For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Ford, John Wayne, and ‘They Were Expendable’ Part 7
by Leo Grin“At eventide we buried our heroic dead, the last salute from their comrades and their officers.” That’s the narration which accompanies the poignant funeral scene in John Ford’s The Battle of Midway. The man who conceived that film — and its brother-in-arms, They Were Expendable — is dead, destined never to return to this world. The men who wrote the words are also dead, as are the men who spoke them. The young soldiers saluting rows of flag-draped bodies, the priests praying over them, the audiences weeping in their seats at the theater — all dead. Time passes, and the next generation remembers a little bit less about their forefathers. The generation after, less still. Before long, all that’s left to remind us of our debt to the past are yellowed documents, faded photographs, and weathered headstones.
And, of course, old movies.
By 1944 John Ford already sensed the onset of these creeping forces of forgetfulness, and so when the time came to make Expendable, he hatched a strange plan. First, he confronted Louis B. Mayer, the head of M-G-M, and demanded that he be paid $300,000 for helming the picture, more than any director had ever made for a single film. Appealing to Mayer’s patriotism, he said he wasn’t going to keep a single cent of it — it would be used in toto to establish a special place of military honor and memory, a shrine “for Pennick and the boys.” Mayer agreed, and after Expendable was finished Ford used the money to buy eight acres of land in the foothills north of Los Angeles, and to build upon it what became known as The Field Photo Farm.
By the time Ford’s funds were exhausted, the property sported stables with horses, a tennis court, a swimming pool, a baseball diamond, and a large parade ground — all of it reserved for the veterans of his OSS Field Photographic unit. A big clubhouse contained glass cases filled with the war medals of Field Photo’s heroic dead. A beautiful chapel was constructed on-site, with the names of the men lost under Ford’s command engraved therein. The list included Jack MacKenzie Jr., the young assistant who had narrowly avoided death alongside Ford at Midway and who had survived the rest of the war, only to be tragically killed in an August 1945 Jeep accident in Los Angeles. In 1947, They Were Expendable’s brilliant cinematographer Joe August collapsed on the set of his 277th picture, dead of a heart attack. Ford dutifully had his name added to the chapel’s grim roster.
A mission statement drawn up for the Farm reads:
The aim of the organization shall be to ever respect and hold before all men the shining example of our comrades who made the supreme sacrifice in order that we, as a nation, may continue to enjoy those freedoms that are the foundation of our country’s greatness and are the birthright of all peoples.
For the next twenty-five years, the Field Photo Farm served as a lovely place for Ford and his old war buddies to meet, drink, be merry, and celebrate holidays with their families. Elaborate Memorial Day services and Christmas parties were staged, which were equal parts festive get-togethers and morose eulogistic remembrances. “Wild Bill” Donovan, Ford’s old OSS superior, had a room permanently reserved for his exclusive use. Field Photo vets down on their luck were allowed to live at the Farm free of charge for as long as they wanted. As members of Ford’s inner circle began to die off, the chapel became the site for many funerals, most notably Ward Bond’s in 1960.
Only in 1969 — when the clubhouse was destroyed by fire, and most of his war buddies were dead and gone — would John Ford reluctantly disband the Farm. Even then, Ford didn’t keep the money: the proceeds from the sale of the property and all of its amenities were donated to the Motion Picture Television and Relief Fund, netting that organization nearly $300,000. As for the chapel, it was moved to the grounds of the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital, where it still stands today as “The John Ford Chapel.” Aside from his films, it is the last physical reminder of Ford’s quarter-century crusade to keep memory alive.
Well, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Joseph McBride notes glumly at the beginning of Searching for John Ford how ignorant Hollywood and its admirers have become concerning the career of America’s greatest director:
I was shocked a couple of years ago when I asked a film teacher at a leading California university what she thought of Ford, and found that she had never seen any of his movies. This was not an isolated instance. I often encountered blank looks when I mentioned Ford’s name to people outside the film business, and a story editor for a Hollywood film company asked me, “What are his films?”
Clearly, something is drastically wrong here. A director of Ford’s artistic stature, a filmmaker whose canvas of American life is so rich and ambitious, should be central to our culture, a household word. . . Has Ford become marginalized because of his concentration on a pioneer past that seems less and less meaningful to a nation entering a new millennium? And if that is so, what does that say about us?
What does it say, indeed. If we no longer make the kinds of films John Ford made — if we lose the capability even to imagine how such movies would look and feel today — what does that say about us and our society? What have we lost?
When in the last months of Ford’s life President Richard Nixon came to Los Angeles to give the dying director the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Jane Fonda decided to protest the event outside the auditorium with thousands of anti-war hippies and vermin. Whether she was raging against Nixon, Ford, or the war is irrelevant — her father owed much of his career and fame to Ford, which means she did, too, whether or not she had the sense to realize it. That supreme lack of class, and of respect for one’s elders, is as good a place as any to draw a line between Ford’s world and our own. To put the dichotomy into further relief: Donna Reed, who starred in Expendable, was also a Vietnam War opponent during those years, but she at least possessed a modicum of politesse. For instance, Reed never once saw fit to pose on an enemy gun battery — on the contrary, she was one of the actresses who had danced and mingled with servicemen at the Hollywood Canteen.
The citation for Ford’s Medal of Freedom reads in part: “As an interpreter of the Nation’s heritage, he left his personal stamp indelibly imprinted on the consciousness of whole generations both here and abroad. In his life and in his work, John Ford represents the best in American films and the best in America.” During his brief acceptance speech that night, a frail and cancer-ravaged Ford admitted to Nixon and the world that he had recently “blubbered and cried like a baby” while watching American POWs coming home from Vietnam on TV. Miss Fonda, for her part, famously called those same POWs “hypocrites and liars,” and laughed off their claims of being tortured.
Years later, an elderly Nixon penned a heartfelt letter to Ford biographer Joseph McBride, wherein he tried to express what John Ford meant to America and how modern Hollywood had broken faith with those ideals. I found it a profound, perceptive statement, but judge for yourself from this excerpt (italics mine):
[Ford] was appalled that the Mayor of New York had said, “Our best young men went to Canada.” What appalled him was not the fact that they fled to Canada in order to evade the draft. He understood why any young person would not want to go to Vietnam and get his butt shot off. What he objected to was their pretensions of higher morality — their looking down on those who did serve, the “dummies” who went to Vietnam and got their butts shot off. He believed as I did that our best young men went to Vietnam — even though they were not the best educated or the wealthiest or members of what would generally be described as the elite class, the brightest and the best in our society.
I don’t see many Hollywood motion pictures these days and I am sure that there are some good ones. But what concerns me as I believe it would have concerned John Ford, is the tendency for many Hollywood pictures to reflect life in Hollywood rather than life in the United States. Many movies are sick because those who write, produce, direct, and act in them are sick. It just isn’t considered fashionable to portray the old virtues that John Ford stood for. Even more important, it isn’t considered to be commercial. This new negativism pervades the elite classes not just in Hollywood but in New York, Washington, and the other great financial and corporate centers of the United States.
A goody-two-shoes portrayal would not be a true picture of America. But I would suggest that Hollywood moviemakers would be well advised to travel through America and see what it really is — the good, the bad, and the ugly, with the good prevailing over the bad and the ugly by a factor of ten to one.
John Ford in his life and in his motion pictures celebrated courage, loyalty, honor, strength, sacrifice, patriotism. He did it so well that people by the millions flocked to see his movies. What America and the world needs today are more John Fords who share his values and reflect them in their work.
John Ford died on August 31, 1973, and was buried on a gentle hillside at Holy Cross, the largest Catholic cemetery in the Los Angeles area. His wife, who died six years later, lies at his side. His older brother Francis rests a few plots away — Francis, who played a genial drunk in so many Ford movies, and who signed up with the Army in April, 1943 before being rejected during Basic once they discovered he was sixty-five years old. Ford’s younger brother Edward and his sister Josephine also are interred in the same section, a bit up the hill.
Having the luck of living only a few minutes away, I visit Ford’s grave often. Always I brush the cut grass and dirt off the small marker. Sometimes I fill the inset vase with flowers. If the illegals mowing the lawn aren’t looking my way, I might even fire off a clandestine salute, Jack Pennick-style. Small gestures to be sure, and pretty worthless in the greater scheme of things.
But what the hell. John Ford never forgot his men. Now that he needs a bit of looking after, I don’t intend on forgetting him.
This concludes our seven-part look at the war years of John Ford and the films The Battle of Midway (1942) and They Were Expendable (1945).
Previous posts in the series “John Ford, John Wayne, and They Were Expendable”:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
FURTHER READING AND VIEWING
You remember our pact, don’t you? The deal was: first we go through the history of a movie, we study the lives and dreams of its makers, we immerse ourselves in its time and place, and we examine its themes and subtext from a conservative perspective.
Then: we watch the film.
Watching the film is important, it’s the culmination of everything we’ve worked up to. At the end of the day, films aren’t meant to be dissected like so many cadavers at an autopsy — they are meant to be experienced as living, breathing entities. It’s the difference between a butterfly fluttering among sunbeams and flowers in the fullness of life, and one pinned into a scrapbook stinking of formaldehyde. It’s the difference between studying the sheet music of a symphony versus hearing it played by a full orchestra. Don’t think you’ve learned very much about John Ford if you’ve only followed along with these articles. You’ve only prepared yourself to learn, the way a traveler studies a map before heading off on a grand adventure. It’s in the film itself where the real magic happens.
Always remember: the more you bring to a film, the more it will give back to you. If you’ve stuck with me these past seven weeks, you now know a great deal about They Were Expendable. It’s time to put all that knowledge to use. You can Buy the DVD of Expendable for as low as $7.12 with free shipping. Alternately, you can add it to your Netflix queue. However you do it, get it in-house.
Then: make some popcorn, crack open a cold beer, put out the lights, pop in the DVD, and enjoy one of the great triumphs of classic American cinema.
Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, we’ll turn to an all-new year and an all-new film. Hope to see you there.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Tips & Feedback
26 Comments
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Big Hollywood, Mr. Pink. Mr. Pink said: For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Ford, John Wayne, and ‘They Were Expendable’ Part 7 http://tinyurl.com/yf88mas [...]
[...] the original post: For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Ford, John Wayne, and ‘They Were Expendable’ Part 7 This entry is filed under America – Blogs, Big Hollywood. You can follow any responses to this [...]
Dear Mr. Grin,
Thanks for a really wonderful and enlightening look at John Ford. I enjoyed every word!
JK in SoCal
Thank you.
I watched this movie last weekend free courtesy of our local library. None of the CGI effects we have grown to expect, but an incredible movie. If it was remade today, who could play the parts (ignoring the fact they would make it into some sort of The US got what it deserved slant) I highly recommend this movie… well done series and thanks
John Ford was one of a kind, we'll never see his like again. Nor a Capra, a Hitchcock, a Minnelli, a Van Dyke…
heck, where's the next Don Siegel, Richard Lester, John Boorman?
Instead, we have ex boyscout and perpetual adolescent Steven Spielberg.
Excellent series! Thanks! I'm looking forward to your next movie.
Excellent. I have about 30 John Ford films on DVD. THE greatest film director in American history. It's no surprise that film students no longer study Ford and his movies. Look at the product these "experts" are putting out today.
Thank you for this series. I kinda get the idea it was a labor of love and I admire that whole hearty, and you did a great service for us in presenting it and helping us understand and appreciate it..
I have many of Ford's films including these two, and rather than just let them sit on a shelf, I have shown them to my children and of course to all my grand children. Some times more than once. These two movies are favorites of my three grandsons. That may be the reason that one is currently in the Navy, while the middle grandson in the Air Force and my 13 year old grandson determined to be a United States Marine.
We as Conserviatives and Americans must counter the liberal education that our children and grand children are getting. We must pass on our values and the values of our grand fathers and their fathers.
If we do not it will be lost.
Papa Ray
Central (used to be West) Texas
Really enjoying this For Conservative Movie Lovers segment. Good stuff.
I received "Expendable" last night from Netflix. It's playing tonight.
Thank you for this outstanding series that reminds one and all of the character that was the man John Ford.
My father-in-law served with Ford's OSS unit. This last part of your series brings back many memories intertwined with stories we've heard, photos we preserve, and pieces of history we cherish. As a youngster, my husband spent many happy hours out at the Farm swimming in the pool, playing with the cannon, snooping around the barn and doing normal kid things. Each family was issued a key to the pool and we still have ours that has the emblem Field Photo Home embossed on one side, and my father-in-law's name engraved on the other. When the Farm was sold, its furnishings were sold too under the watchful eye of Dick Amador. Some of the pieces grace our home today, including a mahogany table with four chairs, two portholes from the bar, and the lock from the gate to the pool.
My father-in-law participated in the Memorial Day Services both at the Farm and later at the Motion Picture Home, where the chapel was moved and donated along with the proceeds from the sale. When he became ill, there was no bed available for him at the Home and he passed away in unfamiliar surroundings. When my mother-in-law became a long term care resident at the Motion Picture Home almost ten years ago, she still recognized the chapel even with her Alzheimer's. The Farm was such as important part of their life together after the war and it was so meaningful to stroll the grounds of the Home, while she talked of the Minnie the Mule they had given to the Farm and the people she knew there including Mr. Wayne.
How bittersweet the timing of Part 7, though. Earlier this year, the Motion Picture & Television Fund announced its intentions to close the Hospital and the Nursing Home. If this were to have taken place unchallenged, the John Ford Chapel would no longer be a place of refuge or worship for the most ill and infirm. Sadly, the residents who need long-term care now, and those who will need it in the future, are expendable to the present management and mindset. Mr. Grin, this goes against every grain of the moral fiber you attribute to John Ford.
Please join families, friends, industry workers, and those who value the ethics of men like John Ford in our courageous stance to preserve a longstanding promise. It's not too late. Thank you for signing the petition; additional articles and blogs about the serious situation can be found online.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/keeptheMPTFhomeo...
In 1973 I was still in High School, I had just turned 18, The first thing I did on my Birthday was to go down to selective Service and register for the Draft, I was proud of my Draft card, I was the only one at school that had one, I was made fun of a lot, but even then I could not stand my fellow classmates. I would graduate and go to College, just to leave school rather than put up with the Leftist education and the drugs. Went to flight school, Aviation has taken it on the chin in a big way the last few years. While unemployment is not fun, the up side is that I have plenty of time to watch DVD's And the Films of John Ford, looms large in my small collection. I did spring for a ticket or two this year, I did spend money to see The hurt locker , The Stoning Soraya M. and the 1939 restored HD "Wizard of Oz. I would go more, I just to go a lot, but so much of what I been seeing is such low grade junk, I have better uses for the 20 bucks.
There have been few, very few movies produced in the last twenty something years that are worth watching, let alone paying to watch.
Even TV has been disappointing for even more years. So disappointing that I have stopped watching it almost all together. The Internet and books and my grand children are my life now. Short as it might be.
Every American should consider what is now and what could be and how they can make it be better for their children and grand children. It takes little to see that our Nation is heading in the wrong way.
Pray or at least ask for guidance from those that love and cherish America.
Papa Ray
I've stuck with this the whole way. Got the movie in and cannot WAIT to watch it. (Have that planned for tomorrow with a few friends.)
This was wonderful, beginning to end. Thank you.
nolotrippen:
I dearly miss Spielberg the ex-boy scout and perpetual adolescent — he was far more of a principled artist and entertainer than Spielberg the award-laden billionaire producer who, aside from SCHINDLER'S LIST, hasn't made a great film in over a quarter century. Perhaps the single most tragic waste of talent in the history of cinema.
Papa Ray says:
> We as Conservatives and Americans must counter
> the liberal education that our children and grand children
> are getting. We must pass on our values and the values
> of our grand fathers and their fathers. If we do not it will be lost.
Yes, yes, a million times yes.
nkb:
Thanks for the interesting comments. If you care to expand on the stories you you've heard, I'm sure everyone here would be interested. And thanks for posting your petition link — that's a good cause and I hope it has some effect.
Leo, great job. You know I love Ford and his films. No one can touch him then, now or in the future. He was one of a kind and he had a love of this country and he wasn't ashamed of it. The entire baby-boomer generation which I am a part can never match up to those depression era babies that did it all. His films are here for all to see and learn and John Ford will be rediscovered when my generation starts to fade away and we would have left a mediocre legacy compared to Ford and his generation.
Leo, you are living proof that your generation has discovered and respect what a man like Ford accomplished. So Mr. Ford left his mark in you and many others like you. What you have to do is make films and follow where he left off. Remember the motto of the Seabees "CAN DO" So can you, if you can make a film as good as you write you will have a great career. Block out all the detractors, the negativity, people who tell you, 'it can't be done, NO, 'give it up' you're film stinks…. none of this matters. The only opinion you pay attention to is the guy that helps you to pay your rent and food.
You have written a wonderful series on John Ford and Big Hollywood would be foolish not to allow you to continue to write about other directors, stars, producers, movie moguls who shaped this American culture that the world fell in love with. The readers of BIG HOLLYWOOD need to hear the real history of these shakers and movers and you bring them to life.
I know so many people today in films who's knowledge is a complete black hole pre Star-Wars of 77. We need to tell people our history as the early scribes did in the ancient times. This is what BIG HOLLYWOOD was meant for, not just topical stories as they are unfolding but our past so we can guide the present into our future.
Keep writing these articles, I feel very confident that our past is in good hands with Leo Grin. Keep up the great work and you should take this six part article and put it on film and don't stop until one day in the future you drop dead on one of your own movie sets.
Spielberg is a mogul now. I´m sure John Ford at the height of his career didn´t need a political advisor.
Great article. I own and already watched the film. Can't wait to see what movie you'll talk about next week.
The works of Ford should be a required study for all film makers and fo the young up and coming writers and fim makers to not heard of these great people is sad and terrible. We have lost many of the great artists and people who lived in hisotry that kept our country strong and free. In their place we only get a handful of intelligent people.. the rest are totally ignorant..
I've never seen a John Ford movie that I know of, but this series has almost convinced me to try it.
WOW this a Great series. I really love the Movie and own most of John Waynes films and several John Ford Films. Leo I would love to see your take on John Milius. He, because of his beliefs and movies, appears to be almost blacklisted in Hollywood. Great series keep it going!
Some random thoughts …
During, my father-in-law served with the Field Photo branch, assigned to the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations, along with cameraman Jack Swain. Although most of his war stories were only shared with his Field Photo group, he told us that he went behind enemy lines; the B&W photos we have seem to confirm that. Each has a number on the reverse, and may be cataloged somewhere. We also have a flight log type book with cryptic entries suggesting dates and destinations. The men he served with and under became his friends for life. Apparently his friend [Chief] Richard J. Amador had a large collection of Ford memorabilia in his home, which had been built in the '20s for silent film star Mary Miles Minter (according to a People mag article).
From a kid's eye view, Mr. Ford was the man his dad called Pappy. At the Farm, the grown-ups stayed inside in the house or bar much of the time while the boys explored the barn. They were were fascinated by what must have been an electric flycatcher out there and discovered that if they put hay in the flycatcher, poof, smoke. Sometimes they dressed in cowboy outfits and played near the corrals. There was a friendly caretaker, Claude, who lived on the property and assisted the disabled residents.
My mother-in-law was impressed with Mr. Wayne. She recalls talking to him once in the kitchen and he insisted she call him Duke which she did thereafter. The parties, dances, and picnics with other members of the OSS and their invited friends and Hollywood guests made them feel that they were part of something special and that it was up to them to honor those who did not make it back. And they were, and they did.
As far as MPTF goes, this is Katzenberg's watch. Spielberg's name is also associated with the fund and he has been silent on the betrayal, or 'new model' of health care depending whose view one chooses. It's been termed a 'scandal,' so we'll see. As soon as the intended closure was announced, MPTF rushed to get its residents to 'relocate' to other facilities. The tactics used by management to get the infirm and elderly to move out were deplorable. Facing a pending lawsuit, smarter heads have prevailed for the time being. No doubt the legal opposition will have more weight than the petition, but the support is out there and greatly appreciated as MPTF seeks to rewrite history rather than preserve it.
You must be logged in to post a comment.