Steve Mayhew is the author of John Wayne: The Stardom Years and The Maynards of Margate, as well as co-writer on the blog Mostly Westerns. When I read his novel Connemara Days some years ago, I thought it was a cracking story and quickly wrote a very positive review for two separate American magazines that I was with at the time.
Steve came across them, contacted me through one of the publications and – although we’ve never met – we’ve corresponded regularly since, discovering a great many interests in common.
I’ve always thought that Connemara Days – set in County Mayo during the making of John Ford’s The Quiet Man -- would make a terrific mini-series. And indeed, it came close on one occasion to being filmed, with several actors picked out, including Stacy Keach as Ford himself. It fell through at the last moment, but I live in hope of someone else seeing the potential in it.
Meanwhile, Adam and I remain eternally grateful to Steve for his warm-hearted generosity in allowing Silent Cinema Galway to print his thesis on Ford’s silent-era years.
I believe that this monumental study will be referred to by both aficionados and serious Ford researchers for years to come.
- CHARLEY BRADY
STEVE MAYHEW
JOHN FORD SILENT FILMS THESIS
Chapter 4 – The Universal Years 1914-1917: Pre and Early Directing Career and Influences
Introduction
This chapter will consider the pre-directing career of John Ford, with emphasis on the early influences of filmmakers such as D.W. Griffith, and Ford’s older brother and mentor, Francis Ford. As will be shown, the influence of these directors is expressly identifiable in Ford’s early work. This section will also contextualise some of the materials presented in the following chapters by providing an overview of other criteria that overtly influenced Ford’s films. The chapter recognises the fact that Ford worked within the studio system at Universal, and explores how operating with a stock company, a corollary of being employed by a Hollywood studio, helped to shape Ford’s style.
Ford told Peter Bogdanovich that ‘his screen career began as a labourer and then as a third assistant director’ (in Bogdanovich, 1978, p.113). According to McBride, ‘he was especially proud of his ability as a cameraman […]. Ford developed his brilliant eye for composition and his knack for capturing action with documentary–style authenticity’ (McBride, 2003, p.81). Unfortunately, it is difficult to identify with any certainty the films on which Ford was employed as a cinematographer. This chapter will therefore concentrate more on Ford’s time as an actor, with emphasis on the genres that he was exposed to prior to becoming a director in his own right.
Ford will be forever associated with the Western form, despite his many forays into other genres. This chapter will therefore present an overview of the evolution of the Western up to the point that Ford started directing at Universal, and how certain aspects of the genre influenced his early films.
Overall, this chapter examines the ways in which the distinctive style and approach that can now, with hindsight, be labelled as proto-Fordian, was shaped by various external factors – individual mentors, genre conventions, and institutional frameworks – during the years 1914 to 1917.
Pre-Directing Career
There are numerous biographical accounts, along with John Ford’s version, of how he found himself in Hollywood and the circumstances that eventually led to him being given the opportunity to direct. As the newspaper editor Maxwell Scott famously remarked in Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend’. Seemingly taking this sentiment to heart, Ford embellished his own legend a number of times over the years, occasionally varying the story in which, in 1914, at the age of 20, he made his way across America to California from Portland, Maine, his place of birth, to join his older brother, Frank, in Hollywood. According to Ford biographer Joseph McBride, ‘Ford wanted people to believe that he hopped freights all the way to California, or that he made his way there working as a cowboy’ (McBride, 2003, p.75).[1]
In 1914 Ford’s older brother, who by this time had changed his name from Frank Feeney to Francis Ford, was under contract to Universal, and established as a successful actor and director in his own right. Following in his brother’s footsteps, Ford changed his name from John Martin Feeney to Jack Ford and went to work for Francis ‘as a carpenter, prop man, editor, assistant cameraman, assistant director or stunt man. He was whatever Frank wanted him to be’ (Eyman and Duncan, 2004, p.23).
According to Anthony Slide, Ford was at one point a prop boy for female director Lois Weber, ‘America’s first native born woman filmmaker, [and] the most important female director to have worked in the film industry’ (Slide, 1996, pp.29-30).[2] Slide maintains that ‘Ford never mentioned the Weber connection, and none of the countless writers who have glorified his career have chosen to note the Lois Weber relationship’ (Slide, 1996, p.38).[3] Joseph McBride does, however, refer to Weber in his later biography on Ford, stating that the director ‘would have had the chance to watch, if not work with, the pioneer feminist filmmaker Lois Weber’ (McBride, 2003, p.80). Although Ford never alluded to the time he spent with Weber, it is quite possible that she, along with the director’s mother, serves as a basis for the numerous strong female characters that permeate his films.
McBride states that ‘Ford was an actor or stuntman in no fewer than sixteen silent films’ (McBride, 2003, p.82). Both McBride and Bogdanovich credit Ford’s first official involvement with movies in the Francis Ford directed serial, Lucille Love – Girl of Mystery (1914), Bogdanovich suggesting that Ford ‘probably played bits in various chapters’ (Bogdanovich, 1978, p.113). However, I.G. Edmonds claims that ‘old stills, such as The Battle of Bull Run (Francis Ford, 1913), show that he was playing bit parts from the beginning’ (Edmonds, 1977, p.51).[4]
Joseph McBride also writes that Ford ‘told Gavin Lambert in the early 60s that the Civil War was his major interest in life, with movies secondary’ (McBride, 2003, p.595). Ford’s rumoured participation in The Battle of Bull Run (1913)[5] therefore indicates exposure to the Civil War genre before he became a director, and must have undoubtedly influenced, and possibly even encouraged, his lifelong obsession with the subject. As will be discussed in more detail in the later chapters, elements of the American Civil War movie pervade many of his later films, either as a major part of the narrative, as in The Scarlet Drop (1918), or as a minor reference, in the guise of the Union veteran in The Blue Eagle (1926).
After a bit part in another further serial for his brother, Lucille, The Waitress (Francis Ford,1914), Ford played a character, according to Joseph McBride, called Dopey (McBride, 2003, p.80), in a detective thriller entitled The Mysterious Rose (Francis Ford, 1914).[6] The theme of family, and Ford’s habit of keeping company on set with those he socialised with away from the studio, has its beginnings during his pre-directing period when he worked with his own relatives in Hollywood, and adopted known pseudonyms when in the employ of his brother.[7] The Mysterious Rose (1914) was also the first film in which he is credited as Jack Ford, a name he would continue to use for the next nine years.
In 1915, Ford found himself involved in the filming of another Civil War drama, The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915). Ford’s grandson, Dan Ford, stated that ‘he always claimed he was a [K]lansman in Birth of a Nation […] don’t know if that’s true but ‘‘Print the Legend’’. Hell, everybody in Hollywood was probably an extra in that film’ (email to author, 05/04/2011). One of Griffith’s biographers, Richard Schickel, questioned Ford on his appearance in the film, with Ford claiming that he ‘was one of the extras that rode with the [K]lan, and his bed sheet twisted and blinded him as he pounded along. He failed to see an overhanging tree branch, which swept him from the saddle and plunged him, unconscious, to the ground. He came to, with no less than Griffith kneeling over him, offering a brandy flask’ (Schickel, 1996, p.231). Eyman writes that the connection between Ford and Griffith ‘was independently confirmed by [actress] Mae Marsh [who claimed that] he was a little extra boy […], riding as a [K]lansman in the Ku
Fig. 4.1
Klux Klan’ (Eyman, 1999, p.50). Eyman and Duncan further suggest that the figure in the image (Fig. 4.1) from The Birth of a Nation (1915) could actually be Ford, stating that he was ‘constantly holding up his hood so that he could see with his glasses, much like the rider on the right’ (Eyman and Duncan, 2004, p.23).
Coincidentally, Ford would later use certain narrative aspects of The Birth of a Nation (1915), in particular the gathering of the Klans, in Straight Shooting (1917), a sequence discussed in more detail further on in this chapter. He also adopted the practice of referencing real-life characters in much the same way as Griffith uses Abraham Lincoln in The Birth of a Nation (1915), adding authenticity to the drama. Ford uses this device in films such as The Iron Horse (1924), The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), and They Were Expendable (1946), in which well-known figures such as Buffalo Bill, Abraham Lincoln and General MacArthur respectively appear.
Fig. 4.2
I.G. Edmonds writes of Ford’s acting career that ‘some of the old reviews credit him with considerable riding ability in his Westerns’ (Edmonds, 1977, p.51). One of those Westerns, again directed by Francis Ford, was entitled Three Bad Men and a Girl (1915) (Fig. 4.2). Essentially a comedy of mistaken identity, the narrative device of three characters as the main protagonists is a theme Ford would employ a number of times later on, in Three Mounted Men (1918), Marked Men (1919), 3 Bad Men (1926) and 3 Godfathers (1948). The figure in the foreground, lying prostrate in the form of a cross, evokes the religious imagery that would subsequently reverberate throughout John Ford’s work. Ford is identifiable in this scene as the figure third from the right, next to his brother Francis.
The Doorway of Destruction (Francis Ford, 1915), a drama based around the Sepoy Rebellion in colonial India, is an extremely significant film as far as Ford’s eventual directing career is concerned. It is the first recorded example of his involvement in a title dealing with Irish culture and identity, a topic he explored frequently. Ford played Frank Feeney, a character named after his older brother. In the film, ‘the British send the Irish on a suicide mission to break through the gates of a besieged city’ (Bogdanovich, 1978, p.114).
In between the production of The Broken Coin (Francis Ford, 1915), in which Ford took on the dual roles of both actor and assistant director (Fig. 4.3) – Ford is the second figure from the left, next to the camera in the back row, chewing on a handkerchief – and Peg O’ the Ring (Francis Ford, 1916) (Fig. 4.4), he and his brother Frank returned
Figs. 4.3 & 4.4
to their home town of Portland in Maine to make two one-reel films. According to McBride, ‘with Jack’s assistance, Frank directed and starred in a sea story, The Yellow Streak (1916), later renamed as Chicken-Hearted Jim, and a crime drama, The Lumber Yard Gang (1916), released as The Strong Arm Squad’ (McBride, 2003, p.87). Both films are presumed lost.
A local newspaper published two articles on the arrival of the Ford brothers back in their home-town in 1915, reinforcing the suggestion that the films were a true family affair. On the subject of Chicken-Hearted Jim (1916) and the involvement of the Ford family, the article states that Francis Ford assigned [himself] the leading role, and save for his brother, Jack Ford, assistant director for the Universal Film Co., and locally known as ‘Bill’ [sic; actually ‘Bull’] Feeney, there were no professional performers selected [. . .], Miss Cecil McLean, the pretty niece of Francis Ford, was named for the leading feminine role, and other relatives of Feeney, alias Ford, included (sic) his father and mother, were given parts [. . .], sisters Miss Josephine Feeney and Mrs. Mary McLean, the 6-year-old niece, little Mary McLean, and a score of friends of the Feeney family embraced in the cast, all amateurs, appearing for the first time before the camera. (The Portland Sunday Press and Portland Sunday Times, 1915)
These ‘home movies’ (McBride, 2003, p.87) emphasise the sense of family that imbue Ford’s work.
Footage from one of the last films Ford appeared in with his brother, The Bandit’s Wager (Francis Ford, 1916),[8] underlines once more the influence Francis Ford’s mode of expression had on the younger Ford’s eventual cinematic style. A plotline, described as that in which ‘a Westerner teaches his Eastern sister caution by pretending to be a notorious masked bandit’ (Bogdanovich, 1978, p.115), implies that the narrative at the very least touches upon the perennial Fordian theme of East versus West. The conflict between the past and modernity, which is discussed in more detail further on in the thesis, is highlighted through the differing methods of transportation associated with the male characters in the film. Whilst the bandit of the title, played by Francis Ford, is free to roam at will on his horse, the ability of the brother, played by John Ford, to travel, is severely compromised when his car
Fig. 4.5
runs out of petrol (Fig. 4.5). One sequence towards the end of the footage shows John Ford framed within the doorway of a house, pre-figuring a signature visual motif that would regularly feature in his own films (Fig. 4.6).
Fig. 4.6
Early Influences – Francis Ford
John Ford admitted to Peter Bogdanovich that one of his earliest influences was his brother Francis. ‘He was the only influence I ever had, working in pictures’ (in Bogdanovich, 1978, p.40), said Ford. It is difficult to determine how much of an influence Francis Ford actually did exert on his younger brother in terms of the various visual and thematic motifs that John Ford adopted over time, mainly due to the large number of silent Francis Ford-directed films that are now presumed lost.
Despite a certain amount of sibling rivalry,[9] Francis was prepared to acknowledge John Ford’s filmmaking expertise over that of his own. In his unpublished memoir, although mentioning his younger brother a mere three times, Francis Ford praises his direction of The Iron Horse (1924) and suggests that John Ford is ‘one of the greatest directors that ever lived’ (Ford, 1934, p.200).
Up to a certain point, the careers of both directors followed a similar trajectory. Francis Ford directed numerous Westerns at the beginning of his career for the producer Thomas Ince, with John Ford directing almost exclusively within the same genre for Carl Laemmle at Universal. The older brother eventually gravitated towards other forms, such as melodrama and historical adventures, as did John Ford during his initial engagement for the Fox Corporation in the 1920s. By the end of the decade though, their careers diverged, with the younger sibling constantly in demand as a studio director, whilst Francis Ford’s directing career was all but finished by the time sound had arrived.[10] He eked out a living up until his death in 1953, playing bit parts in his younger brother’s films, usually as the town alcoholic or local eccentric in films such as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and The Quiet Man (1952). Conversely, John Ford started out playing small character and bit parts in the films of Francis Ford during the silent era, therefore returning the favour to his older brother during the course of time.
Despite the failure of Francis Ford to capitalise on the success of his own directing career, there is some evidence to suggest that his style and approach to cinema did not go unnoticed by his younger brother. A close look at some of Francis Ford’s extant silent films reveals a mise-en-scène that, on occasion, can be regarded as proto-Fordian – that is, similar to the later, established style of John Ford – in construction and approach. Visual motifs, including the use of landscape and figures on the horizon are common, along with classically Fordian thematic concerns such as civilisation versus wilderness, a motif familiar from John Ford films as early as Hell Bent (1918) through to later titles such as My Darling Clementine (1946) and The Searchers (1956).
Custer’s Last Fight (Francis Ford, 1912) features a crudely filmed, yet evocative panorama of wilderness (Fig. 4.7), an example of the type of landscape shot that would not look out of place in John Ford’s 3 Bad Men (1926), or any of the later sound Westerns he directed. In the same film, Francis Ford also captures shots of riders in the distance snaking down the hillside towards the camera (Fig. 4.8); an early example of what would eventually become a signature visual motif for the younger Ford, as seen in films such as Straight Shooting (1917) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949).
Figs. 4.7 & 4.8
Tag Gallagher writes that Francis Ford anticipated his younger brother’s aesthetic, organising ‘shots in three planes of depth, with characters in the middle […]. [He also] liked to stage battles across vast distances—here with cannons firing from down in the valley and cavalry advancing along the two ridges near and far’ (Gallagher, 1975, pp.6-7). This direct influence of the older brother pre-echoes one of John Ford’s signature visual motifs of riders filmed against the skyline, an image incorporated in Blazing the Trail (Thomas Ince, 1912).[11] The younger Ford also tended to favour a composition featuring three characters, here seen utilised in the same film. The figures in the foreground have just presided over a funeral, an example of Francis Ford pre-empting John Ford’s use of ritual
Fig. 4.9
to validate community (Fig. 4.9). In the same film there is also a scene in which Francis Ford, as a half-breed Native American, rescues a white woman held prisoner in a tepee (Fig. 4.10), calling to mind a similar sequence from The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)[12] (Fig. 4.11). The comparison with the classic John Ford Western goes even further, as the rescue takes place prior to an attack on a Native American village by a posse of white settlers.[13]
Fig. 4.10 & 4.11
Another more well-known Fordian visual motif is that of characters framed by a doorway. In Blazing the Trail (1912), figures are placed within the frame of a man-made structure, the character placed halfway inside the cabin, indicating conflict between the wilderness and the civilisation that occupy the space either side of the doorway (Fig. 4.12).
Fig. 4.12
Although Francis Ford’s career flagged and tailed off before his work could develop into a fully-fledged, more mature and personal style, it could be argued on this evidence that he, as much as his brother, would also qualify as a suitable subject for consideration as an auteur operating during the early days of Hollywood.
Early Influences – D.W. Griffith
A number of writers and scholars such as Charles Silver, Joseph McBride, Tag Gallagher, and Lindsay Anderson all comment on the similarities between Griffith and Ford, specifically in terms of mise-en-scène. Gallagher makes the point that the climax to Ford’s Straight Shooting (1917) ‘derives directly from the gathering of the Klans in The Birth of a Nation (1915)’ (Gallagher, 1986, p.22), a point with which McBride also concurs (McBride, 2003, p.115). In both films, the creation of the rescue party is detailed through the conjoining of smaller gatherings that eventually unite to form a mobile force, the group portrayed as a cohesive unit intent on acting as one. Straight Shooting (1917) adopts the same rhythmic editing pattern employed by Griffith, before moving on to the climactic fight between the warring parties.
A viewing of the sequences of both Straight Shooting (1917) and The Birth of a Nation (1915) reveals, respectively, a pattern of intercutting between homesteaders under attack (Figs. 4.13 and 4.14), a view of the attackers as they surround the cabin (Figs. 4.15 & 4.16), then a further cut to the rescuers on their way to save the beleaguered occupants of the cabin (Figs. 4.17 & 4.18). Although not specifically touched upon by Ford scholars, the scene from The Birth of a Nation(1915) also intercuts with another two sequences, covering a riot by black Americans and the trials and tribulations of the kidnapped heroine (Figs. 4.19 & 4.20). This suggests, perhaps, that the young Ford was yet to push the boundaries with regard to the number of narrative threads that could be incorporated within one sequence.
Fig. 4.13 Fig. 4.14
Fig. 4.15 Fig. 4.16
Ford was more than prepared to acknowledge the contribution of Griffith to the art of film as a whole. Eyman and Duncan quote the director as saying that ‘D.W. Griffith influenced all of us. If it wasn’t for Griffith, we’d probably still be in the infantile phase of motion pictures’ (in Eyman and Duncan, 2004, p.23).[14] It is also conceded by Ford biographers that Griffith was a major influence on the director’s early work, most certainly in a visual, if not necessarily a narrative sense, although neither director had much in common when it came to the genre. According to biographer Richard Schickel, when referencing the Westerns that Griffith made for Biograph, ‘the broad vistas of the American West rarely moved him as they did many other directors’ (Schickel, 1996, p.410).
There is also a further trait that both Griffith and Ford have in common; a propensity for filming men in actual battle. In his book Hollywood: The Pioneers, Kevin Brownlow reproduces a photograph of Griffith in the front-line trenches of World War I, intent on capturing footage of a real battle (Fig. 4.21). Brownlow states in a caption to the image that Griffith ‘was the only American film director permitted to visit the front lines, and he was tremendously proud of the fact’ (Brownlow, 1979b, p.87). During World War II, Ford and his naval film unit were present at, and filmed, both the battle of Midway and the D-Day landings in France. Footage from the former event featured in The Battle of Midway (John Ford, 1942), and earned an Academy Award for best documentary of 1942.
Fig. 4.17 Fig. 4.18
Ford also displays a penchant for other visual motifs that can be detected in the films of Griffith. For example, a motif not commonly identified by other writers on Ford can be found in The Birth of a Nation (1915), when the
Fig. 4.19 Fig. 4.20
military are shown being waved off to war (Fig. 4.22); Griffith celebrates military ritual as Ford would do so many times later on in his films. Unlike Griffith, however, it is Ford who tends to emphasise those individuals who are left behind to ponder the fate of their loved ones, a constant thematic motif that Joseph McBride suggests could be
Fig. 4.21
related to the architecture of some of the buildings in Ford’s hometown of Portland. A number of the houses in Ford’s neighbourhood, were often possessed of a ‘widow’s walk’ (Fig. 4.23), ‘eloquent reminders of the days when the wives of sailors would wait anxiously behind the railings for their husbands’ return’ (McBride, 2003, p.30). McBride suggests that Ford’s ‘active imagination would have thrilled to echoes of historic events that occurred […] in bygone days’ (McBride, 2003, p.30), thus the emphasis by Ford on those women who are left behind as their friends, husbands or sons march off to an uncertain future.
Fig. 4.22
Fig. 4.23
Later chapters will also highlight other instances of Griffith’s influence upon Ford, something which eventually began to diminish towards the end of the 1920s.
Universal Studios
Griffith and Francis Ford were not the only influences on Ford, as he evolved from a hired hand, to a jobbing director, then to a filmmaker with a distinctive style of his own. This section will explore Ford’s early directing career at Universal Studios, and examine how one facet of studio policy in particular – the use of a stock company – became an integral component of the director’s style.
Andrew Laskos asserts that the golden years of Hollywood stretched from ‘1913 to 1945’ (in Pirie, 1981, p.16), suggesting that Ford’s arrival in 1914 was rather fortuitous for someone seeking entry into a young industry. The Universal and Fox studios were instrumental in establishing the conveyor-belt approach to filmmaking that stood the industry in good stead until the introduction of the Paramount Decree of the 1948, when the major studios were forced to separate distribution from production or face charges of price-fixing and anti-competitive practice.[15] Ford would eventually rise above the restrictions imposed through working in the highly industrialised environment of a Hollywood studio, mainly by integrating into the narrative of his films motifs and thematic patterns that reflected facets of his own personal background.
Universal had certainly adopted a viable streamlined method of production by the time Ford started directing in 1917, with the director employed as a hired hand for the studio in the beginning. Thomas Schatz suggests that Universal studio head Carl Laemmle recognised early on that, although each film had to be different from the one before, ‘certain production values had to be maintained’ (Schatz, 1988, p.20). Schatz further explains that ‘once the production process and story formula were established for their five-reel Westerns […] Ford could crank them out, often using the same footage for action scenes, with only routine adjustments in story and character’ (Schatz, 1988, p.20).
After working with his brother for the last time in his pre-directing career on the serial The Purple Mask (Francis Ford, 1916-17),[16] Ford was finally presented with the opportunity to direct. Joseph McBride points out that ‘the key part of John Ford’s creation myth – how he became a director – was a drastically reshaped version of what actually happened’ (McBride, 2003, p.88). Ford himself tells Bogdanovich that he was required to stand in for another director who failed to show up at the studio one day. Carl Laemmle was visiting from New York and subsequently witnessed Ford’s efforts. According to Ford, when ‘they needed somebody to direct a cheap picture of no consequence with Harry Carey, whose contract was running out’, Laemmle remembered the young assistant director and said, ‘Give Jack Ford the job – he yells good’’ (in Bogdanovich, 1978, p.38). Carey’s son, Harry Carey Jr., maintains that his father ‘was responsible for Ford being a director. He convinced the head of Universal, Carl Laemmle, to let Jack [Ford] direct his next movie (Carey, 1994, p.45).
All of this ignores the fact that Ford’s first directorial effort for Universal, The Tornado (1917) – a film the director later described as ‘just a bunch of stunts’ (in Bogdanovich, 1978, p.115) – did not feature Harry Carey at all. In fact, Ford himself was actually the star of the film. McBride is of the opinion that it was probably Francis Ford’s ‘intercession with Laemmle that brought Jack the opportunity to direct his first picture’ (McBride, 2003, p.90). Apparently, based on a scenario by Ford, The Tornado (1917) is ostensibly a Western, with Ford playing a character called ‘Jack Dayton, “No-gun man”’ (Bogdanovich, 1978, p.115). Calling upon the migrant experience of his own family, Ford’s character ‘uses the reward to bring his mother over from Ireland’ (Bogdanovich, 1978, p.115), ‘a prototypically Fordian situation if ever there was one’ (McBride, 2003, p.91). This narrative device was also used in Ford’s later Four Sons (1928).
Ford’s apprenticeship as a director of short Western features was a direct result of a studio policy with a stated aversion to the star system and first-run features. Schatz quotes an advertisement of 1915 in which ‘Laemmle extolled Universal as “the first producer to buck the star system – the ruinous practise that has been responsible for high-priced but low grade features”’ (Schatz, 1988, p.20).[17] Universal’s adherence to ‘programmers’ such as ‘oaters’, or low-grade Westerns, and cheap melodramas, meant that the studio could not match the commercial heights attained by the major studios such as MGM or Paramount.
Universal did not specifically abandon the production of ‘A’ features but, according to Schatz, ‘they comprised no more than a half-dozen of the literally hundreds of films that the studio cranked out each year’ (Schatz, 1988, p.22). During Ford’s time at Universal the most famous of the ‘A’ feature directors was Eric von Stroheim who, not too long after Ford had departed for Fox, also left the studio to work with larger budgets and on more prestige productions at MGM. Joseph McBride writes that, when courted by Fox studios in 1921, Ford ‘was attracted by the prospect of higher production budgets, by the wider range of material offered him and by a higher salary’ (McBride, 2003, p.119).
A natural consequence of Laemmle’s decree on maintenance of production values was the establishment, at a very early point in Ford’s career, of a stock company; a practice that the director continued to employ right up until his last feature film, Seven Women (1966). A close inspection of the credits for the films Ford directed for Universal, from The Scrapper (1917) through to his final film for the studio, Sure Fire (1921), reveals the same names in terms of both actors and crew appearing time and again during the four years he spent at Universal. Apart from the obvious example of Harry Carey, actors such as Hoot Gibson, Vester Pegg, Molly Malone, and J. Farrell McDonald[18] appear numerous times in Ford’s Universal titles.
Ford’s Universal Stock Company was a hybrid group, created by ‘adopting several members of the Harry Carey Stock Company into his own nascent acting troupe’ (McBride, 2003, p.107). A number of real cowboys featured as part of the company; Kevin Brownlow maintains that Universal ‘attracted more cowboys than any other studio because it made more Westerns’ (Brownlow, 1979a, p.291). The presence of cowboys-turned-actors in secondary roles, such as Ted Brooks and Jim Corey, infused Ford’s early Westerns with an air of authenticity that would be difficult to create with actors from a purely theatrical or cinematic background, although ironically Harry Carey originally hailed from New York.[19]
Ofcourse Ford was not the only director in the years leading up to the 1920s to frequently use the same cast and crew. During the silent era, William S. Hart either directed himself or appeared in a number of films with the same director, Lambert Hillyer. Tom Mix also worked on quite a few films for the director Lynn Reynolds. However, the frequent presence of the same character actors in Ford’s films creates the impression that they could almost be considered as a series of vignettes, or even episodes in a longer series of stories, rather than as separate entities in their own right. Lefty Hough, who worked for Ford on a number of his films as a production manager, stated, ‘If we got an actor that was a lousy actor, he would throw the plum role to one of his pals […] and this is why he got such great characterisation out of people that nobody else [did]’ (Interview with Lefty Hough, Lilly Library).
Fig. 4.24 Fig. 4.25
The role of the main female lead in Ford’s Universal Westerns for the years 1917 and 1918 alternated between the actresses Molly Malone (Fig. 4.24) and Neva Gerber (Fig. 4.25). Both embodied the purity and innocence that were mandatory characteristics for the girlfriend of the chief male protagonist. In Hell Bent (1918) however, Gerber’s character does hint at the possibility that she might fail to live up to the moral code of the Fordian woman when, despite representing civilisation and community, she is forced into taking a job as a saloon dancer. Similarly, in Bucking Broadway (1917), Molly Malone’s character allows herself to be tempted away from her father’s ranch, and marriage to Cheyenne Harry, in exchange for life in the big city. By the end of the narrative, the female characters are shown to embrace domesticity; a domesticity that they themselves impose upon the male protagonist as well.
On the numerous titles that Ford and Carey collaborated on at Universal, Andrew Sarris writes that ‘Ford always fostered a feeling of amiable continuity in his cinema. Once a player wanders into Ford’s world and settles down in it without undue temperament or histrionics, he […] may return as often as he wishes’ (Sarris, 1975, p.23). Vester Pegg, for example, appears in ten of Ford’s Universal films, from Cheyenne’s Pal (1917) through to Hell Bent (1918), invariably playing either the main villain, as in Straight Shooting (1917), or someone who occupies the
Fig. 4.26
outer fringes of respectability (Fig. 4.26). Among other titles, he was cast as the rich cattle buyer in Bucking Broadway (1917) who is instrumental in Molly Malone’s abandonment of home and friends, and as the cowardly outlaw brother of Neva Gerber in Hell Bent (1918).
Examination of the credits on Ford’s silent movies also reveals that the writers George Hively and Eugene B. Lewis were nominally responsible for the scenarios of twenty-one of the Universal titles directed by Ford, with cameramen Ben Reynolds and John W. Brown involved in twenty-nine films between them. The consistency of approach that comes from the adoption of a stock company such as this inevitably contributed towards the early establishment of a style and aesthetic found throughout Ford’s work. Although the contribution of these various writers cannot be ignored when considering the early evolution of a Fordian style – a reminder that questions of authorship in cinema involve a complex debate around the relationship between various individuals, rather than the work of a single person – it must be pointed out that the one true creative constant throughout the production of the Universal titles is obviously Ford himself.
The consistent use of the same actor or actress in numerous films effectively functions as cinematic shorthand for the introduction of characters to the audience. For example, the continual casting of Harry Carey as Cheyenne Harry means that the spectator is fully aware of the characteristics embodied by the main protagonist from the beginning of, if not prior to, the film itself. In immediately fulfilling expectation of character type, the director can rely upon audience engagement with the narrative from the start. Thus, with reference to actors such as Carey and John Wayne, it is almost a foregone conclusion that these are men of integrity and honour – the complex psychology of Wayne as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers perhaps the exception to this rule – whilst character actors such as Barry Fitzgerald and Victor McLaglen will more often than not fulfill their remit, in Ford’s later films, as comic relief, and as individuals fully acquainted with the vicissitudes of drink.
The employment of a stock acting company and crew therefore imparts to the spectator a sense of familiarity of the director’s worldview, making character types almost instantly identifiable whilst at the same time providing the audience with a sense of place. The Victor McLaglen of The Black Watch (1929) is a continuance of the lost soul he plays in Hangman’s House (1928), as much as the blustering bully of The Quiet Man (1952) recalls his role as the cavalry sergeant in both She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950). Ford’s world is recognisable, regardless of genre. His Westerns, war films, and Irish films are replete with characters and themes that are almost interchangeable between each form. Ford’s oeuvre is thus shaped by an element of familiarity and presumption that in turn primes the spectator to acknowledge and accept the nuances of the domain inhabited by Ford’s characters. This link between protagonists is enforced by John Wayne’s assertion to Harry Carey Jr. that, ‘I watched your dad since I was a kid. I copied Harry Carey. That’s where I learned to talk like I do; that’s where I learned many of my mannerisms. Watching your father’ (in McBride, 2003, p.102). To prove the point, Wayne famously posed in the doorway at the end of The Searchers (1956) (Fig. 4.28) with his left arm thrown across his right (Fig. 4.27) in homage to a gesture frequently adopted by Carey in films such as Straight Shooting (1917) (Fig. 4.28).
Fig. 4.27 Fig. 4.28
Anderson writes that the director’s films ‘at this early stage showed another inclination he was never to lose – that of working continuously with familiar and congenial collaborators [and] no doubt most of these associations began as a result of studio contracts; their continuance clearly witnesses Ford’s partiality for the tried and the familiar in his professional relationships’ (Lindsay, 1981, p.35). Anderson’s observation on Ford’s use of a stock company in the silent era could be taken one step further. It might be argued that, in working with the same group of people over a number of years, the importance of ritual and community in the making of Ford’s movies is subsequently transferred to the screen as well, as the director’s production experiences influenced the narrative drive of his film titles. The regularity of an established team of filmmakers perhaps has parallels with the communities of pioneer and military families that pervade the director’s oeuvre.
Evolution of the Western
This section will present a frame of reference for the genre Ford is most famously known for working in; bearing in mind that he directed so many Westerns at the beginning of his career. It should be noted, however, that the Western was in favour as a staple of Hollywood long before Ford stepped behind a camera to direct his first cowboy feature.
Edwin S. Porter’s early Western, The Great Train Robbery (1903), filmed in and around New Jersey, is generally accepted by both film scholars and historians to be one of the first films to feature a narrative story with multiple plot lines or, in the words of William Everson, ‘it was the first dramatically creative American film’ (Fenin and Everson, 1978, p.47). Tim Dirks challenges this popularly held view, maintaining that ‘the earliest cowboy films were Cripple Creek Bar Room Scene (James H. White, 1898) and Poker at Dawson City (James H. White, 1898)’ (Dirks, 2005, p.3). Dirks also mentions an earlier Edwin S. Porter Western entitled Romance of the Rails (1902) and ‘the 21-minute long Kit Carson (Wallace McCutcheon, 1903)’ (Dirks, 2005, p.3). Edward Buscombe concurs, valuably suggesting that ‘The Great Train Robbery (1903) was probably not the first developed Western narrative in the cinema. That distinction may be held by Kit Carson’ (1903) (Buscombe, 1991, p.23). Porter’s early contribution to the form is, however, acknowledged as the first Western to enjoy popularity with early cinema audiences.
The success of The Great Train Robbery (1903) helped to establish the genre from the outset, in the process creating the first Western cowboy star out of G.M. Anderson, or ‘Broncho Billy’ as he came to be known. Fenin and Everson note that Anderson went on to make ‘close to five hundred short Westerns, one-reelers at first, and then two-reelers’, further stating that Anderson’s films ‘established Westerns as a genre’ (Fenin and Everson, 1978, p.55). The young John Ford was obviously familiar with some of these very early Hollywood cowboy films. In his mid-teens, Ford ‘took a job as an usher [and] was able to see an enormous number of one and two-reel pictures in his first several years as a moviegoer’ (McBride, 2003, p.56). Joseph McBride also points out that Ford filmed a remake in 1919 of Anderson’s very first outing as ‘Broncho Billy’, Broncho Billy’s Redemption (Gilbert M. ‘Broncho Billy’ Anderson, 1910), as Marked Men (1919), with Harry Carey in the lead role. Ford was entranced ‘to find a story that transposed biblical iconography into a Western setting’ (McBride, 2003, p.113); so entranced in fact that Ford remade the film again almost thirty years later as 3 Godfathers (1948), featuring Carey’s son, Harry Carey Junior.[20]
When Ford arrived in California in 1914, Hollywood was producing literally hundreds of one and two-reel cowboy films a year. Producers such as Thomas Ince – the pioneer producer referred to by Marc Wanamaker as ‘the father of the Western’ (Wanamaker, 1981, p.2170) – concentrated solely on the genre. In 1911 Ince set up a studio of 18,000 acres north of Santa Monica, specifically to make Westerns. The Miller 101 Bison Ranch studio – or ‘Inceville’ as it quickly became known – was also home to hundreds of actors, real cowboys, Native Americans, dancers, and animals, all utilised in the production of Ince’s films. Ince produced and directed all of the Westerns made at 101 from 1911 to 1912, after which he ‘divided the direction between himself and Francis Ford’ (Wanamaker, 1981, p.2170).
According to Wanamaker, Ince eventually teamed up with Universal but had to give up the Bison 101 brand to the studio after a legal altercation regarding rights to the name, and after this worked under a new production company called KayBee. Inceville continued to expand, catering to an ever-increasing audience of Western fans. By 1914 the studio ‘contained a Spanish mission, a Dutch village and a Sioux camp’ with ‘520 inhabitants on the payroll’ (Wanamaker, 1981, p.2171). Ince also formed a partnership with D.W. Griffith, who, along with William S. Hart, ‘were to contribute more to the Western film [than anyone else]’ (Fenin and Everson, 1978, p.72). In fact, Ince’s company produced The Bargain (Reginald Baker, 1914), a film starring Hart which, according to Marc Wanamaker ‘established [him] as a major Western star’ (Wanamaker, 1981, p.2171).
Hart is the direct link between the screen persona of ‘Broncho Billy’, the first ‘good bad man’ screen cowboy, and Cheyenne Harry, the character played by Harry Carey in the early Ford Westerns.[21] Unlike other silent-era cowboy stars such as Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson, the characters portrayed by Hart and Carey possessed an element of villainy beneath the exterior of goodness promoted by the Western protagonists of the time. This in turn introduced a slightly more complex psychological layer of characterisation that was totally absent in the more flamboyant screen personalities of Mix and Gibson, hence the expression ‘good bad man’.
By the time Hart appeared on the scene in 1914, the Western was almost marginalised as a major Hollywood genre. Fenin and Everson state that, ‘by 1912 […] Westerns were losing ground again at the box office. The criticism of tired uniformity that had been flung at them five years earlier, and which was to be reiterated at regular intervals, became particularly sharp’ (Fenin and Everson, 1978, p.72), going on to suggest that Hart was the ‘man who, single-handed, rescued the Western film from the rut of mediocrity into which it had fallen’ (Fenin and Everson, 1978, p.75). Hart, a director as well as an actor, helped to define the image of the solipsistic loner and outsider that personified the Western hero right up until the decline of the genre in the early 1970s. Brad Weismann maintains that the actor ‘crafted an authoritative and compelling archetype, and created a moral/mythic context for film Westerns that still defines the genre today’ (Weismann, 2005, [n.p]).
Although the narratives of the early Westerns presented a simplistic view of the West based around the notion of good versus evil, this formula evolved in various ways before Ford ventured out to Hollywood. One twist was ‘for the hero himself to be a reformed outlaw, creating a moral and a physical tension’ (Fenin and Everson, 1978, p.30), a narrative trait Ford incorporated in a number of the Westerns he made with Harry Carey. Another additional development to the traditional narrative ‘was for the villain to have killed or seduced the hero’s sister’ (Fenin and Everson, 1978, p.31), a narrative device that Ford employed in two of his later silent films, 3 Bad Men (1926), and Hangman’s House (1928).
As for the onscreen depiction of the Native American figure, prior to 1910, ‘the Indian was seen as a hero almost as frequently as the white man, though already there was a difference [in his portrayal]. He seemed more of a symbol, less of an individual, than the cowboy, and he was presented in a more poetic, and often more tragic, light’ (Fenin and Everson, 1978, p.38). Films such as Comata the Sioux (D.W. Griffith, 1909), The Red Man’s View (D. W. Griffith, 1909), The Flight of Red Wing (Fred J. Balshofer), and The Squaw’s Revenge (Fred J. Balshofer, 1910) attempted to present the settling of the West from the Native American point of view. Schickel quotes a contemporary review of The Red Man’s View (1909), in which the film is recognised as ‘symbolic of the fate of the helpless Indian race as it has been forced to recede before the advancing white’ (Schickel, 1996, p.139).
The Balshofer films, produced by the Bison company, featured a Native American actress, Lillian Red Wing, who went on to star in a number of features directed by her husband, also of Native American descent, James Young Deer. Andrew Brodie Smith maintains that Young Deer ‘made Westerns in which his Indian protagonists acted to protect their communities and families rather than to uphold European civilisation. Interracial coupling was not always an issue’ (Smith, 2003, p.93), although, as Edward Buscombe suggests, ‘romance involving Indians, whether among themselves or across the racial divide, appeared to be increasingly problematic, as James Young Deer discovered’ (Buscombe, 2010, p.92). Eventually, according to Smith, ‘the industry no longer considered interracial sexual situations or the question of American Indian assimilation acceptable subjects’ (Smith, 2003, p.97), and by 1913 the notion of the vanishing Native American as anything other than a stereotypical savage had all but disappeared from the screen. From then on, Hollywood Westerns would adhere to the tenets of Manifest Destiny[22] rarely straying from a portrayal of the settling of the West that in turn deified the settler and discriminated against the indigenous natives.
The change in emphasis away from the depiction of the Native American as a psychologically rounded character imbued with nobility and grace has a direct bearing on the manner in which this particular ethnic group was presented in Ford’s early Westerns. As will be shown in the following chapters, Native Americans featured mainly as either objects of derision or, in some cases, were relegated to the background, serving no significance at all in terms of narrative and storyline.
Summary
It is obvious that the filmmaking practices and methods of Francis Ford and D.W. Griffith, along with the discipline and habits imposed by the working procedures of a corporate Hollywood film studio, made a huge impression on Ford. The autonomy, opportunity to experiment, and the ability to contribute towards the scenarios of the films he was to direct serve as the foundation upon which his later work, and the concept of John Ford the director as auteur, already begins to crystallise.
The next three chapters will take a close look at the director’s Universal and Fox films from the silent period, highlighting along the way the difference in style as Ford moved from one studio to the next, and how this distinction between working environments impacted his approach to filmmaking.
[1] McBride also quotes a story told by Ford himself in which he worked as a cowboy on a ranch whereupon ‘the boss’s daughter, believe it or not, fell in love with me. She was six-foot-two and weighed about 210 pounds, so I stole a horse and rode away […] and came to California’ (in McBride, 2003, p.75).
[2] ‘Lois Weber (1879-1939) was one of the most renowned directors-screenwriters in early Hollywood and at the time considered one of the “three great minds”, along with Griffith and DeMille […]. Weber’s career spanned three decades of extraordinary change in the US industry. She entered the industry at a time when women’s presence was valued and played an important role in legitimating Hollywood. Whether she was making films on social issues like poverty, drug addiction, and capital punishment or on contraception, marriage, and sexuality, Weber’s films consistently featured complex female characters in central roles.’ (Programme notes for 2012 Bologna Film Festival retrospective of Lois Weber.)
[3] A young Ford also worked for another well-known director at Universal, Allan Dwan. According to Dwan, ‘His brother Francis was working for me as an actor, and he asked me to give Jack a job. Jack was cutting his teeth in those days, just starting, and he became a property man. I remember him as a good, efficient one, too’ (in Bogdanovich, 1997, p.66).
[4] 2010, the University of South Carolina’s Newsfilm Library posted news of the discovery of surviving footage of this early Francis Ford film. According to the library, ‘Newsfilm was given a small collection of nitrate films that had been stored in a shed (the proverbial chicken coop) in Columbia, SC for untold decades. Of the films that survived one was a “lost” silent film about the Civil War, The Battle of Bull Run (1913), which features John Ford’s first-ever appearance on film.’ The University of South Carolina confirms that ‘The Battle of Bull Run (1913) was preserved by the gracious support of the American Film Institute. Our library still holds the nitrate print (tinted) as well as preservation elements’ (email to author from Greg Wilsbacher, Curator, Newsfilm Collections, 04/04/2011).
[5] Despite a close viewing of the remaining footage of The Battle of Bull Run (1913), it is extremely difficult to confirm with any conviction the appearance of John Ford in the film.
[6] The filmography in the Peter Bogdanovich book on Ford, however, states that Ford’s character is called ‘Bull’ Feeney (Bogdanovich, 1978, p.114), a name Ford was christened with when he played football at college. Eyman writes that ‘he must have been a bruiser; he soon won the nickname of Bull Feeney’ (Eyman, 1999, p.39).
[7] Another of John Ford’s older brothers, Edward, ‘worked for many years as one of his assistant directors [and] adopted the name of O’Fearna, partly to distinguish himself from his more successful younger brother’ (McBride, 2003, p.21).
[8] Approximately fifteen minutes of film from The Bandit’s Wager (1916) was discovered in the BFI archive by archivist John Oliver. The surviving footage was premiered at the Bologna Silent Film Festival in July 2009.
[9] Eyman writes that, ‘backing up stories of Francis’s lack of brotherly love was a Universal electrician […] who would assert that Francis often abused his younger brother on the set, verbally and, on occasion, physically’ (Eyman, 1999, p.52).
[10] A contemporary review of Hell Bent (1918) asserts that ‘Jack [Ford] seems to be after his brother’s laurels in the way of staging fights and chases, and Francis had better step lively’ (Picture Play, 1918, p.272).
[11] Gallagher maintains that Francis Ford’s ‘directorial contributions were concealed by Ince’s habit of claiming total credit for the work of others [and] it is arguable, indeed probable, that Francis Ford should be credited as principal author of most of the more significant 101 Bisons (Ince’s production company)’ (Gallagher, 1975, p.14).
[12] This scene does not appear in the original source novel of The Searchers by Alan LeMay.
[13] Eyman concurs, stating that Blazing the Trail (1912) ‘contains plot elements and compositions that Jack (John Ford) would use as late as The Searchers (1956)’ (Eyman, 1999, p.42).
[14] McBride records that Ford was among ‘only six people who paid respects to Griffith at the funeral home’ (McBride, 2003, p.428) when the director died in 1948.
[15] Richard Maltby writes that, ‘in 1948, the US Supreme Court finally ruled that the majors’ control of distribution and first-run exhibition constituted an illegal monopoly, and ordered the separation of exhibition from production-distribution. This decision (known as the Paramount case decision) signalled the end of the studio system of production, and with it the beginning of the end of the Classical Hollywood cinema’ (Maltby, 1997, p.71).
[16] Joseph McBride states that ‘’Jack [Ford] did double duty as a performer and crewman [in] The Purple Mask’ (McBride, 2003, p.82), but Bogdanovich writes ‘no evidence could be found to prove [that Ford worked on the film]’ (Bogdanovich, 1978, p.115).
[17] Despite Laemmle’s professed antipathy towards the star system, ‘it is he who is credited – for better or for worse – with the making of the first “star”’ (Article on Universal Studios, Internal MOMA publication, author unknown), with reference to the silent film actress Florence Lawrence.
[18] J. Farrell McDonald appeared in over twenty of Ford’s films, including roles in the director’s later sound films, making a final unaccredited appearance for the director in When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950).
[19] McBride writes that ‘Henry Dewitt Carey, known as “the Bronx Cowboy”, had a most unusual background for a Western star. The son of a wealthy New York judge, he studied law […] while recuperating from pneumonia [and] wrote himself a stage vehicle called Montana. The play became a runaway hit, which he modestly attributed to the fact that he rode an actual horse on stage. In 1911, Carey drifted into the movies, playing tough-guy roles in New York for D.W. Griffith’s Biography Company’ (McBride, 2003, p.99).
[20] Harry Carey starred in an earlier version for Universal of The Three Godfathers (1916), directed by Edward LeSaint.
[21] Fenin and Everson suggest that, ‘in actual fact, Carey’s taciturn characterisation predates Hart’s in that he was active in early Biograph Westerns for Griffith’ (Fenin and Everson, 1978, p.150).
[22] On the subject of Manifest Destiny, Edward Buscombe writes that ‘the phrase was first coined in 1845 by John L. O’Sullivan […]. O’Sullivan wrote of “our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions”’ (Buscombe, 1991, pp.180-181).