Ford, John (1895-1973)

Ford, John (1895-1973), American director and producer whose name is synonymous with Westerns. Born Sean Aloysius O'Fearna in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, he joined his writer-director-actor brother, Francis Ford, as a handyman in Hollywood while still in his teens. His first credits as a director are unclear, but they may belong to 1914 when, he claimed, he was also an extra in The Birth of a Nation. Straight Shooting (1917) seems to be the first genuine Ford film, but the first major example is The Iron Horse, made for Fox in 1924. He began to tackle more contemporary subjects, often with Irish themes, during the transition to sound.

Ford's four Oscars—still a record—for Best Direction show both his strengths and his weaknesses: The Informer (1935), an arty, German-derivative Dublin tale; The Grapes of Wrath (1940), an honest, realistic study of the Depression (from the novel by John Steinbeck); How Green Was My Valley (1941), a folksy rendering of a bestselling novel; and The Quiet Man (1952), a rumbustious but phoney Irish comedy.

Ford's post-war films show him freed from commercial pressures, but with the notable exceptions of The Searchers (1956), a Western, and The Last Hurrah (1958), a political fable, most of them are marred by cliché and sentimentality.