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- [00:01]
Katharine Hepburn
Not all meals are created equal. For instance, breakfast has the spicy egg McMuffin for a limited time. And lunch doesn't.
- [00:11]
Ben Mankiewicz
McDonald's. Breakfast comes first. You're very odd now, I think.
- [00:17]
John Ford
Very odd.
- [00:18]
Ben Mankiewicz
You're odd. O, double D, O, double d, odd. In 1973, an aging movie star went to Palm Springs to visit a dying Hollywood director. How long have we known each other? 40 years. The actress was Katherine Hepper. The director, John Ford. There were rumors they'd once had an affair. You're very devious. So people were scared. I think they were very scared of you.
- [00:53]
John Ford
Good.
- [00:57]
Ben Mankiewicz
Hepburn was right. John Ford was sometimes scary and often odd. He constantly chewed on a handkerchief.
- [01:06]
John Ford
Can you see my hanky?
- [01:08]
Ben Mankiewicz
He could be reckless on set.
- [01:10]
Ward Bond
We blew him up one time.
- [01:15]
Ben Mankiewicz
Ford didn't attend a single award ceremony, though he won more Oscars than any director in history. The winner is John ford. John Ford. Mr. John Ford. But John Ford was also undeniably the most influential filmmaker of the 20th century. He directed more than 100 movies. He was famous for his westerns. Films like Stagecoach, the Searchers. And classics like the Grapes of Wrath. Fella ain't got a soul of his own. Just little piece of a big soul. If you ask some of the greatest directors of all time. Which director they turn to for inspiration. Martin Scorsese, Orson Welles, Steven Spielberg. Nearly all of them point to John Ford.
- [02:02]
John Ford
I try to write a John Ford film. One or two before I start every movie.
- [02:07]
Ben Mankiewicz
There's something about Ford that nobody else has.
- [02:09]
Katharine Hepburn
I love the old masters.
- [02:11]
Ben Mankiewicz
By which I mean John Ford, John Ford and John Ford. But ask Ford how he felt about making movies.
- [02:19]
John Ford
A lot of people ask me, what is a secret. I never cared that much. Just a way of making a living.
- [02:29]
Ben Mankiewicz
That's the thing about John Ford. You could never quite pin him down. He was a man of many contradictions. And a consummate liar. We all knew Ford was a bit of a bullshitter, right? The guy was a big liar.
- [02:43]
John Ford
And with every passing year. The lies were becoming grander and grander.
- [02:50]
Ben Mankiewicz
You had a quite elaborate land. There are only a few recorded interviews. Ford, he hated doing them. Cut. On the other hand, he loved badgering reporters.
- [03:00]
John Ford
I'll do deference you? I think it's stupid of you to ask. Continue to the next question.
- [03:06]
Ben Mankiewicz
In fact, John Ford bullied pretty much everyone.
- [03:10]
John Ford
He was a very sentimental man.
- [03:12]
Katharine Hepburn
But he could be brutal if you let him. There was tension always.
- [03:17]
Ben Mankiewicz
Life is too short. I'll never work for that son of a bitch ever again.
- [03:20]
Katharine Hepburn
He didn't speak to me for two years. I don't know to this day why he didn't.
- [03:25]
Ben Mankiewicz
Even his closest friends weren't spared.
- [03:27]
Katharine Hepburn
Pilgrim, you're going to need a couple of stitches.
- [03:30]
Ben Mankiewicz
Ford and John Wayne made 14 films together. They vacationed together. Ford was godfather to his sons.
- [03:37]
John Ford
What are you getting paid for?
- [03:39]
Ben Mankiewicz
But on set, he tormented Wayne.
- [03:42]
John Ford
Rub your butt all day long.
- [03:43]
Ben Mankiewicz
He badgered him and he'd take it.
- [03:46]
Ward Bond
Oh, for God's sakes, Duke.
- [03:48]
Katharine Hepburn
When are you gonna learn how to act?
- [03:49]
Ward Bond
God almighty, you're the worst.
- [03:54]
Ben Mankiewicz
Still, many of Hollywood's best actors followed Ford from film to film. I always feel it was like a badge of merit to be able to say I was in the John Ford stock company. So many of us who love movies have tried to understand Ford. Not only because of his remarkable work, but because his films helped shape our image of this country. John Ford's idea of America became the idea of America. John Ford is Walt Whitman. John Ford is Thomas Edison. John Ford is. John Ford is American life. We are still living in the world John Ford created. On screen.
- [04:43]
Katharine Hepburn
Out here, a man settles his own problems.
- [04:45]
Ben Mankiewicz
Wherever there's a cop beating up a guy, I'll be there.
- [04:49]
Katharine Hepburn
What you all need is a good stiff drink. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
- [04:59]
Ben Mankiewicz
Despite all that influence, all that success, John Ford remains something of a puzzle. Even Katharine Hepburn, who knew him better than most, even she, could never quite understand the man. He was very mysterious. I could never figure him out. And I still seek the answer, you see. So I still hope to find the truth about it. This season on the Plot Thickens. I also hope to do just that. Get to the truth about John Ford. I'm your host, Ben Mankiewicz. You're listening to the Plot Thickens, a podcast from Turner Classic Movies. Each season we bring you an in depth story about the movies and the people who make them. This season we partnered with the audio company Novel to bring you decoding John Ford. To understand Ford and his movies, we traveled literally around the world into film vaults and private tape libraries, pouring through hundreds of hours of films, footage and interviews with some of Hollywood's biggest stars. Maureen o', Hara, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda. I've never had more fun in my life than on locations with Ford. You walked on a John Ford set and you had a feeling that something great was happening.
- [06:31]
Katharine Hepburn
Then I suddenly realized that this was probably the finest artist I'd ever known.
- [06:37]
Ben Mankiewicz
I even went on a mission around the world to find a lost John Ford film. I have been looking and looking for this film. And I have never found anything.
- [06:47]
Katharine Hepburn
What it would mean to find that.
- [06:49]
Ben Mankiewicz
Footage is literally incalculable. What an incredible discovery it would be. Do you think this is it?
- [06:56]
John Ford
Is this John Ford's film?
- [07:00]
Ben Mankiewicz
This season we're diving into the mystery of John Ford to make sense of the myths, the contradictions and the movies he left behind. This is episode one. Go west, young man. If you're going to try to understand John Ford, maybe we should start at the beginning. As he did in an interview with his grandson, Dan Ford.
- [07:31]
John Ford
In 1895. February 1st. My father bore me the baptism fount full of joy and Jameson Christmas shone. Aloysius of Fair.
- [07:44]
Ben Mankiewicz
The name on the birth certificate is not Sean Aloysius o'. Fearna. It's much simpler than that. John Martin Feeney. And the date he gives isn't right either. He would take on many more names throughout the years. Bull Feeney. Coach Jack Ford. John Ford. Papa Ford. Admiral Ford. Pappy. The old man, the man of many names was born in a small village in Galway. In a classic stone cottage with a thatched roof overlooking the rocky shores of. Okay, sorry. No, that's not true either. When it comes to the facts of his life, there's what we know to be true. And then there's what John Ford wanted us to think was true. Ford was the youngest of 11 children. Though Ford often boosted the figure. 13.
- [08:44]
John Ford
I'm the youngest of 13 children, which is normal size for an Irish Catholic family. I came after a succession of girls. I had a very, very happy childhood.
- [08:54]
Ben Mankiewicz
Apologies that Ford isn't always easy to understand. In these tapes he often had something in his mouth when he spoke. A pipe or his signature white handkerchief that he had a habit of chewing. He was born to Irish parents in a mostly Irish and Italian working class neighborhood in Portland, Maine. His dad was a bootlegger, ran a local saloon. He came to the US as a teenager after the potato famine. John's parents infused a strong Irish identity in their children. That's why he would sometimes lie and tell people he was born in Ireland. He loved being Irish. But John didn't actually set foot in Ireland until his dad took him when he was 11 or 12 on a trip that awakened something in young John. They sailed for a week across the Atlantic. And when the boat docked at the port of Galway, they piled into a car. It was a bumpy 10 mile ride out to their ancestral village. Village of spittle out the window. Grass and moss everywhere, thick as a carpet. Thatched cottages dotting the countryside and so much sky.
- [10:21]
John Ford
And I became madly in love with the country. It was beautiful. Entirely different from anything we had in America. I was amazed at the emerald green, the colors, the rivers, the sea.
- [10:34]
Ben Mankiewicz
They stayed long enough that John Ford's father even enrolled him in school.
- [10:38]
John Ford
Going to an artist school is a great experience. By going back and forth to the school and wandering through that marvelous scenery really imbued me with a great love of Iowa at that time. I must have acquired, I say this modestly, I must have acquired a great eye for scenery.
- [10:57]
Ben Mankiewicz
Ford doesn't need to be modest about that. He went on to create some of the most beautiful shots ever put on film. On the last night of their trip to Spittle, the village held a CE a traditional Irish party with music and dancing. Young John drank it all in.
- [11:18]
John Ford
Everybody attended. Women, children, children, boys and girls. It's quite a celebration.
- [11:24]
Ben Mankiewicz
The villagers drank a local moonshine called Puccin.
- [11:28]
John Ford
Very powerful, very potent drink. And we had a couple of fiddlers and accordion. They danced the Irish dances which were quite classic and very interesting. And I think the celebration lasted until dawn.
- [11:43]
Ben Mankiewicz
The Cayley left an impression on John. These were his people dancing, cracking jokes, telling stories. The music, the booze, the beauty. It was a feeling he would strive to recreate for the rest of his life. On screen and off. When they returned home to his normal life in Portland. The usual routine of school chores, playing with friends. John discovered something that brought back some of the magic he felt in Ireland. Something that consumed him from for the rest of his life. Motion pictures. Portland's first movie theater, what was then called a nickelodeon was a short trolley ride away from John's house on Sheridan Street. It was a straight shot down Congress there, just off the trolley line, sandwiched between an ice cream shop and a roller rink. A light up marquee spelled out the name of John Ford's first favorite spot. The nickel.
- [12:48]
John Ford
I was hooked on movies. Whenever I got a nickel, I went to the nickelodeon. I sat through the entire program two or three times. And the glamour and the glitter of Hollywood always appealed to me.
- [13:02]
Ben Mankiewicz
John Ford was entranced. He began to dream of making his own movies. It was there in that nickelodeon that John got his first lead on how he might make it to Hollywood. John had an older brother named Francis. 12 years older. Francis left home about a decade earlier. He essentially disappeared. The family caught snippets here and there of what he was up to. But he'd largely become a mystery to them. Then one day John and his mother went to the nickelodeon to Catch a Cowboys and Indians picture. The lights dimmed and the movie began.
- [13:47]
Katharine Hepburn
And all of a sudden, they saw their older son and older brother playing a role in the movies.
- [13:55]
Ben Mankiewicz
That's historian Michael Connelly. In all the scenarios the family could have imagined of where he'd gone. Francis Feeney of Portland, Maine, making it to the silver screen. It was all just so improbable.
- [14:10]
Katharine Hepburn
But at the end of the movie, when the credit came up, it was Francis Ford. They wanted to know what the heck was going on. He had been away for a long time. They lost track of him, and they had to find him.
- [14:25]
Ben Mankiewicz
The family tracked Francis down. He was in the picture business. He soon returned home for a visit, bringing with him all the trappings of Hollywood.
- [14:37]
Katharine Hepburn
He was driving the equivalent of a Packard, and he had a raccoon coat. And he was quite the dandy. So the conquering hero returned.
- [14:47]
Ben Mankiewicz
Francis told them all about Hollywood, about moviemaking, about a different life on the other side of the country. It felt like a world away for John, but it was a world he desperately wanted to be part of. Now, with Francis help, it seemed possible. Making movies was hardly an obvious path for either of the Feeney brothers. The Irish of Portland, Maine, didn't exactly celebrate men getting in touch with their creative side.
- [15:19]
Katharine Hepburn
It's a funny culture. There's a duality to it.
- [15:23]
Ben Mankiewicz
Ireland is a country known for poetry and song and beauty, but also, at least back then, for a pretty narrowly defined idea of what it meant to be a man.
- [15:35]
Katharine Hepburn
They worshiped boxers, wrestlers, football, contact sports. Boxing in particular was very important to the Irish community.
- [15:49]
Ben Mankiewicz
In the Feeney family, there was no higher calling for a man than to be a warrior. Generations of Feeney men were in the military. They were celebrated for it. It's even baked right into the family name.
- [16:03]
Katharine Hepburn
A lot of names have a connection with fighting. John Ford's name, Feeney, comes from the Gaelic ophina, which means a soldier or warrior.
- [16:17]
Ben Mankiewicz
But John Ford was not a paragon of Irish masculinity. He was a sickly kid. Spent a whole year in bed with diphtheria when he was 12. And when he went back to school, he had an awkwardness that he would never quite shake. It didn't help that he had terrible eyesight and wore thick glasses. So in a move that would echo across his life, John started to overcompensate. He tried to hide his tender center inside an extra hard shell. He joined the high school football team and quickly earned a reputation. He would charge like a bull into any obstacle in his path. He claimed to have broken his nose in three places in his very first game. That's how he earned his nickname, Bull Feeney. John was even recruited by colleges to play football. He chose the University of Maine. But once he got there, he grew restless.
- [17:20]
John Ford
I was getting more and more disgusted with campus life. I didn't like kicking the campus dust around.
- [17:29]
Ben Mankiewicz
As he was kicking the dust around, he started to notice something he'd never really experienced before. Portland had been filled with immigrants. They all seemed to get along for the most part. But the university was different.
- [17:43]
John Ford
It was all strange and new to me. Despite the fact this is the state of Maine. There were some racial and religious prejudice there.
- [17:53]
Ben Mankiewicz
He got a job in the school cafeteria. He told Katharine Hepburn about this later in his life.
- [18:00]
John Ford
And one night I was waiting on table, there was a pimply faced horrible boy, the son of wealthy parents. So I was sloshing this beef around and I heard this punk yelling out, hey shanty, let me have my dinner. Now we don't mind being called a Mick or Paddy but we don't like to be called shanty Irish. So as you know, I have a very agreeable nature. So I let him have it right in the mush through the Disney hit him right in the face.
- [18:38]
Ben Mankiewicz
By the way, the University of Maine has no record of John Ford attending. John continued to find solace at the movies. Sometimes in those years, John's brother Francis reached out from Hollywood.
- [18:55]
John Ford
It I was hipped on movies and my brother had sent a letter saying that I wanted to come out, he could finish me with a job.
- [19:05]
Ben Mankiewicz
Looking at Francis's invitation to join him in Hollywood versus working in a college cafeteria, it was a no brainer. John packed his bags for the west coast. Coming up, John Ford gets his first taste of showbiz as a stuntman.
- [19:27]
Ward Bond
We blew him up one time. Wonder he didn't kill him.
- [19:38]
John Wayne
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- [20:10]
Ben Mankiewicz
Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [20:30]
John Wayne
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- [20:46]
John Ford
So I went out to Hollywood. Mother gave me a big box of sandwiches.
- [20:51]
Ben Mankiewicz
And you took the train?
- [20:52]
John Ford
I took a train. Tourist on our third class coach. Whatever I bought, yeah.
- [21:00]
Ben Mankiewicz
The journey from New England to California took over a week. When John Ford got off that train, he was 20 years old, broke and hungry. He couldn't even afford to buy dinner. His last night on the train he had no college education and no idea if this gamble would pay off. He did though have one advantage. His big brother Francis, who was waiting at the train station for his baby brother in a fancy convertible. A glamorous lady sat in the front seat. Grace Kennard, one of the first women directors. Together she and Francis had written, directed and starred in dozens of films for Universal, making them famous around the world. Francis Ford was the king of early Hollywood. He was the number one star, producer, director. That's film professor Katherine Fuller Seely. She's writing a book about Francis Ford. He was a pretty intimidating figure by this point. Very successful running a company. He knew how to be in charge. Francis drove John up the palm lined boulevards of downtown Los Angeles toward Universal City, the center of the silent movie industry. A very different version of Hollywood than the one we know today.
- [22:23]
Katharine Hepburn
Yes, this is Hollywood of long ago sleepy suburb of simple homes and modest fruit farms. Its climate suddenly attracts moguls of the infant motion picture industry looking for good place to shoot few fair weather flickers.
- [22:37]
Ward Bond
Universal City, let me tell you, in those days was a very exciting place. This was a city in itself.
- [22:46]
Ben Mankiewicz
Lefty Huff was a prop man working for Francis at the time. If you needed a rope or a sword in your scene, Lefty was your man, he remembers. Universal City is a pretty wild place place. It covered 230 acres and was home to dozens of production companies. It even had its own zoo where they kept the animals that starred in popular silent comedies like Beasts of the Jungle and the Boxing Kangaroo.
- [23:16]
Ward Bond
Something was happening all the time, the animal arena. There was somebody would say a tiger got up, you know. So this Was an exciting planes. A very exciting place.
- [23:29]
Katharine Hepburn
Yes, this is Hollywood Orange Grove of 1887 Los Angeles suburb in 1910. Today the capital city of the motion picture world.
- [23:38]
Ben Mankiewicz
There was a sense in old Hollywood that anything was possible out here. Far beyond the reach of Yankee industrialists. Hollywood was a place with room for all kinds of people. Including immigrants who weren't always welcomed elsewhere. Most of the men we think of as the pioneering movie moguls were immigrants. This is film historian Leonard Malton. Most of them were Jewish. Most came here with no clear cut notion of what they might do in America. Except that America was the land of opportunity. It was a world away from being called a shanty Irish. As his brother's fancy car passed by the studio and climbed higher and higher into the hills, perhaps John could feel how a rough Irish kid from New England could make his way here. John and his siblings had grown up with two other families. Almost 30 kids between them crammed into a three story apartment. But when the car pulled up to Frances new home had a big magnificent.
- [24:47]
John Ford
House up in Hollywood Hill. A big star and a big movie actor at that time he was doing very well.
- [24:55]
Ben Mankiewicz
Francis had a commanding presence. Tall, broad shouldered with the chiseled features and deep set eyes of a matinee idol. Sometime during his lost years he'd worked as a tailor and it showed. His bespoke suits fit him like a second skin. Next to Francis, John was a schlub. The New York Times once described him as wearing mangy old pants, a sloppy jacket and shoes with holes. His signature accessory was a white handkerchief which he chewed all the time. He was a character and he always had a handkerchief hanging out of his mouth. His handkerchief which he chewed on a lot because he slobbered almost hypnotic chewing on the handkerchief. If you took his picture when he.
- [25:42]
John Ford
Was chewing on the handkerchief, boy, you're in big trouble.
- [25:44]
Ben Mankiewicz
He'd be nervous and upset about something and he'd be chewing on even when he was being interviewed as an old man. Ford loved his hanky.
- [25:55]
John Ford
When you see my hanky, what the hell did I do with it?
- [25:57]
Ben Mankiewicz
Now John was self conscious about his looks. The two brothers both stood roughly 6ft tall. But you can see in a family photo from the time that next to Francis, John seems hunched and small, big ears jutting out from a mop of thick dark hair. And it wasn't just their physical appearance that made the two so different. Francis was all charm and charisma. John on the other hand, he was very scared around women. I think he was very Shy, he was not ever the man about town Historian Kathy Seeley again. And I think he was also very sensitive. He liked poetry. But he, John, had to build up a wall around himself that I don't think Francis ever had to do. The prop man, Lefty Huff, saw this sibling rivalry play out.
- [26:51]
Ward Bond
Francis was big. Jack was nothing. Francis, I think, kept Ford away, pushed him away a little bit.
- [27:01]
Ben Mankiewicz
Even though Francis brought John to Hollywood, he seemed determined to show his little brother where he ranked in this brave new world.
- [27:13]
John Ford
Frank got me a job as a ditch digger at Universal and I loved it.
- [27:19]
Ben Mankiewicz
If you didn't catch that, yes, that's John Ford saying he was happy to dig ditches. He didn't care what job Francis gave him as long as he could be near the action, the glitz, he was happy.
- [27:32]
John Ford
I love the glamour, all the glitter. Just loved it.
- [27:36]
Ben Mankiewicz
John had been going by his given last name, Feeny. But when his first check came, he realized again how much he lived in the shadow of his famous brother, Francis Ford.
- [27:48]
John Ford
Everybody started calling me Ford, at which I objected. But when I see my first check, it was made out to Jack Ford. I said, what the hell? So since then, I mean, I become Jack Ford.
- [28:04]
Ben Mankiewicz
Newly minted Jack Ford tried his hand at acting yet again. Francis gave him that job and his first role, a character named Dopey. Mostly, though, Francis hired John to be his body double, doing all the stunts Francis didn't want to do himself. John fell off horses for Francis. He jumped onto moving trains.
- [28:28]
Ward Bond
We blew him up one time.
- [28:30]
Ben Mankiewicz
That's prop man Lefty Huff again. On the set of a movie about the Civil War, Francis asked John to step in for him during a scene. Sounded simple enough.
- [28:41]
Ward Bond
Francis was supposed to be a Confederate general sitting behind a desk.
- [28:47]
Ben Mankiewicz
But Francis didn't tell John the whole story. He sent his brother to go pick up props for the stunt.
- [28:53]
Ward Bond
While he was gone, we wired up a dynamite, the desk and everything and blew him up and had him in the hospital, I think for about three months, sworn, if he didn't kill him.
- [29:07]
Ben Mankiewicz
The brothers laughed off the prank, or so Francis thought. John never forgot it. He did what he often did when he felt vulnerable. He closed himself off.
- [29:21]
Ward Bond
He was a hell of a sworn cookie young fellow, but he's a mysterious sort of a guy. Nobody ever got close to him, not even his own brothers.
- [29:33]
Ben Mankiewicz
John's earliest lesson in Hollywood seemed to be that even a brother can't fully be trusted. John never made that mistake again. From that point on, he made his own way. Slowly, he began to work his way up the Hollywood chain.
- [29:53]
John Ford
Eventually I came third prop man, then second prop, now finally first prop and finally the system director.
- [30:00]
Ben Mankiewicz
He got his first big chance to step out of Francis shadow in 1917 when Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal, hired him to direct a short silent western called Straight Shooting. For the lead role, the studio cast an actor named Harry Carey.
- [30:17]
John Ford
Harry Carey was a very, very sound professional and he helped me immeasurably. Terry is a great actor. He was a source of great joy and happiness to me. One of my dearest friends.
- [30:30]
Ben Mankiewicz
Ford and Carey started putting their own touches on the script and soon cooked up a scheme to expand the film. Universal had authorized the purchase of two reels of film about a thousand feet, which would be enough to make a short movie, roughly 20 minutes. That's what the studio wanted. John Ford, though, had bigger ambitions. He wanted to make a full feature. Here's Harry, Cary's son Dobie, telling the story. You start shooting it and writing it as they're shooting it and they run out of film. But they both had a very creative mind. They put their creative minds to work and hatched a plan to get the rest of the film made. They called the studio and said there'd been an accident.
- [31:23]
John Ford
They said that the camera had fallen into the water and ruined all the.
- [31:27]
Ben Mankiewicz
Film and they needed 4,000 more feet or whatever. Carl Laemmle, who ran Universal, believed John's lie and let them buy another three reels of film. So John got busy making his five reel feature. When Laemmle found out the truth, he fired John Ford and Harry Cary on the spot. But then Laemmle sat down to watch the movie. And there in those extra reels, he saw what so many after him would see. John Ford's undeniable talent.
- [32:05]
John Ford
Then they put it together and ran it. And Lemley hired him back at double their salaries.
- [32:09]
Ben Mankiewicz
John Ford seemed to take this as a sign that he could do what he wanted, how he wanted. He could work around the system. And for the rest of his career that's exactly what he did. After the break, Ford becomes Hollywood's most dangerous filmmaker, risking the lives of his cast, his crew and their children.
- [32:37]
Ward Bond
And we took the baby out on location. And the mother never did know.
- [32:45]
Ben Mankiewicz
Amazon one MEDICAL PRESENTS PAINFUL THOUGHTS I've.
- [32:50]
John Wayne
Been on hold to make a doctor's appointment for 23 minutes now. The automated voice has told me 47 times that my call is very important to them. I'm starting to think that they don't think my call is important at all.
- [33:05]
Ben Mankiewicz
With Amazon One Medical 24. 7 Virtual Virtual Care, you'll get help fast without having to remain on the line to make an appointment. Amazon One Medical Healthcare just got less painful. This episode brought to you by MGM plus from executive producer Stephen King and an executive producer of Frog Comes the Institute, a chilling new original series from mgm. Kidnapped and trapped in a sinister facility, gifted teen Luke Ellis must join other children to fight for their survival. Starring Emmy award winner Mary Louise Parker, Ben Barnes and introducing Joe Freeman. The institute premiering July 13 on MTN. After making straight shooting, John Ford got a lot of work. Between 1918 and 1923, Ford made more than 30 Westerns. Many of the them with Harry Cary. He became Hollywood's go to man for cowboys, Indians and cattle rustlers. When Ford was 29 years old, he got a call. 20th Century Fox wanted to make a western epic. The biggest movie the studio had ever made. A silent picture about the transcontinental railroad called the Iron Horse. Fox wanted Ford to direct it.
- [34:29]
John Ford
They were willing to spend a lot of money on this. In other words, $450,000, which at that period was a big price. And they gave me five weeks to do it.
- [34:41]
Ben Mankiewicz
Even with the time crunch, Ford didn't want to make the picture on a Hollywood studio set. He decided to take the whole production out of Los Angeles and and transport it to the high desert of Nevada.
- [34:56]
Ward Bond
This is the first big location, I think, out of Hollywood. I don't think anybody had ever taken this kind of venture before.
- [35:05]
Ben Mankiewicz
Lefty Huff was now working as a prop man for Ford. Shooting on location would add authenticity to the picture. More than that, though, it would give John Ford what he really wanted. An escape from Hollywood and its meddling producers.
- [35:22]
Ward Bond
We went out on a circus train and people don't know what the hell a circus train is like.
- [35:29]
Ben Mankiewicz
What a circus train is like is chaotic. A 20 plus car train usually used to transport circus performers and gear, now filled with 3, 300 actors and crew, along with props, sets, wardrobe, food and everything else the shoot required.
- [35:51]
Ward Bond
For Christ's sake. There was no planning done. We went down, we climbed on the circus drain as everybody for themselves, men, women and everything else.
- [36:01]
Ben Mankiewicz
On New Year's Day 1924, the circus train pulled into the Pyramid lake Indian reservation 40 miles miles east of Reno. A blizzard had swept through the night before and the 300 actors and crew dressed for the LA sunshine tumbled out into the snow. It was the actual middle of nowhere. Ford insisted that if they were going to be making a Western about pioneers. The actors and crew should listen. So carpenters got to work building outhouses and shacks for the men to sleep in. The women stayed on board the train.
- [36:45]
Ward Bond
Nobody knew where they're going, not even for we went where there was even no water. We had to have a water carpet. The sanitation was a big problem.
- [36:55]
Ben Mankiewicz
Not only that, the screenplay wasn't finished either. They were pretty much making up the story as they went along.
- [37:03]
Ward Bond
You must remember in making of that picture, we had no script. And you got up to the train every night and find out what the hell we were going to do the next day.
- [37:14]
Ben Mankiewicz
The train cars had been built to transport circus animals. A hippopotamus, a kangaroo, a herd of camels. They were infested with fleas and had no. It was so cold. The actors slept in their costumes with their regular clothes underneath. The dining car steward died of pneumonia three weeks into their stay.
- [37:39]
Ward Bond
And believe me, we were lucky as hell that nothing ever happened.
- [37:43]
Ben Mankiewicz
Tell that to the dead guy, Lefty. Ford scrambled for a way to keep up crew morale. He put up a big top to house the mess hall. After the day's filming was done, it became the social center of the production.
- [37:59]
John Ford
My commissary was functioning in a great big circus tent. And things started to look up.
- [38:05]
Ben Mankiewicz
He hired an accordion player to play music throughout the shoot.
- [38:09]
John Ford
Two or three times a week we'd have a show in the mess tent. We also had mass every Sunday.
- [38:16]
Ben Mankiewicz
Ford ran the place like a military camp. He was the commander. He even had a bugler to rouse the troops. But camp Ford was. Was hardly your average military camp. There was a saloon, a gambling hall. Even a few painted ladies came out from Reno on Sundays to entertain.
- [38:38]
Ward Bond
We finally got it fixed up pretty nice. Worked out all right. Had a couple of bootleggers and we had everything we needed.
- [38:45]
Ben Mankiewicz
Suddenly, the barren Nevada desert felt more like that second home to Ford. Like one of those Kaylee parties he'd loved in Ireland. Meanwhile, back in la, all the studio could see was that expenses for this party slash film set in the desert were piling up. One day a writer showed up on Ford's set carrying a telegram from the studio, encouraging the director to pick up the pace. Ford apologized and wrapped up production as quickly as he could. No, of course he didn't do that. What he did do was hold up the studio's telegram and ask a stuntman to shoot a bullet right through the center of it for the whole crew to see. Then Ford went back to making his film. Fox stopped complaining when the movie finally hit theaters. The Iron Horse became the top grossing film of the year. Ford had stumbled on a formula that would make him a legend in Hollywood, which was to literally go outside the bounds of Hollywood to land where he could do things his own way with no one watching over him. Sometimes that way was dangerous. After the Iron Horse, Ford began taking even bigger risks. He would do anything to get a good shot. His next western took that to extremes. The film was called Three Bad Men, and it's got one of the craziest, most dangerous shots I've ever seen. Ford wanted to recreate the Dakota gold rush of 1877. Cowboys and homesteaders trampling over each other to stake a claim. Ford staged hundreds of wagons and horses all galloping at full speed across the plain.
- [40:50]
John Ford
The day of the big rush, we had 150 vehicles and I covered wagons, stagecoaches, wagons of all sorts. Sun, men and horseback and speedrun. Terrific. Very spectacular scene.
- [41:06]
Ben Mankiewicz
Through the dust, you can see wagons tipping over, wheels spinning off, stagecoaches, horses collapsing. It wasn't a stunt. It was anarchy. Still, it wasn't enough. Ford raised the stakes. He wanted the audience to feel the danger. He decided to put someone's actual life on the line. And not just any life, a baby's life. Luckily for Ford, though, not so lucky for one woman. A crew member's wife showed up to camp with her child.
- [41:45]
Ward Bond
Woman come up to the camp to see her husband. We wanted a baby, so took the mother and put her back in camp with her husband, and we took the baby out on location.
- [41:56]
Ben Mankiewicz
Ford set up the shot putting the baby, a live baby, in the dirt, center frame, right in the path of galloping horses and speeding stagecoaches. Madness of this, to actually shoot it. No doubt Ford was thinking, this will get the audience shaking in their seats.
- [42:18]
Ward Bond
So the way that Pappy set up the shot was I was on the running board of an automobile, standing on the side. We set the baby on the ground and got myself in position where I could reach in and grab this kit and they could pull out with a car.
- [42:36]
Ben Mankiewicz
The shot was set. John Ford called action.
- [42:41]
Ward Bond
Here comes all the wagons on the.
- [42:43]
Ben Mankiewicz
Horse.
- [42:47]
Ward Bond
And I picked up the baby.
- [42:49]
Ben Mankiewicz
At the very last second. Lefty Huff's arm enters the frame and scoops up the baby moments before the horses thunder past. Ford's telling of this story is, of course, exaggerated in his account. Lefty wasn't being driven by a car to pick up the baby, but on a speeding horse.
- [43:12]
John Ford
One of the sudden picks the baby up on the ground at full gallop, picked her up, put her on the side and rode her away. There's no trouble at all, no sweat.
- [43:22]
Ward Bond
And the mother never did know. She never knew it. She never knew what we did with it. After we got the shot, we sent the baby back to the camp. If I would have missed the baby, if I'd have missed it, I'd have fallen right on top of it. That was the idea.
- [43:36]
Ben Mankiewicz
It's a remarkable piece of filmmaking. Reckless and irresponsible, but thrilling. John Ford was now the hottest director in Hollywood. In just 10 years he had surpassed his brother. Soon he'd find a new friend, a new collaborator. They formed a bond thicker than blood. They would work together for the next four decades and they'd become world famous. In the late 1920s, change came to Hollywood. The talkies arrived.
- [44:14]
John Ford
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
- [44:16]
Ben Mankiewicz
You ain't heard nothing yet.
- [44:18]
John Ford
Wait a minute, I tell you.
- [44:20]
Ben Mankiewicz
John Ford embraced this new world of sound. One of his first talkies was a romantic comedy called salute in 1929.
- [44:28]
John Ford
What do they do in the movies besides Becky Holy throw.
- [44:32]
Ben Mankiewicz
They do, huh?
- [44:33]
John Ford
Yes, sir.
- [44:34]
Ward Bond
5.
- [44:36]
Ben Mankiewicz
Salute was set at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It's about the Army Navy football rivalry and Ford wanted a few dozen buff guys to play linebackers, tackles and tight ends. So he went down the road to the University of Southern California and recruited the USC football team as extras.
- [44:56]
Ward Bond
Come on man, I see your head.
- [44:57]
John Ford
Now turn. And the football team arrived. I needed a couple of actors to play bits.
- [45:04]
Ben Mankiewicz
Two football players caught John Ford's attention. They seemed more interested than the others in the often slow, painstaking process of making a movie. One of them was a starting lineman, Ward Bond, a bruiser with a mug to match. The other guy, a always hanging around with Bond was Marion Morrison, a square jawed backup tackle with intense eyes and a funny walk. You might know him better by his stage name, John Wayne.
- [45:37]
Katharine Hepburn
Well, take some advice, pilgrim. You put that thing up, you'll have to defend it with a gun.
- [45:47]
John Ford
He was a big handsome lad and as I said, he was really hipped on movies. I noticed that Wayne was very bright and so was Bond. I mean, they're always around the cameras listening.
- [45:58]
Ben Mankiewicz
John Ford was surprised how much these guys like movies. And John Wayne didn't expect Ford to be such a football fan.
- [46:07]
Katharine Hepburn
Jack to me was an attractive man that, that knew a little something about football which the majority of the people on the Fox lot did not know it. And I find that he was out of the ordinary and that he knew what the hell he was talking about.
- [46:26]
Ben Mankiewicz
Ford promoted the two players from extras and gave them small speaking roles.
- [46:31]
John Ford
And I looked at the lines, memorized them in a few moments played the scene. Here's the first sign, Mr. Now tell.
- [46:39]
Katharine Hepburn
Me, what do they do in the movie?
- [46:41]
John Ford
So I put them in the back of my mind. There's a couple of potential good actors.
- [46:47]
Ben Mankiewicz
On the train to Annapolis to shoot scenes for Salute Ford, Ward, Bond and John Wayne all shared a cabin. They drank, they played cards, they drank some more. But the two rowdy football players knew nothing about Hollywood hierarchy on a set that the difference in rank between an extra and a director was as stark as the one between an infantryman and a five star general. John Wayne says Ward Bond was especially clueless.
- [47:19]
Katharine Hepburn
I told you about him going in to borrow the money, didn't I? Jeez.
- [47:23]
Ben Mankiewicz
One day Ford was in the bathtub. Bond barged right into Ford's room and yelled, I'm taking about 20 bucks. I'm going into town drinking tonight. You can go with us if you want to come.
- [47:33]
Katharine Hepburn
You know, Jack never carries 25 cents with him. So Ward took the. At 15 or 20 bucks, that's as much as Jack would have all the time he was back in making the picture.
- [47:45]
Ben Mankiewicz
Bond took the money from Ford's wallet and left before Ford could stop him. Nonetheless, Ford would proclaim, let's face it, Bond's a but he's my favorite. The film marked the start of something special between the three men.
- [48:03]
Katharine Hepburn
This was the catalyst that brought us all so very close together.
- [48:08]
Ben Mankiewicz
Wayne and Ford formed an especially strong bond, one of the most enduring partnerships and friendships in movie history. They made each other more famous than either could have imagined back in 1929.
- [48:23]
Katharine Hepburn
We never had anything but wonderful times. You know, we never had anything to offer but our loyalty and friendship.
- [48:34]
Ben Mankiewicz
Those were the early days, good times, drunken nights, male bonding. That was before those knights became out of control benders.
- [48:43]
Katharine Hepburn
He was an alcoholic.
- [48:45]
Ben Mankiewicz
He's the type of person wondering too.
- [48:47]
Ward Bond
Many in the thousands, not enough.
- [48:48]
Ben Mankiewicz
Before Ford started showing his mean streak. He rose out of his chair and knocked me over back against the chair and knocked over water pitcher and something before he reduced John Wayne to tears.
- [49:03]
Katharine Hepburn
Well, I told you he didn't speak to me for two years. I don't know to this day why I didn't before.
- [49:09]
Ben Mankiewicz
Ford said he made an epic war film that disappeared that no one has ever seen before. He elevated the western to a true American art form. Before John Ford became the most honored filmmaker of all time. That's all coming up this season on the plot thickens. Angela Caron is our director of podcasts. Story editor is Karen Duffin. Jaco Friedman is our senior producer. Script writing by Jaco Friedman, Maya Croth and James Sheridan, who also fact checked every episode for us. Audio editing and sound design by Brandon Ardle, James Kim and Mike Vulgaris mixing by Glenn Matullo research by Matt Goldberg. Production support from Liz Winter, Allison Fire, Matthew Ownby, Julie Bettone, Emma Morris, Susan B. Sack, Dorie Stegman and Phil Richards. Thanks to our legal team, Jon Renau and Kristin Hassell, and to the talents of TCM staffers Taryn Jacobs, Katie Daniels, David Byrne, Diana Bosch, Caroline Wigmore, Michelle Height, Stephanie Thames, and to our resident ford scholar, Scott McGee. Our executive producer is Charlie Tavish. Special thanks to Dan Ford for sharing his family archive with us and to the helpful team at Independence Indiana University's Lilly Library. From Novel thanks to producer Philippa Goodrich, story editor Veronica Simmons, researcher Valeria Rocca, assistant producer Nadia Mehdi, production managers Cherie Houston and Charlotte Wolf, executive producer Max o' Brien and creative director Willard Foxton. Thomas Avery of Toonwelders composed our theme music. I'm your host, Ben Mankiewicz. Thanks for listening. See you next time.