For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Ford, John Wayne, and ‘They Were Expendable’ Part 6

The casting of Robert Montgomery (1904–1981) in They Were Expendable was uncommonly appropriate. The suave, handsome actor made his name in debonair romantic comedies throughout the 1930s, but like John Ford he didn’t wait until America was dragged into war before enlisting. In 1940, fired up by the life-and-death struggles raging in Europe, he abandoned his M-G-M contract, went to France, and volunteered as an ambulance driver. Only a few weeks went by before he had it shot out from under him — one film magazine of the era reported (or perhaps exaggerated) that he narrowly avoided capture with the help of a French priest, and escaped the country mere hours before it fell to the Germans.

Back in the states he enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve, and over the next three years served in many capacities before finding his way to the Pacific theater, where he met John Bulkeley and became his executive officer. Montgomery commanded a PT boat in many battles, and eventually headed up to Normandy as an operations officer for a destroyer squadron. While preparing for D-Day, he remembered later, “I saw Bulkeley on his PT Boat and waved to him. There was another man on the bridge with him. I had no idea then it was Jack Ford.” (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | Tweet this |

Tags: Banana Wars, Bewitched (TV Show), blake edwards, Bosley Crowther, Bronze Star
Posted Nov 21st 2009 at 10:54 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story | 26542223 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/11/21/for-conservative-movie-lovers-john-ford-john-wayne-and-they-were-expendable-part-6/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+John+Ford%2C+John+Wayne%2C+and+%27They+Were+Expendable%27+Part+62009-11-21+18%3A54%3A15Leo+Grin

For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Ford, John Wayne, and ‘They Were Expendable’ Part 5

“I was just the paint for the palettes of Ford and Hawks.”

– John Wayne –

John Wayne was still young in 1944, only thirty-eight years old. And yet the major elements of his inimitable style were hardening into place. Perhaps no other actor in history has been so cognizant of using his body to express grand themes and timeless mythological underpinnings. Under Ford’s direction Wayne never just stands there, he poses, in ways and with effects that conjure up famous paintings and sculpture. When he fills the frame as Lieutenant Junior Grade Rusty Ryan in They Were Expendable, he becomes every man who ever fought a losing action in a war, who faced defeat with stoicism, who sacrificed for a greater good. In the history of film, John Wayne remains nonpareil in his use of presence to project subtext.

Little of that came naturally to the Duke — in his early films he’s tall and rangy and handsome, but with little of the gravity, focus, and dramatic weight that would come to typify his prime acting years. Those skills, and they were skills, were consciously learned over fifteen years of working with Ford and his old troupe of veteran actors. He watched the way they walked and carried themselves, studied the way they were directed, and began to divine the level of nuance Ford demanded. There’s a funny story from the making of Stagecoach (1939, John Wayne’s big coming-out party as an actor), where Wayne’s character was supposed to be washing his face after a hard day, and Ford started smacking him around screaming, “Christ Duke, wash you face like a man! You’re daubing it! You’re daubing it!” He was trying to teach Wayne that, when you are an actor in front of a camera, your every movement can and should mean something deeper than what is on the surface. The act of washing one’s face can be pedestrian, or it can be a sweeping gesture that evokes strength of character, or a relaxed demeanor, or a gentleness of heart. And those deft movements will unconsciously fire off all sorts of neurons in the brain of an audience. (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | Tweet this |

Tags: Al Jolson, Bataan, Corregidor, Dan Ford, Danny Borzage
Posted Nov 14th 2009 at 10:56 am in Classic Hollywood | 26249855 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/11/14/for-conservative-movie-lovers-john-ford-john-wayne-and-they-were-expendable-part-5/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+John+Ford%2C+John+Wayne%2C+and+%27They+Were+Expendable%27+Part+52009-11-14+18%3A56%3A38Leo+Grin

For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Ford, John Wayne, and ‘They Were Expendable’ Part 4

YouTube -- click here to watch in full-screen HD

“Close-ups, affectionate or noble, are held at leisure; long shots are sustained long after their narrative role has been performed. A marginal figure is suddenly dwelt on, lovingly enlarged to fill the center of the screen. Informed with heightened emotion, a single shot, unexpectedly interposed — a ragged line of men marching into nowhere, one of them playing a bugle-call on his harmonica — assumes a deeper significance than is given by its function in the story. This is one of the properties of poetry. They Were Expendable is a heroic poem.” – Lindsay Anderson

The wondrous shots about which Mr. Anderson writes were masterminded by John Ford, but they were brought to life on film by Joseph H. August (1890-1947), one of the great cinematographers of the age. It was August who memorably crafted the hauntingly beautiful images of night-fog and shadows for Ford’s The Informer (1935), which won Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Director. He also lensed now-classic movies like Gunga Din and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (both 1939), and during the war served as a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserves. (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | Tweet this |

Tags: American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), Breen Office, cinematography, Donna Reed, General Douglas MacArthur
Posted Nov 7th 2009 at 10:43 am in Classic Hollywood | 25840633 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/11/07/for-conservative-movie-lovers-john-ford-john-wayne-and-they-were-expendable-part-4/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+John+Ford%2C+John+Wayne%2C+and+%27They+Were+Expendable%27+Part+42009-11-07+18%3A43%3A17Leo+Grin