Searching For John Ford: A Life |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Gerald Ford > Item 24
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Searching For John Ford: A Life
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by Joseph McBride
Sales Rank: 194802
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$7.70
At Amazon
on 4-18-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 838 pages
Published by: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition June 23, 2001
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0312242328
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0312242329
Book Dimensions:
9.6 x 6.5 x 2.1 inches
Weighs: 3.1 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
After being called the "greatest poet of the Western saga," film director Ford responded, "I am not a poet, and I don't know what a Western saga is. I would say that is bullshit." Yet Ford--who made such classic westerns as Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--helped define the idea of the western as a quintessential American story for audiences around the world. This first full-length critical biography presents a complex, fascinating portrait of a troubled and conflicted artist and man. Born John Feeney, he was an Irish outsider in Yankee New England. He began working in the film industry in 1914 as a studio ditch digger, but was soon acting in films and, a few years later, directing them. By the early 1930s, he had achieved considerable artistic and commercial fame with The Informer. McBride (Frank Capra) elegantly and cogently weaves Ford's personal life into the fabric of his career. He is at his best describing how Ford's political sentiments emerged in his work (especially the antiracism of Steamboat Round the Bend and The Searchers) as well as the director's move from liberal to conservative politics during Hollywood's red-baiting years and the HUAC hearings. He gives an equally astute delineation of Ford's emotional life--a tempestuous marriage, a possible affair with Katharine Hepburn, his reputation as a tough guy and his alcoholism. Drawing upon a wealth of critical material plus more than 125 interviews with Ford's colleagues, family and friends, McBride has produced a fine, long-needed biography of a pivotal American artist.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
"My name's John Ford. I make Westerns." Ford preferred to let his work speak for itself, and his abrasive encounters with film scholars have become legendary. In fact, "Pappy" Ford, who fancied himself a journeyman director, would probably have been perplexed by these two recent additions to the rapidly growing library of Ford film criticism. Arriving hard on the heels of Scott Eyman's comprehensive Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford (LJ 10/1/99), McBride's weighty tome, several decades in preparation, paints a similar portrait: Ford was an insecure alcoholic whose gruff, even sadistic treatment of family, friends, cast, and crew masked his sensitive, sentimental nature. Complex and contradictory like many of his films Ford was a man who stood up to McCarthyite blacklisters but later churned out crude propaganda in support of the Vietnam war. He celebrated tradition, family, and community but was a miserable failure as husband and father. As Eyman did, McBride (Frank Capra; Steven Spielberg) draws on exhaustive research and interviews, but he has the advantage of a few memorably brief meetings with the Great Man himself. Ford left an impressive if uneven body of work, and McBride does it justice, looking at each film in illuminating detail. Still, although McBride's book is very deserving, public and academic libraries that cannot collect both biographies should stick to Eyman's more streamlined telling. Studlar (film and English, Univ. of Michigan) and Bernstein (film, Emory Univ.) take readers into academic territory, offering nine essays on the work plus a "dossier" of articles on the man and filmmaker. Robin Wood leads off with a classic critique, questioning whether Ford's late films measure up to his early work. Other essays discuss the role of women and Religion in Ford's film universe, and the hotly disputed controversy about whether his last epic Cheyenne Autumn was a "mea culpa" for previous insensitive portrayals of the American Indian. Westerns is recommended for academic collections. Stephen F. Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PA.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Reader Reviews
This is a very good biography of Ford. Yes, McBride relies on Sarris and Carey Jr. a good bit of the time, yet this book remains very interesting and does a thorough job covering the many films Ford made. Strengths of the book include an eye-opening look at Ford's WWII service, (How many other guys were at both Midway and D-Day and managed to get to Burma and Yugoslavia as well?) a clear presentation of Ford's relations with the different studios (the list of "better" titles for The Quiet Man the head of Republic tried to force on Ford is hysterically funny) and an evenhanded evaluation of Ford's behavior during the blacklist era. Perhaps the evenhandedness of McBride's tone is what I liked the most about the book. One could take Ford's life and turn it into a straightforward case of hero-worship, or one could take an axe to him up and down the line, pointing out his failures in family life, his bigoted comments, his questionable actions in some controversial issues. McBride avoids falling into either extreme camp. We get Ford warts and all here, and it is left up to us to decide. My only complaint is that the book is too short. I would have liked more discussion on a few films, and I would have liked a chapter on Ford's posthumous reputation. McBride raises the issue in his introduction that Ford is being forgotten by the new generation of writers and filmmakers, but he never quite tells why. Still, this was a fine book, one that I read quickly despite its length.
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Searching For John Ford: A Life
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