released in May 1956, by United Artists.
