For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Ford, John Wayne, and ‘They Were Expendable’ Part 1
by Leo Grin
YouTube -- click here to watch in full-screen HD“[John Ford] was the only one of the Hollywood directors who fought who did not forget his men.”
– Captain Mark Armistead, USN –
Thus quotes Joseph McBride in his masterful biography Searching for John Ford, at the head of the chapter dealing with the director’s wartime activities. It is usually seen as lamentable when a genius is pulled from the practice of his art for any extended period, but here we must make a special allowance. As filmmaker Lindsay Anderson (1923-1994) explains in his essential critical volume About John Ford (which, like the McBride book, should be sitting proudly and dog-eared on the bookshelf of every conservative film fan): “War service took Ford away from the making of films for some three years when his powers were at their height. One would regret this interruption more had it not led directly to the making of a masterpiece.”
The masterpiece of which he speaks is a 1945 war film called They Were Expendable, and if you are a conservative who has never seen it, then you have denied yourself one of the most moving and achingly poetic expressions of your worldview ever put to celluloid.
They Were Expendable was made in the Fall of 1944, while most of the people portrayed in the story were still rotting in Japanese POW camps, if indeed they weren’t already dead. Just like our modern foes, the Japanese mocked the Geneva Conventions throughout World War II, and by the end some 40% of the POWs in their care had been executed, starved, or died of disease in their camps. This is compared to Europe, where only 1% of American POWs in German camps died. The events the film depicts took place in early 1942 when, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, tens of thousands of Americans found themselves trapped in the Philippines and facing a fearsome Japanese invasion. The enemy bombed them with impunity, destroying their bases and leaving them with only four planes and an assortment of tiny boats. Supplies and morale dwindled into oblivion as, rather than be evacuated, they were ordered to hold their positions as long as possible against — and eventually be killed or captured by — an overwhelming enemy who was infamous for torturing and murdering prisoners.
How these Americans (and Filipinos) comported themselves as they were gobbled up by the Japanese war machine, buying time with their lives so that General MacArthur could escape the clutches of the enemy and prepare a counter-assault, is the focus of the film. And yet it is like no other war film ever made. Its long running time (two hours, sixteen minutes) allows us to linger on scene after scene of doomed men and women slowly losing their grip on their homes, their jobs, their culture, and each other. Under Ford’s direction, the movie rises above mere plot — battles, strategies — to become something much greater: the cinematic ennobling of an entire people, their way of life, their code of honor, and their selfless sacrifice. Lindsay Anderson would later declare it his single favorite film from his single favorite director, noting the presence of “image after image of conscious dignity” depicting a “love of brotherhood, loyalty,” and “the spirit of endurance that can wring victory from defeat.”
What prompts someone to make a movie like this? To throw away all of the Hollywood clichés, to indeed ignore the enemy entirely (the Japanese are only seen from afar via their planes and ships) and instead reach for something more vital: the very bedrock of our connection with country and culture? It’s so personal a picture that any essay has to be as much about the life and times of its maker as about the film itself — the two are intertwined too deeply to ignore. We thus turn away from They Were Expendable for a spell, and drift backward in time to the life of the director many call the greatest in motion picture history.
For John Ford (1894–1973), serving with the Navy during World War II was much more than boilerplate Hollywood patriotism. He was no green recruit, hastily enlisting in the wake of Pearl Harbor to toss on a uniform for the very first time. Growing up on the coast of Maine where he met many sailors, from an early age he was entranced by the discipline, hard ways, and exaltation of duty inherent in military life. During High School he applied to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, and was devastated when he failed the entrance exam. In 1918, as a twenty-three-year-old fledgling director in Hollywood, he again tried to serve, this time volunteering as an aerial combat photographer. Bad eyesight ensured he flunked the physical, and numerous attempts to circumvent that ruling came to naught.
Despite these failures, he never gave up, making many military films throughout the ’20s and ’30s and taking every opportunity to schmooze with the Navy brass brought on as technical advisers. Finally, as a forty-year-old in 1934, and despite bad eyes once again causing him to fail the physical, enough strings were pulled by his Navy buddies to get him into the U.S. Naval Reserve. Given the rank of Lieutenant Commander, he was charged with creating “a course in naval photography; its uses, tactical, historical, and propaganda,” studying “infra-red and other super-sensitive films and complimentary filters as to their efficacy on sea and in the air, particularly in tropical waters” and “working intensely in an effort to collect photographic and camouflage information likely to be of value to the Navy.”
He also began spying for the Navy on a semi-formal basis during frequent trips of drunken carousing down the western coast of Mexico on his yacht, the Araner. With friends like John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and Ward Bond in tow, Ford made observations of the coastline and filed detailed reports on Japanese ships and suspicious “sailors” in the area. These made their way to Navy intelligence, netting him several citations.
In 1940, with friends in the military telling him that America’s eventual entry into the war was all but assured, Ford attempted to establish an official Naval photographic unit that could not only use their skills to directly aid the front-line troops in the fight ahead (in the form of reconnaissance, mapping terrain, et cetera) but also help fight the nasty propaganda war that was already brewing between patriotic Americans and growing cells of anti-American Leftists who were becoming increasingly vocal in the media and Hollywood. The proposal he sent to his superiors reads today as if it was clipped from Big Hollywood’s own mission statement:
Radio, newspapers, motion pictures blast contrary ideas back and forth. . . A series of films which show factually the power of the American Navy is bound to give a psychological lift to the whole nation. Let them see the rigors of training; the skill of execution in maneuvers. . . our morale purpose is to show that a Democracy can and must create a greater fighting machine, in spirit and being, than a dictator power.
Unfortunately, Ford was pressing up against a lumbering, asleep-at-the-wheel Navy, the same one that would allow the Japanese to surprise its fleet at Pearl the very next year. With numerous agencies like the Signal Corps protecting their film-making/photographic turf against the interloper, Ford watched his proposals vanish into the gaping maws of military bureaucracy. The sense that namby-pamby Hollywood civilians would have little to contribute to an honest war effort might have played a part as well. As much as Ford liked being a Navy man, the endless red tape and politics were sources of constant aggravation, and he often lashed out at his superiors to a degree that would have landed anyone else in the brig. An oft-told story has it that, when asked by an officer what Hollywood landlubbers liked to do for amusement after making a movie, Ford cheerfully replied, “We all get on a bus and go down to San Diego and f*** Navy wives.”
Undeterred by being ignored, Ford decided to proceed unofficially, confident that someday soon the talent of Hollywood would be called upon, and that he would be ready. He began enlisting men from the rank-and-file of Hollywood film crews — cinematographers, grips, editors. He borrowed prop guns and uniforms from the Fox costume department, and set up impromptu military film classes on unused soundstages. There his Hollywood recruits learned from experts like the Oscar-winning cinematographer Gregg Toland (The Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane, et al.) about cameras they would use during a war, how to shoot in all lighting conditions, and how to develop film in the field if need be. They also were drilled in the basics of military life by Jack Pennick, a member of Ford’s regular acting troupe who happened to be an expert on military history and rules.
The rest of Tinseltown, and the skeptical Navy brass, began jokingly referring to this motley crew as “John Ford’s Navy.” And yet, by the time he was through, over a hundred of his Hollywood trainees had joined the active service or reserves, ready for a war they knew was coming.
After Pearl Harbor, with the Navy in shock and disarray, Ford finally found his long-sought benefactor. William “Wild Bill” Donovan was in the process of setting up the OSS — the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to today’s CIA — and Ford’s moxie, skills, and penchant for skirting the bureaucracy was just what he was looking for. Soon the director had brought his Hollywood gang under the official auspices of the OSS as “The Field Photographic Branch,” and it wasn’t long before they were filming reconnaissance, troop movements, and full-on battles all over the world.
At forty-seven years of age, after three decades of trying, John Ford was finally a soldier.
Ford served without pay, traveling across the globe and dodging enemy bombers and U-Boats to fulfill his duties as head of Field Photo. Iceland… Panama… North Africa… West Africa… Cuba… Australia… Ceylon… China… India…. Burma…. Saudi Arabia… Brazil… France. Ford filmed potential base locations, assessed the security of existing sites, captured now-historic battles on film, often in color, and coordinated the movements and missions of his men, thirteen of whom were killed in action. For these efforts, he was promoted to Captain on April 3, 1944. In later years he would state that — although he was the recipient of many of the highest awards in the film industry, including several Oscars — he was most proud of having earned his Small Arms Expert’s medal in the Navy.
John Ford had a knack for showing up in interesting places. He was on the deck of the USS Hornet, deep in enemy waters, when the famous Doolittle raid lifted off for Japan, his camera recording the historic moment for posterity. He was at Normandy on June 6, 1944, capturing rare footage of D-Day as it unfolded. He first (and last!) parachute jump occurred behind enemy lines in Burma on a secret OSS mission, with Ford terrified and murmuring Hail Marys all the way down because, a mere few days before, he had filmed a cargo drop and watched as chute after chute failed to open and the boxes smashed into the unforgiving earth.
Someone else who was scared was Ford’s wife, Mary, who only saw her husband on several brief occasions during the years he was off to war. She was from a Navy family herself and understood the sacrifices involved, but that didn’t make it any easier. One extant letter has Ford gently chiding her, “Ma, you can’t call up long distance just when you’re blue and lonesome. It’s just too damned expensive. We’ve really got to adjust — not financially necessarily, but mentally.” Lonely and bored, she wrote back to her husband that she felt guilty for not doing anything herself for the war effort while he was away fighting. One stateside friend wrote to Ford that his wife was, “pretty miserable just sitting on a hilltop worrying about you and waiting for you to come home.”
Eventually, Mary found some solace in volunteering her time at the now-legendary Hollywood Canteen, the star-studded entertainment hangout for servicemen passing through Los Angeles, where GIs could be served dinner by movie stars and dance the night away with popular starlets to the tunes of world-famous big bands. Mary threw herself into kitchen work there, and quickly became Vice President of the Canteen’s board. Her letters during this time reveal that she helped stars like Bob Hope and Bette Davis fight off a coven of Hollywood Commies, who were trying to get the military MPs (charged with keeping order in the Canteen) booted out, so they could then begin using the venue for staging and promoting leftist propaganda unimpeded.
Ford’s relationship with his wife wasn’t perfect — he was a notorious alcoholic, and one who had flirted with his share of Hollywood actresses during the early years, most notably Katharine Hepburn. But his wife had closed her ears to the gossip and never wavered from his side, vowing to remain “Mrs. John Ford until I die.” They had been married almost twenty-five years, raised two kids, and had overcome problems that would have doomed a lesser marriage. “I pray to God it will soon be over,” he wrote to her in another letter, “so we can live our life together with our children and grandchildren. . . God bless and love you Mary darling — I’m tough to live with — heaven knows & Hollywood didn’t help — Irish & genius don’t mix well but you know you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.”
By the end of John Ford’s life, he had been married for fifty-three years.
Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, we continue our look at John Ford’s war years, and address his Oscar-winning WWII documentary The Battle of Midway (1942).
FURTHER READING and VIEWING
Searching for John Ford: A Life by Joseph McBride: Without question the bible for John Ford fans. Ford is lucky in that most of the biographies written about him have been pretty good. But McBride’s masterwork — the culmination of three decades of intense research — towers above them all. Heavily drawn upon whenever I write or think about Ford, it is a must-read for all conservative film fans.
John Ford’s Sex Hygiene (1940): A footnote to Ford’s war career, mentioned here solely for the benefit of the morbidly curious. Only for the strong of stomach (and not safe for work). Actor Charles Trowbridge (later to play Admiral Blackwell in They Were Expendable) narrates and stars in this still-ghastly training film, which fully accomplished its goal of scaring the hell out of millions of randy enlisted men. In graphic, venereal diseased detail, young recruits are shown the perils of fooling around with ’dem dirty wemmins in their off-hours. At one point during the production of this little documentary Daryl Zanuck, the head of Twentieth-Century Fox, burst in on Ford interviewing a guy glistening with disgusting sores and declared, “He don’t scare me — send him to makeup!” When asked to comment on the film years later, Ford quipped, “I looked at it and threw up.”
Sex Hygiene Part I at YouTube | Sex Hygiene Part II at YouTube (again, it’s thoroughly gross, and there’s lots of medical full-frontal male nudity — you have been warned.)
The Hollywood Canteen is an idea that could and should be resurrected today, but do you dare take a peek at the modern incarnation of The Hollywood Canteen? One featuring not patriotic movie stars serving our troops, but pampered, puerile celebrities like Paris Hilton and Marilyn Manson being feted by armies of vapid Hollywood wannabes? Steel yourself against massive disappointment and check it out.
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60 Comments
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Outstanding stuff, and I'm sorry to report that I hardly knew any of it. Thanks for the wonderful write-up.
Excellent article. I own the movie, and it's one of my favorites. My great-uncle survived the Bataan Death March and spent the duration of the war as slave labor in a Mitsubishi copper mine. He weighed less than 90lbs when finally liberated at war's end. One of the most poignant scenes in the movie is what I'll call (spoiler alert), "last plane out". You can't watch that scene and not think, "where did we find men (and women) like that?"
They Were Expendable….Just a Terrific Movie period. This movie was made when Hollywood loved it's Country more than Itself. Wonderful article Thanks.
Difficult, if not impossible, to compare today's bunch of self-centered self-indulgent Hollywood airhead twits with those men and women of 60 yrs ago that recognized responsibility and weren't afraid to step up to it.
The present-day Hollywood, with exceptions, is almost like an alien planet, or a cancer eating continuously away at its host until it destroys the host and itself.
Thank you for this article. My grandpa was in WW2 … I will have to check this movie out.
Excellent article! Growing up in Louisiana, I got to meet many members of the Louisiana National Guard who were caught in the Death March and spent the war in Japanese prison camps. I remember many of them telling me that they'd gladly do it again, if their country asked. We truly were a great nation of men.
They Were Expendable was a terrific movie; I own that, and most of John Ford's other work, on DVD and watch them over and over again. Thanks for the book recommendations; I'll look them both up in my local library!
I remember reading somewhere how much John Ford loved sailing the Araner into Pearl Harbor while flying his admiral's flag and receiving salutes from the ships in the harbor. The old man certainly earned it. And the photo of Shirley Temple happily serving sailors and soldiers caused a huge pang of regret in me — I dearly miss the days when people actually cared about one another in this country, and were grateful for the sacrifice of their young men. What has happened to my country?
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Good article. Time to counter-revolution the commies ideas in America. Communism sucks.
Excellent story, terrific film…
Ford really abused John Wayne during the shoot; Robert Montgomery was a real PT Boat skipper and many on the set were veterans as well. The Duke, being well over 30 with children after WWII started didn't qualify for officer status (he wasn't a big enough name to get the favours other actors got) and didn't serve.
Ford constantly reminded Wayne of his heroic shortcomings during the production. He revered Ford like a father and took all the hazing silently…
To this day there isn't a veteran who doesn't appreciate what Wayne did for the military AS an actor.
What an era…
Great bit of writing, When a 70 year movie in theathers for just one show one night is a sell out nation wide. It has to tell you something, I saw the Wizard of OZ last month on the big Screen, it restored and in High Dev. It was the most enjoyable movie I seen all year, I use to go to the Movies at least once a week some times twice, Most of what is being made is junk. They don't seem to care a whole lot. Thou with the current down turn, they can afford to make losers. I would bet remastered John Ford Movies along with Henry Hathaway work would do well at the box office. Its not that Americans don't like going to the movies, they do, they just will not spend 10 a ticket on junk. There was no doubt about love of country during Ford's hay day as a director.
They Were Expendable….Just a Terrific Movie period. This movie was made when Hollywood loved it's Country more than Itself. Wonderful article Thanks.
Yeah, I always thought that was a little disingenuous of Ford, given that his service was the result of status and a "good old boys club" mentality. I thought Duke was also 4F'd for a collegiate football injury, thrown into Donavan's Reef as a character development point. Anywho, Dukester did what he could and far more than many. Love Ford's movies. Reef and Mr. Roberts are must watch home cinematic events 'round here.
[i] when Hollywood loved it's Country more than Itself /[i]
Not really. They were just outnumbered then.
—-when Hollywood loved it's Country more than Itself —-
Not really. They were just outnumbered then.
you bet- his treatment of Wayne was nasty- and he knew it. Wayne did also have a football injury, but the understanding is his age and marital status (3kids) made him ineleigible for OCS and being a 31 yr old private isn't attractive to anyone- Hollywood actors particulalry. No matter. Sgt Stryker is most likely the best
role he ever had (Oscar nominated) and was, and still is a template for Marine NCO's.
Guess you already knew that…
"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way."
John Paul Jones
To me the most difficult scene to watch was when the Army carted away the last of the PT Boats. If you have never been in the Navy or served a long time on a single ship or boat you cannot know what this feels like. The closest in peace time would be a de-commisioning of a ship. The connection that sailors have with thier ship, or boat is very real, It is home, and you fight for your home much more than just a piece of machinery. In the Air Force when the Plane is hit you punch out. In the Army when your position is over run you retreat. In the Navy when your ship is hit you continue fighting and Damage Control fights to keep the ship afloat. The single hardest order to obey is Abandon Ship.
I would bet remastered John Ford Movies along with Henry Hathaway work would do well at the box office.
I seriously doubt that.
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"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way." — attributed to John Paul Jones
"They Were Expendable" fantastic and definative PT Boat movie.
The scene where Donna Reed comes to the officer's mess for dinner really shows the loneliness of service. The way the men's eyes light up and their permanent smiles during the whole dinner is priceless. They were just starved for the company of an American woman. Just one of a hundred authentic moments in this terrific film.
"I don't want to be in a fake war in a studio."
Said Henry Fonda, who had two children, and was two years older than Wayne. And who managed to serve in the US Navy despite a lifetime of painful hangnails, unlike Big John.
John Wayne gets a pass for his cowardice because of his conservative politics and all of you know it.
Yup. Earlier last year we were talking about that scene. Tough to get through. Ward Bond does it to me every time, too.
Good points. But you dismiss the flyer's feeling for his plane, particularly if his tail number is his. As USAF vet let me tell you that an aircraft is your partner, brother, lover, mother and father and grandpa all in one. You don't just 'bail out'. Trust me.
Good points. But you dismiss the flyer's feeling for his plane, particularly if his tail number is his. As a USAF vet let me tell you that an aircraft is your partner, brother, lover, ma, pa and grandpa all in one. You don't just 'bail out'. Trust me.
I love this movie; it has made my personal top ten ever since I saw it.
I really hope, agnesdeigh, that you served and saw combat, thus your acusation of cowardice will have some weight to it. Then again, most combat veterans would be hard pressed to throw terms like "cowardice" around so easily. Most wouldn't wish war on a dog.
Bravo Zulu!!
Ah, but the "cowardice" here does not refer to his failure to serve, but the way he responded to this episode for the rest of his life. A man who would not fight for his country when it was threatened was, for the next 30 years, a loud and aggressive expert in what constituted patriotism and anti-Americanism.
Good points. But you dismiss the flyer's feeling for his plane, particularly if his tail number is his. As a USAF vet let me tell you that an aircraft is your partner, brother, lover, ma, pa and grandpa all in one. You don't just 'punch out'. Trust me. (sometimes it gets pretty crowded in there
And during WWII, with bombers, crews associated themselves with their aircraft even more than they do now. When they were hit, they continued as long as they could, sometimes limping back in pieces, but landing nonetheless.
And most stars today do the same thing, and none of them ever served. Or is it only because you agree with them?
I would also point out that Ford gave Wayne a hard time throughout the entire production of
"They Were Expendable"; calling him a coward and such to the point that Robert Montgomery gave Ford the word to cut it out. Montgomery served in PT boats during the War and had no problem that Wayne did not. Bit of a contrast between Ford and Montgomery. And your supposition that you cannot comment on what is patriotism and anti-Americanism because you didn't serve is bunk. You can dismiss what Wayne said because you don't agree with him(as I do most of the aristocracy that passes for celebrities these days), but unless you have real proof that Wayne was a physical coward, you be wrong, my good fellow.
I checked out the link to the modern so-called "Hollywood Canteen." Sure looked boring. The women were better looking back then and so were the uniforms.
Here is a warning to conservative movie goers. I saw a movie over the weekend and one of the trailers was a movie with the anti-millitary jake gyllenhall, toby macguire, and natalie portman. It looks like they are doing an imitation of the movie "coming home", the anti-vietnam war movie. The movie is about a wounded war on terror vet, toby macguire, complete with the frankenstein haircut and the 1000 yard stare, who comes home to find that his brother and wife are having "relations" because they thought he was dead. Hollywood has no shame once again. Imagine if hollywood made movies about the germans and japanese during world war two the way they make them about the jihadis. Imagine if every WW2 film was only about wounded and psychotic returning vets. Could we have fought that war.
By today's standards Ford is definitely Conservative. To my knowledge he was a registered Democrat and had a number of differing oppinions than those of John Wayne. Unlike some today, Ford's love of country and respect for its finest are without question.
I have to disagree with Mr. Grin. Searching for John Ford is a book heavy with informationbut hardly something that is work be pleasing to conservative fans of film ( for which I am one).
The author let's his politics seap into too much of his writings especially where John Wayne is concerned. It is obvious that the author doesn't care for John Wayne.
I have read Searching for John Ford along with Harry Carey Jr's book and 4 biographies on John Wayne. It appears that some of facts about John Wayne in Searching for John Ford don't appear to jive with way the other 5 books I mention tell the same stories about John Wayne.
So if these stories are inconsistent then that makes me suspicious of the the rest of the book.
In conclusion Searching for John Ford maybe great for dates and stats for John Ford's movies but the personal story research the author has done, leaves alot to be desired.
Great article! I'm old enough, barely, to remember the family worries and excitement of WWII. One uncle lost toes to jungle rot in the CBI theater. Another was a sniper/deadshot & dozer-driver with the SeaBees during the '43 – '45 island hop out of the South Pacific. I thought I was well informed of the era, but John Ford's exploits are new to me. I can't wait to find and absorb "They Were Expendable."
It saddens me that the sacrifices (and accomplishments ) of "The Greatest Generation" are mostly unknown by our current Under-30s. It is diffult to aspire to greatness if you do not know what greatness is.
They were right about not going back to Subic anymore. And Olympia – if you are reading this – I still miss you.
Heny Fonda, not a big liberal- yet- did serve. He was, as mentioned earlier a BIG star at the time unlike the B lister Wayne, and like Gable and others in their 30's were given special treatment. Wayne could have served as an enlisted man. So should have Fonda, Gable, andStewart. No dimuntion of their efforts; patriots all. But Wayne's case is unique and virtually all veterans are good with the contributions Duke made. It is only the lefties like yourself who make this argument…
Muster at Whinnie's, tonight. San Miguel shits at breakfast.
Themes of honor, sacrifice, friendship – the "last plane out" sequence stands out, as a previous person mentioned, the visit with their dying friend, very good naval action scenes, among others. I love the restraint of this movie – ordinary people who are called to do heroic things and do them the best they can, sparing us any of their angst or personal epiphanies. They take pride in their service.
My great uncle survived the Bataan Death March, so this movie took an added relevance.
Regarding Mcbride's book "Searching For John Ford"- Mcbride contends that Ford was a "closet liberal" who disagreed with John Wayne's and Ward Bond's politics. I think Mcbride over dramatizes Ford's left wing tendencies which did show themselves occasionally (particularly in regard to an incident involving Cecil De Mille and the Director's Guild") .
It's more correct to say Ford was a 1930's type liberal and would have abhored the sort of Hollywood tripe that actually began with "Bonnie And Clyde" and "Easy Rider" .If you want a true accounting of where McBride sits politically just read his "Capra" book in which he constantly castigates Frank Capra for not being a true left winger.
Ford probably always had an independent streak, and did wind up supporting Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon.
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/jun/03/magazine/...
"Loud and aggressive expert"? Nah, Wayne was a class act, even with his ideological enemies.
Check out the history behind his appearance at Harvard to defend himself against the Lampoon's assertion that he was the "biggest fraud in history." Charmed a whole crowd of hippies who were out for his blood, and was funny and self-deprecating in response to an entire assortment of rude questions.
Wayne never hurled invective at the country from an Oscar-night stage the way far too many liberals do today. He hated HIGH NOON, yet accepted the Oscar on behalf of Gary Cooper and gave a gracious speech. Rock Hudson was afraid that his homosexuality would be a big problem with Wayne when they first worked together, but they became great friends. Katharine Hepburn shied away from working with Wayne for decades, fearing that he was probably a monster who would bite her head off about politics, but when she finally gave him a whirl with ROOSTER COGBURN she couldn't have been more surprised and pleased. He even treated Jane Fonda with respect at the height of her seditious idiocy, happily signing autographs for her kids and professing to like her personally even though he disagreed with her politics.
Unlike modern Hollywood's screeching "Hate Republicans at All Costs" halfwits, John Wayne spoke eloquently at Jimmy Carter's pre-inaugural gala in support of creating a sense of bi-partisan solidarity around America's then-new President, and he wasn't afraid to take stands that clashed with the Republican party line. For instance, he supported Carter's relinquishing of the Panama Canal, in doing so enduring loads of hate mail from CONSERVATIVES calling him senile and a traitor (Ronald Reagan was pretty ticked at him about it, too).
Sure, he had notions of what was right and wrong, patriotic and not, and he stood by those guns in his movies and in his public pronouncements. But he was really a very open-minded, reasonable, classically liberal, well-read guy, nothing like the reactionary ogre progressives portray him as.
Hey Kendama (another Dirty Harry veteran!),
Yeah, old movies probably aren't a good bet to clean up at the box-office in today's market — why bother when we have Netflix, TCM and 60-inch screens? THE WIZARD OF OZ is a special case — kid-friendly, in glorious Technicolor, and had the restoration angle going for it. But Mr. Semel is right-on when he sings the praises of seeing those films on the big screen.
One of my all-time favorite experiences at the movies was when I saw THE QUIET MAN at The Egyptian in Hollywood a few years back with a raucous Good Friday audience. Explosions of laughter rocked the respectably filled theater all the way through, with all sorts of things jumping off the screen that you just don't catch on a smaller image — subtle facial expressions of background characters, little blink-and-you-missed-them gestures, and so on.
The real question is: would John Ford and Henry Hathaway-like NEW movies do well at the box office? The answer is, assuming they are done well, OF COURSE. But that would entail having talented directors like Ford and Hathaway directing talented stars like Wayne in pro-America, pro-conservative scripts. We're a long way off from that nirvana, I'm afraid. But I'm hopeful that, with the technology to make a decent-looking feature becoming available to any enterprising soul with a dream, and the Internet providing cheap global distribution, a new paradigm will eventually emerge.
Someday, a brilliant kid out in the sticks is going to get a hold of some decent equipment, borrow a neighbor's ranch as a location, and film a beautiful western series for consumption on YouTube, one that people will be able to pipe onto their TV screens in hi-def. Or a Christian organization will begin making films like the Bible epics of old, using the latest computer technology to nail the effects. Or an ex-army guy is going to film a bunch of excellent HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER style actioners that unabashedly feature the military as heroes.
Heck, it won't be long before we have all of our favorite old actors available as computer models to star in any type of film we choose. 3-D modelers might become famous for making the best young John Wayne or whatever. I think long-term, Hollywood as we know it is doomed, and the future of independent film is bright. But until then, we suffer.
Hi scruvy,
Actually, I agree with your basic point — McBride is a (I'm guessing proudly liberal) professor based up near San Francisco, and SEARCHING FOR JOHN FORD does tend to take the liberal party line whenever lightning-rod issues like racism, anti-Semitism, and the Hollywood blacklist are discussed. It's not outrageously partisan or anything, but the slant is there whenever those things are mentioned, true.
In John Wayne's case, to take just one example, I think McBride was wrong to take a quip Wayne made about "the draft breathing down my neck" and extrapolate that to mean that Wayne went on USO tours in an effort to avoid the draft. After all, McBride himself admits that Wayne was likely too old, had too many children, and too many nagging physical problems to ever be drafted, and Republic Pictures was writing numerous deferment requests for him that were all being enacted, so why would he be worried? The far more likely explanation for that remark of Wayne's is that it was self-deprecating and sarcastic, that even then he was feeling bad about not serving and beating himself up over it.
So yeah, it's totally fair for you to bring up this concern, it's a valid criticism of the book in my opinion. But let's give McBride a lot more credit than pinning down dates and stuff. He is a HUGE Ford fan — that's not an insignificant point, and it comes through loud and clear throughout the book. He is also for the most part scrupulously fair, in ways and to a degree that we almost never see from liberals, most of whom hate Ford and would have gleefully turned the whole project into a blistering hatchet job. His research and his thematic and critical interpretations are mostly impressive — even when I disagree with him he offers substantial food for thought, and he doesn't ram his opinions down your throat, he instead takes pains to refrain from damning his subjects, making it easy for the reader to politely disagree as needed and keep going.
SEARCHING FOR JOHN FORD is a book that has enriched my life immeasurably, and it remains a gold standard that will likely never been surpassed now that most of the principals are dead and gone. I think we are terribly lucky to have gotten the McBride book, faults and all. His volumes on Welles, Capra, and Spielberg are also top-notch. I feel the same way about Lindsay Anderson's book (another outward liberal who, like McBride, caught the Ford bug early on and did the Old Man much justice in his writings).
The Carey book is wonderful too, of course. Pretty much all the books about Ford are worth a read, he's been very well served on that score. Various books correct facts and quibble over details with others, but for the most part it's a rich field.
I'll be saying a lot more about Wayne and his wartime activities a couple Saturdays down the road, and I'll look forward to any additional comments you might be able to provide from those Wayne biogs you read.
Hi John R,
Yes, Ford was definitely a conservative by today's standards. In the thirties he bragged about being a Roosevelt supporter, "always Left." In the fifties he drifted into Republicanism as leftist groups became increasingly more stridently anti-American and subject to communist infiltration (the same way Reagan started out as a Roosevelt Democrat and then changed course). Ford stayed a Republican from the 1950s on, with the exception of casting a vote for Kennedy in 1960 (mostly in fidelity to his Irish and Catholic heritage, and to Kennedy's status as a fellow veteran).
In the final analysis, Ford was not much of a political animal. His surface politics and voting patterns tended to favor whatever group would leave him best positioned to keep working in Hollywood without issues. His essential conservatism, though (respect for tradition, family, religion, the military, etc.) never wavered throughout his life, even during those times when he wasn't exactly a walking poster boy for those values where his own family and behaviors was concerned.
The real question is: would John Ford and Henry Hathaway-like NEW movies do well at the box office? The answer is, assuming they are done well, OF COURSE. But that would entail having talented directors like Ford and Hathaway directing talented stars like Wayne in pro-America, pro-conservative scripts.
I appreciate your sentiment, but tread very carefully here. Andrew Breitbart had a speech somewhere (I forget where) in which he warned prospective conservative filmmakers against making films that were merely talk radio with pictures. Such filmmakers have to be willing to let their characters mess things up and avoid ramrodding messages down audiences' throats (it didn't even work for the Left; see that spate of ant-Iraq War films from a few years ago.) I'm not saying go out of your way to get praise from left-wing movie critics, but do what you have to do to make things interesting.
(I confess, though; I've yet to sit down and watch a western of any description!)
Dick,
Agree heartily with your capsule explanation of Ford's politics, and more or less with your analysis of McBride's. Nevertheless, I think McBride's positives far outweigh any negatives, and expand upon that thought a bit in this comment:
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/yf3zdrb” target=”_blank”>http://tinyurl.com/yf3zdrb
Thanks for the thoughts above, you describe the type of liberal Ford was very succinctly and accurately.
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A number of years ago on my way to Alaska, I was in the Seattle airport between flights. I was sitting near a woman and two teen age girls. I was eavesdropping on their conversation and learned that they were on their way to Japan. One of the girls asked the woman, "What should we say if they ask us about the atomic bomb?" Before the woman could answer I said, "You ask them about the Bataan Death March." The woman looked at me in disgust. The two girls were absolutely clueless. I smiled and walked away. Those of us who were brought up by the parents who lived and worked during the Great Depression and fought WWII inspired us and taught us patriotism. And always remember, always love your country, never trust your government. Fly the flag every single day. It will remind you that we live in the greatest country in the world.
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