The American West of John Ford is a 1971 television special documentary, directed by Denis Sanders, about movie director John Ford's career narrated by John Wayne, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda. Footage of Wayne, Stewart, and Fonda talking with the aging Ford are interspersed with an array of clips from Ford's films spanning more than five decades, including The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance , The Searchers , and Stagecoach , each of which is dealt with at some length.
The section on My Darling Clementine features Fonda and Stewart, both of whom played Wyatt Earp in Ford films, interviewing Ford about the director's claim that Earp himself had explained the strategy and chronology of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral to Ford and Harry Carey, complete with a sketched diagram, decades before Ford filmed a version of the melee with Fonda as Earp. Stewart's memorable poker scene as Earp in Cheyenne Autumn , which had nothing to do with the rest of the movie and has frequently been cut by exhibitors and television stations, is also discussed and illustrated with a clip.
The hour long special was telecast on December 5, 1971 over the CBS television network. The show sometimes appears on Hulu under the title The Great American West of John Ford. The documentary also briefly features a whip-cracking Andy Devine during a comedic sequence with Wayne and Ford filmed in Monument Valley.
Parts of the special were filmed in Monument Valley in Utah. [1]
James Maitland Stewart was an American actor, military aviator, and poet. Known for his distinctive drawl and everyman screen persona, Stewart's film career spanned 80 films from 1935 to 1991. With the strong morality he portrayed both on and off the screen, he epitomized the "American ideal" in the mid-twentieth century. In 1999, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked him third on its list of the greatest American male actors. He received numerous honors including the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1980, the Kennedy Center Honor in 1983, as well as the Academy Honorary Award and Presidential Medal of Freedom, both in 1985.
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American actor whose career spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. On screen and stage, he often portrayed characters who embodied an everyman image.
Stagecoach is a 1939 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring Claire Trevor and John Wayne. The screenplay by Dudley Nichols is an adaptation of "The Stage to Lordsburg", a 1937 short story by Ernest Haycox. The film follows a group primarily composed of strangers riding on a stagecoach through dangerous Apache territory.
How the West Was Won is a 1962 American epic Western film directed by Henry Hathaway, John Ford and George Marshall, produced by Bernard Smith, written by James R. Webb, and narrated by Spencer Tracy. Originally filmed in true three-lens Cinerama with the according three-panel panorama projected onto an enormous curved screen, the film features an ensemble cast formed by many cinema icons and newcomers, including Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne and Richard Widmark. The supporting cast features Brigid Bazlen, Walter Brennan, David Brian, Andy Devine, Raymond Massey, Agnes Moorehead, Henry (Harry) Morgan, Thelma Ritter, Mickey Shaughnessy and Russ Tamblyn.
My Darling Clementine is a 1946 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp during the period leading up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The ensemble cast also features Victor Mature, Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, Tim Holt, Cathy Downs and Ward Bond.
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.
Vera June Miles is an American retired actress. She is known for appearing in John Ford's Western films The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and for playing Lila Crane in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and Richard Franklin's sequel Psycho II (1983).
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.
Andrew Victor McLaglen was a British-born American film and television director, known for Westerns and adventure films, often starring John Wayne or James Stewart.
The Cheyenne Social Club is a 1970 American Western comedy film written by James Lee Barrett, directed and produced by Gene Kelly, and starring James Stewart, Henry Fonda and Shirley Jones. The film is about an aging cowboy who inherits a brothel and decides to turn it into a respectable boarding house, against the wishes of both the townspeople and the ladies working there.
This is the filmography of American actor Henry Fonda. From the beginning of Fonda's career in 1935 through to his last projects in 1981, Fonda appeared in more than 100 films, television programs and short subjects.
Patrick John Morrison, better known by his stage name Patrick Wayne, is an American actor. He is the second son of movie star John Wayne and his first wife, Josephine Alicia Saenz. He made over 40 films, including eleven with his father.
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.
Cheyenne Autumn is a 1964 American epic Western film starring Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, James Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson. It tells the story of a factual event, the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878–79, told with artistic license. The film was the last Western directed by John Ford, who proclaimed it an elegy for the Native Americans who had been abused by the U.S. government and misrepresented in numerous of his own films. With a budget of more than $4 million, the film was relatively unsuccessful at the box office and failed to earn a profit for Warner Bros.
Burton Raphael Kennedy was an American screenwriter and director known mainly for directing Westerns. Budd Boetticher called him "the best Western writer ever."
The Battle of Midway is a 1942 American short documentary film directed by John Ford. It is a montage of color footage of the Battle of Midway with voice overs of various narrators, including Johnny Governali, Donald Crisp, Henry Fonda, and Jane Darwell.
Directed by John Ford is a documentary film directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Originally released in 1971, it covers the life and career of film director John Ford.
Wyatt Earp was an American Old West lawman and gambler in Cochise County, Arizona Territory, and a deputy marshal in Tombstone, Arizona Territory.