The Search

Summary

The Plot Thickens: Episode Summary - "The Search"

Release Date: June 27, 2024

Introduction

In the fourth episode of Season Five of "The Plot Thickens," host Ben Mankiewicz delves into the enigmatic quest to uncover a purported lost World War II film by legendary director John Ford. Entitled "The Search," this episode unravels the mystery behind Ford's alleged documentary footage from D Day, exploring the depths of archival hunts across the United States, the United Kingdom, and even attempts to probe Russian archives.

---

The Mystery of John Ford's D Day Film

The episode opens with Willard Foxton, a seasoned reporter and war correspondent turned podcast contributor, recounting his discovery of a tantalizing footnote in Stephen Ambrose's book On D Day. This footnote references a 1964 interview where John Ford mentions a color film he shot during the D Day invasion—a film that seemingly vanished without a trace.

[01:53] Ben Mankiewicz: "A couple of decades ago, I picked up a copy of Stephen Ambrose's book On D Day... I remember thinking how incredible. John Ford was there on D Day."

[03:46] Ben Mankiewicz: "It just felt like the Tutankhamun's tomb of movie making."

Foxton becomes intrigued by the possibility of this lost footage, considering it a historical treasure that could offer unprecedented insights into one of the most pivotal moments of the 20th century.

---

Initial Search Efforts in the United States

Determined to locate Ford's missing film, Foxton collaborates with Bonnie Rowan, a dedicated film researcher, to scour American archives. Their initial efforts lead them to the Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) Presidential Library, where they hope to find records or copies of the elusive footage. However, their search yields no results, leading to a dead end.

[08:05] Ben Mankiewicz: "So I went to the FDR library. To see what they had."

Realizing the FDR Library holds no clues, Rowan redirects their efforts to the National Archives, renowned for housing vast collections of federal documents and footage.

[09:57] Ben Mankiewicz: "One of the things that's important to realize about the National Archives is that a number of federal agencies produce hundreds of thousands of motion picture film productions."

Here, archivist Steve Green uncovers four reels labeled as D Day. Excitement mounts as they project the footage, which appears to be an edited compilation of the invasion. However, discrepancies arise—contrary to Ford's claim of color footage, the reels are entirely in black and white, and the content lacks the graphic intensity Ford described.

[11:48] Ben Mankiewicz: "But when you look at it, it wasn't that disturbing. It didn't fulfill the story."

Consequently, Rowan and Mankiewicz conclude that these reels likely do not constitute Ford's lost masterpiece.

---

Clues from John Ford's Interview

Delving deeper, the team revisits Ford's 1964 interview, extracting critical information that hints at the film's storage location—Anacostia, near Washington, D.C. However, tragedy strikes when a fire engulfs the National Archives' nitrate vaults in 1978, potentially destroying millions of feet of film, including any remaining copies of Ford's D Day footage.

[13:57] Ben Mankiewicz: "National Archives nitrate vaults went up in flames in December, 14 years after John Ford said his film was stored there."

This devastating loss casts further doubt on the existence of the film, leaving the searchers grappling with the grim possibility that Ford's footage may have perished in the fire.

---

Searching the UK Archives

Undeterred, Foxton shifts his focus to the United Kingdom, spurred by rumors that copies of Ford's film might have been sent to prominent leaders like Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. His investigation leads him to the Imperial War Museum in London, where curator Toby Haggath reveals a similar black and white film labeled "A picture compilation of some of the activities that took place on D Day and D Day 3."

[19:08] Ben Mankiewicz: "A picture compilation of some of the activities that took place on D Day and D Day 3. It's not a great title."

Despite initial optimism, the British version lacks key elements Ford described, such as graphic battle scenes and color footage. Furthermore, there is no documentation indicating that Churchill or other leaders viewed the film.

[25:18] Willard Foxton: "In our search in the UK, there was nothing in the records. My UK search left me feeling a little bummed out."

---

Attempted Search in Russia

The next frontier in the search is Russia, motivated by the fact that Stalin was reportedly an admirer of John Ford's work. Foxton enlists the help of Alexander Kanderoff, a former employee of the Krasnogorsk Russian State Archives of Film and Photo Documents. Despite the archive's extensive holdings, Kanderoff finds no evidence of Ford's D Day film.

[33:33] Ben Mankiewicz: "They sent a collection of Movietone and other American news to Russians as allies. But there is no evidence that there is a special film sent to Stalin, be it the 33-minute film or any other film."

Additionally, geopolitical tensions and travel advisories cast doubts on the feasibility of accessing further Russian archives.

---

Theories on the Film's Disappearance

With exhaustive searches across multiple countries yielding no definitive evidence, several theories emerge:

1. Destruction in the 1978 Fire: The most plausible theory suggests that the film was lost in the National Archives' nitrate vault fire.
2. Exaggerated Claims by John Ford: Some experts, including Ford biographers Scott Iman and Joseph McBride, posit that Ford may have embellished his accounts, leading to the perpetuation of a non-existent film.
3. Unrealized Project: It's possible that Ford never completed the film, or only created preliminary footage that never saw fruition.

[35:19] Willard Foxton: "With Ford, you really can't ever rule out the idea that he was, at a minimum, stretching the truth."

---

Reflections on John Ford's Experience

The episode concludes with a poignant reflection on how Ford's experiences on D Day profoundly affected him. Having sought military service, Ford was instead confronted with the brutal realities of war, leading to personal struggles and a departure from his Hollywood success.

[43:28] Willard Foxton: "Priceless reels of film shot by a team of Hollywood cameramen, all led by John Ford, with footage of one of the most important battles in modern history. Slipping away into the ocean, truly lost."

Foxton emphasizes the emotional weight of Omaha Beach's history, underscoring the significance of understanding and bearing witness to such monumental events.

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Conclusion

While the search for John Ford's D Day film closes without uncovering the elusive footage, "The Search" offers a fascinating journey through archival detective work, international collaboration, and historical inquiry. It highlights the challenges inherent in preserving and uncovering cinematic history, especially amidst the tumultuous backdrop of global conflict.

As Foxton poignantly states, understanding what truly transpired on Omaha Beach is perhaps more critical than the fate of a single film, serving as a testament to the sacrifices made and the enduring impact of war on individuals and art alike.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Ben Mankiewicz [01:53]: "A couple of decades ago, I picked up a copy of Stephen Ambrose's book On D Day... I remember thinking how incredible. John Ford was there on D Day."

• Willard Foxton [04:27]: "This is my fellow TCM host, Eddie Mueller, reading what John Ford told the reporter."

• Ben Mankiewicz [05:44]: "Everyone held his breath. While the naval bombardment was going on, things began to happen fast."

• Willard Foxton [11:55]: "This is not the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. It's also not very John Fordian."

• Ben Mankiewicz [22:05]: "Is this John Ford's film? I don't think this is it, no."

• Willard Foxton [35:19]: "With Ford, you really can't ever rule out the idea that he was, at minimum, stretching the truth."

---

Final Thoughts

"The Search" masterfully intertwines historical investigation with personal storytelling, offering listeners an engaging exploration of a cinematic mystery that bridges the worlds of film and World War II history. While the elusive footage remains out of reach, the episode enriches our understanding of both John Ford's legacy and the broader narrative of wartime documentation.

Transcript

[Ben Mankiewicz]

This episode brought to you by MGM 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.

[Willard Foxton]

Gifted teen Luke Ellis must join other.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Children to fight for their survival. Starring Emmy award winner Mary Louise Parker, Ben Barnes and introducing Joe Freeman. The Institute of Watch, now on MGM new episode streaming Sundays.

[Willard Foxton]

We get a lot of pitches for the plot thickens. But only one of them has ever made me board a plane and fly to Europe.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

We're going to start your watches. The local time is just coming.

[Willard Foxton]

This was last year, middle of February. I was missing Valentine's Day. Luckily, my wife is a saint.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

At the moment it's about 8 degrees, should go up to about 12 or 13 degrees.

[Willard Foxton]

Later today in London, I made my way to Walthamstow, one of the city's older neighborhoods. There I found a historic brick home, the kind that doesn't have a number. It has a name. I was greeted by the guy who sent me this pitch, a man named Willard Foxton.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Hello. Love to meet you. Come in. Hello. So nice to meet you. Hello. Ben.

[Willard Foxton]

Ben, yes.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Great to meet you.

[Willard Foxton]

Willard now works for the podcast company Novel, but he started his career as a reporter and war correspondent for the BBC. He has dodged bullets in places like Lebanon and Afghanistan. Like a good English host, Willard offered us something to eat.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

If you want some Camembert and biscuits.

[Willard Foxton]

Later, I don't know what any of that means. The pitch that brought me halfway around the world was something Willard stumbled on in a footnote almost 30 years ago.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

A couple of decades ago, I picked up a copy of Stephen Ambrose's book On D Day. And then there's this fantastic bit in it where John Ford talks about his experiences on D Day. And I remember thinking to myself how incredible. John Ford was there on D day.

[Willard Foxton]

D Day, June 6, 1944. One of the most significant battles in modern history. The turning point Of World War II.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

D Day is here. The invasion of Western Europe has begun. The Allies had launched the long awaited invasion by assaulting the French coast from the air and by sea. A vast number of countries. The biggest sea invasion in history. Our invasion forces are on the offensive against Nazi troops who have been ordered to die rather than retreat. We will accept nothing less than full victory.

[Willard Foxton]

John Ford said he was there witnessing and filming as American troops landed on Omaha Beach.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

It's an incredibly vivid picture of what's happening on the day. Men being sick in landing crafts and the salt spray on their faces and the gunfire coming down the bluffs on Omaha Beach. It's such a vivid picture.

[Willard Foxton]

And then buried at the bottom of the page, Willard saw a small footnote.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

And the footnote says, in his 1964 interview with American Legion magazine, Ford said the D Day film still exists.

[Willard Foxton]

And Willard thought, what D Day film? Willard is a huge John Ford fan, but he'd never heard of this film. And given the success of Ford's 18 minute documentary, the Battle of Midway, a film about D Day, that would have been huge, a historical treasure. It's something people would have talked about extensively.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I just thought what an incredible discovery. Like live footage from Omaha beach would be incredible, but like live footage in color shot by one of the greatest directors of all time, it just felt like the Tutankhamun's tomb of movie making.

[Willard Foxton]

And that is why I left my wife on Valentine's Day to go halfway around the world. Somewhere out there, Willard pitched us, is a John Ford movie that no one has ever seen, about one of the biggest battles in modern history. And I wanted to find it. I was on the hunt for John Ford's missing movie.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I have been looking and looking for this film. What it would mean to find that footage is literally incalculable. So I think it's possible that there is a film. It doesn't seem very, very probable to me.

[Willard Foxton]

Do you think this is it?

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Is this John Ford's film?

[Willard Foxton]

I'm your host, Ben Mankiewicz. You're listening to season five of 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 Novel for decoding John Ford, the most influential filmmaker of the last hundred years. This is episode four, the Search. Our first clue came from John Ford himself. In that 1964 article Willard told me about. Ford was 70 years old when he gave the interview, but his memory was sharp. This is my fellow TCM host, Eddie Mueller, reading what John Ford told the reporter.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Everyone held his breath. While the naval bombardment was going on, things began to happen fast.

[Willard Foxton]

Once on the beach, I ran forward. I didn't tell my boys where to aim their cameras.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

They took whatever they could.

[Willard Foxton]

As for his missing movie, Ford not only didn't think it was missing, he told the reporter exactly where it was.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The film my men took was processed.

[Willard Foxton]

In London in both color and black and white.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Most of it was in Kodachrome, my cutting unit.

[Willard Foxton]

It was in London too. They worked 24 hour watches picking out.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The best part of the film that had been shot.

[Willard Foxton]

The cutters worked four hour shifts on four, off four. All of it still exists today in.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Color and storage in Anacostia, near Washington.

[Willard Foxton]

D.C. there were literally millions of feet of film. We've established by now that John Ford liked to exaggerate. Lie a little, lie a lot. But it's hard not to be struck by how precise he was in this interview. He said there were literally millions of feet of film. He also said it still exists in color, in storage in Washington D.C. it's one thing to stretch the truth. It's another to give such a detailed description of something if it actually doesn't exist. So we started reaching out to people in D.C. trying to figure out what storage space Ford was referring to. And we quickly learned that we weren't the only ones trying to find this movie.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I have been looking and looking for this film.

[Willard Foxton]

This is Bonnie Rowan, a film researcher in Washington, dc. I always was interested in John Ford and also in D Day, and I.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Was upset that there was so little.

[Willard Foxton]

Footage 12 years ago. Bonnie read that same John Ford interview, and it piqued her interest. Lost films are Bonnie's jam. She's like an archaeologist for documentaries, movies, and TV shows. Bonnie started digging.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

So I said, where is this film?

[Willard Foxton]

So I went to the FDR library.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

To see what they had.

[Willard Foxton]

If John Ford made a D Day film, President Roosevelt would not only have seen it as the Commander in Chief, he would have been the one to commission it. So Bonnie talked to historians at the FDR library. I said, I don't know exactly what.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

It is, but it's about D Day. They said, no, we've looked at everything.

[Willard Foxton]

It is not here. Dead end. Next, Bonnie thought, if it isn't in the Presidential Library, maybe it got sent to the National Archives. She reached out to a connection there, an archivist named Steve Green. As luck would have it, he was working on a D Day project himself.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The 70th anniversary of D Day was coming up, and the Eisenhower Library, of course, was going to do a big commemoration.

[Willard Foxton]

If Bonnie's search was tough in the FDR Library, searching in the National Archives was like trying to find a drop of rain in the Atlantic Ocean.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

One of the things that's important to realize about the National Archives is that a number of federal agencies produce hundreds of thousands of motion picture film productions.

[Willard Foxton]

These hundreds of thousands of films aren't always filed where you'd expect them to be. So even if a film is in the archive, there's no guarantee you'll find it. This is where the magic of an archivist like Steve Green comes in. He spent so much time burrowed in the files, he knows every hidden corner, every unexplored file cabinet. So he poked around, did some detective work. And then Steve found something. Four reels of film from the Army Signal Corps labeled as D Day. They weren't grouped together, they weren't dated. Their ID numbers didn't line up. So at first it didn't look like much of a lead.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

But when I started to look at the roles, it was evident that they were part of a 4Real film production.

[Willard Foxton]

He figured, might as well take a look at them. And then, for perhaps the first time in nearly 70 years, those reels were placed onto a projector.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I didn't hear much. I heard humor. And then I heard a narrator. England, June 4, 1944.

[Willard Foxton]

Bonnie, the film archaeologist, also watched what was on those reels. Unlike the rest of the footage in.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

This collection, which is raw footage, silent for the most part, this was edited.

[Willard Foxton]

And it had this very flat voiceover.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The men of the armies marched toward the southern ports. Equipment rolled down the roads. I mean, anyone who's done anything in oss knows the voice because it was just someone. And then they did this, and then.

[Willard Foxton]

They did this, and then, you know.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

There was no drama to it. The invasion had been scheduled for June 5, but bad weather in the channel had caused a postponement. These reels, if you put them together, look like that could be that film. And it was just. It was so exciting. There it was.

[Willard Foxton]

It ticked all the boxes. A documentary about D Day made by the government that no one knew about or even watched for nearly 70 years. All the boxes, that is, except one in that American Legion article. John Ford said his film was extremely graphic, full of gruesome images of war. But when you look at it, it wasn't that disturbing.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

It didn't fulfill the story.

[Willard Foxton]

Steve Green sent me a digital copy of the film. There's some impressive battle footage, but it's all shot from a distance and not on the beach. Like Bonnie said, it's not disturbing. This is not the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. It's also not very John Fordian. It's not scored, it's not scenic. The edits are fast. The whole thing seems unfinished. Furthermore, Ford said he shot some footage in color. This is entirely in black and white. So in the end, Bonnie concluded, this is probably not John Ford's lost film. Then Bonnie remembered something else, something Ford said in that article that might explain why no one could find his film.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

When he Says Anacostia. He's talking about the archives nitrate vault. I assume that's what he's talking about.

[Willard Foxton]

Nitrate vaults. These vaults are an offshoot of the National Archives. They're where the government stored most of its newsreels and war footage from the 1940s. Everything shot on D Day was shot in nitrate film.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

So it would have been there. Because they didn't want that stuff downtown.

[Willard Foxton]

They kept these outside the official archives for a reason. Nitrate film is highly flammable. Remember the scene Inglourious Basterds in the movie theater where Marcel, the projectionist, lights nitrate film on fire to burn down the theater and kill all the Nazis in attendance? Anyway, nitrate film is dangerous and hard to store properly. A single spark can cause it to explode. And that is exactly what happened in 1978.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

And there was a fire.

[Willard Foxton]

The National Archives nitrate vaults went up in flames in December, 14 years after John Ford said his film was stored there. Workers blamed the fire on faulty air conditioning. I remember the day of the fire.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I was in the library, and all of a sudden a call came. And Paul Spear, the head of motion pictures, he rushed out to go to see what they could do.

[Willard Foxton]

Millions of feet of nitrate film went up in smoke. To this day, nobody knows exactly how much was lost. I haven't seen a breakdown because archivists.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Are embarrassed that the stuff burned.

[Willard Foxton]

I just know Universal releases and outtakes.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

From the war years were the worst story. So did other things burn? Who knows?

[Willard Foxton]

Maybe John Ford's D Day footage isn't missing. Maybe it burned up in that fire. But there was still hope we might find the movie. Because there was another rumor about it. A rumor that three copies had been made and sent around the world.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

One of the stories was that John.

[Willard Foxton]

Ford made a film and it was.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Sent to Churchill, Stalin and fdr.

[Willard Foxton]

So perhaps the film isn't in the United States. But if Stalin and Churchill also got copies, maybe it is in Russia or the UK I think there could well be footage in British archives. Maybe the Imperial War Museum.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Maybe someone just took it home. I don't know. But we who work in this world feel that the.

[Willard Foxton]

The British are notorious for walking off.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

With things and claiming them.

[Willard Foxton]

After the break, the search continues in London.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

So I can't believe that they didn't watch it. I mean, it's a glass of port and a cigar. And there you are. The McDonald's snack wrap is back. You brought it back. Ranch snack wrap. Spicy snack wrap. You broke the Internet for a snack? Snack wrap is back.

[Willard Foxton]

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[Ben Mankiewicz]

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[Willard Foxton]

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[Ben Mankiewicz]

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[Willard Foxton]

On a typically chilly and overcast day in February, I made my way toward the Southwark area of London. Oh, that's St. Paul. Sorry. Nice.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

And this is Fleet Street.

[Willard Foxton]

This is Fleet street. All right. Everything about London was distracting. Didn't help that my taxi was driving on the wrong side of the road. Look, kids. Big Ben, Parliament. Then I pulled up in front of the Imperial War Museum. Thank you very much. This is where Bonnie Rowan told me the Brits may have stashed whatever film was sent to Winston Churchill. The Imperial War Museum looks a little like the US Capitol building with columns in front and a pointy dome in the center. So this is the. This is the Imperial War Museum and it's free admission? Yeah, I mean, that's.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

It is.

[Willard Foxton]

Yeah, we charge recharge. Museum curator Toby Haggath met me out front.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Hi, I'm Toby. Ben. Nice to meet you, Ben.

[Willard Foxton]

Nice to meet you as well.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Hey.

[Willard Foxton]

Toby specializes in World War II, mainly film. He brought me to one of the highest spots in the museum, inside the dome. It looked like the war room from Dr. Strangelove.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

And this room was the chapel when the museum was a hospital for people with mental illness.

[Willard Foxton]

I was in the former chapel of what used to be an asylum. There was an engraving of the Ten Commandments on the wall. Then Toby brought out a movie he wanted to show me.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

England. June 4, 1944. The men of the armies marched toward the southern ports.

[Willard Foxton]

It was the same black and white movie that Steve Green found in the U.S. toby, though, had more information about it than the Americans in the U.S. the film wasn't even labeled. This one has an official title, one clearly written by a bureaucrat.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

A picture compilation of some of the activities that took place on D Day and D Day 3.

[Willard Foxton]

It's not a great title.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

It's not a great title, but it's also typical of the report film that you've got this very starchy title that really is deliberately un eye catching. The troops worked their way in collecting prisoners on the roadside.

[Willard Foxton]

I should say it was mostly the same film. As I was watching it again with Toby, I noticed slight differences. Some shots that were in the American version seemed to be missing. Mostly shots of dead bodies.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

British Cameron would not film their own dead and they would not film British soldiers being killed. American cameramen filmed American dead quite often, quite regularly.

[Willard Foxton]

I mean, I almost want to watch them side by side.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I suppose it's. It is quite possible that the Americans decided to cut a slightly different version. Maybe this was slightly weighted to the British side.

[Willard Foxton]

Perhaps before the film went to Churchill, British Intelligence cut an even more sanitized version than the already sterile American one. Then, as we were watching, something caught my eye. What was that at the end there?

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Was that a German?

[Willard Foxton]

That was the German, yeah.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

German Corps, Yeah.

[Willard Foxton]

A dead German soldier. Allied troops were throwing coins onto the body. Why are they throwing money on him?

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Well, it's. It's something that soldiers do. It's just a kind of callous gesture. I find it difficult to understand, but I can understand it in the context of a war.

[Willard Foxton]

My father was in the 69th infantry, and he was driving his jeep and it was the winter, and he saw a German officer dead and frozen, lying in the snow. And he picked him up and drove him back to his. Wherever his unit was. And his sergeant was there, and he said, hey, what do you got there? And he said, well, I saw him on the side of the road and the sergeant said, bury the bitch. Never forget that line. It was such a striking line. And then he was like, we don't pick them up, like we leave them. But, I mean, I was reminded of that when you told the story about the money. Just because I like that. His first instinct was, oh, my goodness, there's a dead guy. I gotta take care of his body. I've now seen two different versions of the same movie on two different shores. Though Bonnie Rowan in the US didn't think this was Ford's film, the fact that this unidentified movie was found in both countries made me wonder if she was wrong. Maybe this is Ford's film. I put the question to Toby. Do you think this is it?

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Is this John Ford's film? I don't think this is it, no. But the fact that it hadn't been identified is not a big deal. I mean, we've got thousands of feet of footage still not properly cataloged. And, I mean, this black and white film is not a lost film. You know, we've had it, the museum since 67. You've had it in America for some Time.

[Willard Foxton]

Of course, merely because this might not be the film we're looking for doesn't mean John Ford didn't shoot anything on D day.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I think the color film he's talking about, it's quite possible that a film was made, or I would suspect a rough cut was made or maybe a preliminary version. Maybe they'd even written a treatment for it. So I think it's possible that there is a film, but I doubt it's completed.

[Willard Foxton]

Toby also confirmed that this 33 minute film did get sent to various military leaders. He even had documentation of what people said after watching it.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

So I was looking at my records about the film and apparently it was very well received when it was shown in the British embassies in the Soviet Union. And they all recommended you must be shown to Stalin. Must be shown in. In cinemas in Russia. And obviously a copy was sent to Roosevelt as well.

[Willard Foxton]

Do we know that they all saw it?

[Ben Mankiewicz]

We don't know precisely that they. But I can't believe that they didn't. I mean, Churchill, for example, was an avid film watcher and had lots of private screenings and watched lots of official films. So I can't believe that they didn't watch it. And it's only 33 minutes. I mean, it's, you know, it's. It's a glass of port and a cigar, and there you are.

[Willard Foxton]

A glass of port, a cigar, and there you are. I don't know what Toby's talking about, but I know I like it. The day after meeting Toby at the museum, I took the train to Cambridge to see the Winston Churchill archives.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

So you're in the inner sanctum of the archive center at the moment, in our strong rooms. This is where we keep the original material.

[Willard Foxton]

It's quite. It's quite chilly in here.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Yeah. So we keep this space at about 15 degrees centigrade and about 50% humidity.

[Willard Foxton]

Churchill took notes on every movie he watched.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

And what we have here is a book which was kept by the projectionist who was responsible for showing films for the Prime Minister.

[Willard Foxton]

Looks like you watched Casablanca twice. And there In November of 1942, he's looking at young Mr. Lincoln, which is a John Ford picture and gets a very good. Gets a very good Pride of the Yankees. There we go. That's a Herman Lankiewicz film. It's my grandfather's movie. He wrote that script.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Afraid only gets a fair.

[Willard Foxton]

Only got a fair. All right. Well, you know what? You guys don't know anything about baseball. I'm sure if it had been about soccer, he Would have loved it. I wanted to see if he had any notes on a film about D Day, any film about D Day.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

We have documents relating to what Churchill is doing at around that time. Sadly, none of them mention him viewing the film. It's just not mentioned in any of the contemporary diaries or minutes.

[Willard Foxton]

There was nothing in the records. My UK search left me feeling a little bummed out. But then I started thinking that discrepancy between the American and British 33 minute films and how the British version was even more sanitized, it reminded me of something else John Ford told the reporter in that 1964 interview. Ford not only claimed his D Day footage was extremely graphic, he said he thought the government buried it because of that, because it was too disturbing. June 6, 1944 was a slaughterhouse from the Allied point of view. An utter complete chapter.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Slaughterhouse.

[Willard Foxton]

Ford biographer Scott Iman says maybe the world just wasn't ready to witness what really happened on D Day. There were bodies being decapitated by machine gun fire.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

There were limbs, free floating limbs in the water. It was really bad.

[Willard Foxton]

So the question becomes, how do you.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Edit that into anything you can show.

[Willard Foxton]

To an audience in 1944 or 1945.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Or 2023 for that matter? I mean, there's an old saying that in in war, truth is the first casualty.

[Willard Foxton]

Another ford biographer, Joseph McBride, spent years uncovering and declassifying Ford's war documentaries and studying World War II films. He confirmed that a lot of things were buried, including about D Day.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

A lot of the public was in the dark until after the war about how gruesome it had been. The government didn't want the public to see graphic combat footage. We still don't even know the number of people killed in the beaches of Normandy. I find that kind of odd. And the landings of the paratroopers, which were done just ahead of the invasion, were a disaster. And those kind of things were covered up.

[Willard Foxton]

So maybe Ford did make a film, but Americans weren't ready to see it. And if it was too gruesome for the Americans, then it certainly was for the British too. But what about the third country the film was sent to? What about the copy sent to Joseph Stalin? Coming up, we continue the search in.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Russia for the Russians. There is no sense in keeping it secret. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile.

[Willard Foxton]

Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

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.

[Willard Foxton]

So there goes my big idea for the commercial.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment.

[Willard Foxton]

Of $45 for a three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Busy taxes and fees extra.

[Willard Foxton]

See mintmobile.com Amazon One Medical presents Painful.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Thoughts I've 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. Hmm. I'm starting to think that they don't think my call is important at all. With Amazon One Medical 24. 7 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. Do you know who Joseph Stalin's favorite movie director was? Mr. John Ford.

[Willard Foxton]

Willard Foxton, who first told me about John Ford's missing movie, said he thought that Russia might actually be our best hope for finding the film because of a certain dictator's taste in movies.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Stalin loved Ford. And one of my favorite things about it is Stalin had a movie archivist. He used to keep detailed notes of Stalin's movie taste and every single movie Stalin watched and Stalin's comments during the movie. And frequently while watching John Ford movies, he would make comments like outrageous capitalist cowboy filth. But as soon as he'd get towards the end, he'd be like, oh, and get me another one. So he loved a cowboy movie.

[Willard Foxton]

Willard insisted that if the film did make its way to Russia, Stalin would have eaten it up.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

If a package had arrived for Stalin from Mr. John Ford, Stalin would have watched it. So that's the next thing I'd go for.

[Willard Foxton]

So that was the plan to go to Russia to dig there. There was a problem, though. When I got to my hotel room that night, I turned on the news.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

A new warning to any US national still in Russia to leave. We know tonight. NATO's chief has said he believes the.

[Willard Foxton]

New Russian offensive has stopped started.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

That is a new travel advisory from the U.S. state Department urging U.S. citizens to exercise caution due to risk of wrongful detention.

[Willard Foxton]

Listen, I may have ditched my family on Valentine's Day, but my bravery has its limits. In the midst of his war against Ukraine, Russia was jailing everyone from US Journalists to WNBA players. I kept picturing landing in Moscow, going through customs and explaining that I had come from America to snoop around their film archives. Realistically, Russia wasn't going to happen. At least not for me. Luckily, we knew someone on the inside.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The main library of all newsreel's documentaries is the Krasnogorsk Russian State Archives of Film and Photo Documents. That's its full official name.

[Willard Foxton]

This is a film researcher named Alexander Kanderoff. He used to work at Krasnogorsk, Russia's state film archive. Krasnogorsk was kept secret for decades. The former Soviet Union wouldn't even put it on a map. While Russia didn't share much information with the outside world, Alex says they kept very detailed archives.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

They still have a jaw, Hitler's jaw. The only component of the Fuhrer's body that is confirmed that used to belong to him.

[Willard Foxton]

That's right. Somewhere in a KGB vault is Adolf Hitler's jaw. The Russians might be known for rewriting history, but what they don't erase, they file away for posterity. And the Russian film archive is massive.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

They have an enormous underground storage and hundreds of thousands of reels.

[Willard Foxton]

Krasnogorsk has opened up a little since the Soviet days. Much of its card catalog is even online. But it's still not an easy place to navigate.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The access was difficult. You know, only a professional filmmaker with a letter supported by this and that organization or agency could get an access. And it still has a stamp of the paranoia of secrecy, you know.

[Willard Foxton]

Alex agreed to become our agent, our conduit into the Russian archives. I explained what we were looking for and right off the bat he was skeptical that the film was flown to Stalin.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Could anybody afford a plane with a reel of film to fly all the way to Moscow across the fighting areas? And it doesn't seem very probable, very probable to me.

[Willard Foxton]

Still, he agreed to dig around those underground archives for us. We asked him to look for any film about D day that might have been sent to Joseph Stalin. Two weeks later he called us back with an update.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

What they sent to Stalin was a collection of these Movietone and other News, American News, U.S. news, which I think were given to Russians as allies. But there is no evidence that there is a special film sent to Stalin, be it the 33 minute film or any other film.

[Willard Foxton]

The film we found in the US and UK was not in Russia. My first thought was maybe the Soviets buried the movie. Maybe they didn't want it to be seen. Alex disagreed.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

For the Russians, there is no, no sense in keeping it secret. That was not a Russian effort. There's nothing secret in it for, for the Russians.

[Willard Foxton]

Apparently, while Russia likes to manage its own history, an artifact like this from another country, they don't care so much. Though Alex didn't think the Russians had any reason to lie, he did think someone else wasn't so trustworthy. John Ford himself.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The guy was a big liar. And with every passing year, the lies were becoming grander and grander. He says in his interviews that the canaries work four hours work, four hours sleep. Okay, then I have a question. Why did such a mountain give birth to such a small mouse? Where is the produce of all this titanic effort?

[Willard Foxton]

With Ford, you really can't ever rule out the idea that he was, at a minimum, stretching the truth. Or maybe, as film historian Mark Harris told us, Ford wasn't outright lying. Perhaps he was merely remembering it wrong.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

You know, one thing that we have to acknowledge in the Ford story is that he was a pretty severe blackout. Alcoholic alcoholism can do strange things to memory. And time can do strange things to memory, too. If you're asking if I think Ford intentionally misled people, I don't. I do think that Ford had to tell himself a story of his own heroism. And that need to have validation did strange things to him. And even his family said he started having an obsession with metals and an obsession with recognition. You know, directors are storytellers. I wouldn't call them liars.

[Willard Foxton]

I'd call them tall tale tellers. Ken Bowser is a documentary filmmaker. He doubts Ford's story, too, but for a different reason. Because making documentaries is hard. Making a documentary of D Day, as Ford described it, seems nearly impossible.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

When you got several hundred cameras shooting footage all over the place. British units and American units and many, many cameramen. The idea that Ford created this one hour color film is really, really difficult to imagine.

[Willard Foxton]

The sheer number of cameras is why Ken doesn't think we're ever going to find a real movie.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The amount of footage we're talking about for D Day would have been, in the end, 100, 150 hours. An enormous amount of footage. And the ability to put it together in two or three days is virtually impossible, no matter how much amphetamine or anything else you gave them to get through all of that footage. Anything is possible in the world, but it's very unlikely. All kinds of crazy things have happened in film history.

[Willard Foxton]

Ford biographer Joseph McBride has a different theory.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I mean, in South America, they found a version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It was 30 minutes longer than the version we had. And an original uncut print of Dreier's Passion of Joan of Arc turned up in a Danish mental hospital some years ago. A whole bunch of American films were found in New Zealand a few years ago, and they were sitting in their archive and nobody looked at them until some American archivists went down there and started opening the cans. So a lot of film history has been lost, stolen or misfiled.

[Willard Foxton]

Lost, stolen, misfiled. Burned in a nitrate vault. Fire. Too graphic. So it got buried in some archive somewhere. We may never know. After all the searching, I don't think I'll ever get to see John Ford's film. But I still wanted to try to understand what he may have shot on the day the Allied forces came ashore and changed the course of history. It's midday on Thursday and I'm staring out at the beach, staring out at the English Channel on Omaha Beach. Whatever film was shot on June 6, 1944, it was shot here in this section of beach on the Normandy coast. The wind that morning was strong and cold. Middle of February, cold. I was joined by an Irishman named Ed Robinson, a tour guide and expert on D Day.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Hello. The wind is picking up and it's drizzling slightly. It's going to be a bit cold.

[Willard Foxton]

Still standing on the sand, he gestured to the water and began to tell me what John Ford might have witnessed 80 years ago.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

This is Exit Dog 1. This is the very westernmost point of Omaha beach. And this is where the famous landing scene in Saving Private Ryan is supposed to have taken place. This was one of the two spots on Omaha beach where the American forces lost the most men when they came ashore in the initial assault waves. Here on the beach, under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France. The gradient on the beach is so shallow that the landing craft couldn't get closer than about a 50 to 100 yards before the boats would ground out. So they not only had up to a quarter of a mile of open sand to cover, but you had to come through water for 50 to 100 yards before you even got onto the sand, which meant you were seasick, you were wet, the wind was pouring in. And to cap it all off, the Germans were doing their best to kill you as well. Men and women of the United States, this is a momentous hour in world history. This is the invasion of Hitler's Europe. You wouldn't have been able to hear anything. It would have all just been the. What's called, a roar of battle. Machine guns firing, rifles firing. It would have been totally deafening when you landed. The world's greatest military undertaking is underway. You can see bullets are being fired at you, but you don't know where they're being fired from. And your main priority is to get as far up the beach as quickly as you can to get to the COVID and tuck yourself in a sweep. Small as possible, casualties in this mammoth operation may reach a dreadful toll. The camera member coming ashore with the soldiers in the assault craft, taking the same risks, but with a camera in their hands instead of a rifle. But coming into land on the beach, you would have been coming past floating bodies. The color of the sea was turning redder and redder the closer you got to the shoreline itself. Until by the time they got in onto the shoreline, everything would be covered in light, smoke, dust. As the battle blew the fire and the smoke across the battlefield, you'd be coming ashore, finding men screaming, wounded, others dead. Three to 400 men died on the beach. No more than about 500 yards in any direction from where we're standing at the moment.

[Willard Foxton]

Three to 400 men just within 500 yards of where we are.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Exactly.

[Willard Foxton]

It was, to say the least, a lot to take in. I explained to Ed how I ended up on Omaha beach. And to my surprise, he told me he'd heard about the John Ford flight. He gave me his theory about what might have happened to it.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

There is a story that a lot of the footage which was shot on D day was being passed from a landing craft up to a destroyer and it was dropped into the ocean between the two of them and never seen again. On D Day, you would have had three foot waves inshore and six to eight foot waves offshore.

[Willard Foxton]

So right now it looks, it looks unbelievably calm. This was not how it was on June 6.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The landing craft is bouncing up and down on the side of it and you're trying to get a duffel bag weighing 50 or 100 pounds up the side, vertical side of a ship 20ft high. From the moving deck of a landing craft onto a destroyer. I'm surprised they only dropped one duffel bag.

[Willard Foxton]

All right, yeah, so maybe that's what happened. Priceless reels of film shot by a team of Hollywood cameramen, all led by John Ford, with footage of one of the most important battles in modern history. Slipping away into the ocean, truly lost. What John Ford saw on the beach that day changed him in ways impossible for us, for me to grasp. Ford had craved military service for so long. But after experiencing the brutal reality of battle, he spiraled into darkness. He went on one of the biggest benders of his life when he gave that interview 20 years after D Day, the one that sent us on this search. He didn't sound like a war hero. He sounded like a man humbled by what he saw and by the men he commanded on that beach, many of whom were his fellow filmmakers.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

They were impressive.

[Willard Foxton]

They went in first, not to fight, but to photograph.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

They went in with the troops.

[Willard Foxton]

They were with the first ones ashore.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

They didn't have arms, just cameras. And to me, facing the enemy defenseless.

[Willard Foxton]

Takes a special kind of bravery. When a man is armed with a gun is probably much braver than if he doesn't have. If it's still out there, maybe one day someone else will find John Ford's D Day film and we'll have another way in, another portal to history, courtesy of one of our greatest filmmakers. It obviously won't be me, though. We gave it a solid try. But, you know, in the end, standing on the Normandy coast on that cold day in February, I realized what should have been obvious. It was more important, more necessary to just try to understand, to, in my own way, bear witness to what happened on Omaha Beach 80 years ago. It's quite something like, I knew it was going to take my breath away, but it did. And I was like, oh, this will be moving. And then, of course, I started to cry. And I'm reminded, of course, I'm constantly reminded of my father here, December 1945. He came over and fought the last five months of the war. But he was always. He was very somber and proud of what happened here. And it is quite something to be here, man. I. I was ready to be cynical about this. And it's impossible. I mean, it's overwhelming. The sacrifice, overwhelming. Next week on, the Plot Thickens. We continue our quest not for John Ford's film, but to understand Ford himself.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

There was a change in Jack because, you know, he liked to play soldier before the war, but after he'd been out there, you know, then it was a different thing.

[Willard Foxton]

The aftermath of what John Ford saw on D Day throws him into a complete tailspin.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

He just started drinking and didn't stop.

[Willard Foxton]

And Ford returns to the US searching for a new frontier to conquer.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I wanted to relieve. I was anxious to get away from.

[Willard Foxton]

Hollywood, get out in the great open spaces. He sets up shop in the desert and starts to build his own kingdom. It's like a summer camp, and he's running it.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

He could be absolutely hideous to people, dreadful, Very, very nasty and unpleasant. If you got into an argument with the old man on stage, he would blackball you from films until he was ready to forgive you.

[Willard Foxton]

Angela Caron is our director of podcasts. Story editor is Karen Duffin. Jaco Friedman is our senior producer. Script writing by Yakov Friedman, Maya Croth and James Sheridan, who also fact check 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, John Renau and Kristen Hassell, and to the talents of TCM staffers Taran Jacobs, Katie Daniels, David Byrne, Diana Bosch, Caroline Wigmore, Michelle Hite, 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 Indiana University's Lilly Library. Special thanks to TCM host Eddie Muller, who read John Ford's words for us. Even, I have to admit, reluctantly, he did a pretty good job. 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 Tune Welders composed our theme music. I'm your host, Ben Mankiewicz. Thanks for listening. See you next time.