60 Fun Facts About John Ford

How many Academy Awards for Best Director did John Ford win, still a record?

They came for The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley and The Quiet Man; William Wyler and Frank Capra are next with three.

Under what surname was Ford born?

He later liked to give his name as Seán Aloysius O'Feeny.

In which state was John Ford born, to Irish immigrant parents?

He was born in Cape Elizabeth and grew up in Portland's Irish neighbourhood of Munjoy Hill.

What nickname did Ford earn playing fullback at Portland High School?

It came from the way he lowered his helmet and charged the line.

Ford broke into films in 1914 working for which older brother, already a Hollywood actor-director?

He adopted the name Jack Ford and appeared uncredited as a Klansman in The Birth of a Nation.

Ford's directorial debut Straight Shooting (1917) starred which silent Western actor, his partner on 26 films?

Only three of their collaborations survive; Ford later dedicated 3 Godfathers to him.

Ford's early triumph The Iron Horse (1924) told the story of building what?

Fox sent him to shoot on location at Wadsworth, Nevada.

Which 1930 Ford film marked the screen debuts of both Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart?

Both were signed to Fox on Ford's recommendation, then dropped.

Ford's first Oscar came for The Informer (1935), a drama set during which conflict?

Victor McLaglen won Best Actor as Gypo Nolan, who betrays a comrade for a £20 bounty.

Which humorist made three films with Ford, ending with Steamboat Round the Bend, before a 1935 plane crash?

Judge Priest, their second film, was one of the top-grossing pictures of 1934.

Which child star headlined Ford's 1937 film Wee Willie Winkie?

It grossed over $1 million in its first year, as did The Hurricane the same year.

Stagecoach (1939) was adapted from a short story by Ernest Haycox with what title?

Dudley Nichols wrote the screenplay.

Which stuntman performed the famous horse-and-coach stunts in Stagecoach?

The Apache attack was filmed at Lucerne Dry Lake near Victorville, California.

Which director claimed to have watched Stagecoach more than 40 times while preparing his own first film?

He called it 'a perfect textbook of filmmaking' before making Citizen Kane.

Which Arizona-Utah border location did Ford first use in Stagecoach and return to for six more Westerns?

Its sandstone buttes rise up to 1,000 feet above the valley floor on Navajo land.

Which character did John Wayne play in Stagecoach, the role that made him a star?

He had already appeared in a Ford film in 1928, as an excitable spectator in Hangman's House.

In Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), the young lawyer wins a murder trial using what piece of evidence?

He proves the moon had set before the time of the killing.

Who played Tom Joad in Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940)?

Gregg Toland, on loan from Goldwyn, shot it; the film ends with Ma Joad's 'We're the people' speech.

How Green Was My Valley famously beat which film to the 1941 Best Picture Oscar?

It also beat The Maltese Falcon and Sergeant York, and Ford took his third directing Oscar.

Where was the Welsh mining village of How Green Was My Valley actually built?

The 80-acre set stood at Brent's Crags; the film is narrated by the adult Huw, who never ages on screen.

During World War II, Ford headed the photographic unit of which agency?

He rose to become a top adviser to OSS chief William Donovan.

Ford was wounded in the arm while filming which 1942 battle for his Oscar-winning documentary?

He shot the Japanese attack from the power plant on Sand Island; the 18-minute film was narrated by Henry Fonda, Donald Crisp and Jane Darwell.

With which cinematographer did Ford co-direct the propaganda documentary December 7th about Pearl Harbor?

The 82-minute original was shelved; a 32-minute cut won the 1944 documentary short Oscar.

To what naval rank was Ford promoted on the day he left service after the Korean War?

Nixon made him a full Admiral in 1973 while presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Who played Wyatt Earp in Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946)?

Victor Mature played the consumptive, Shakespeare-loving Doc Holliday.

Fort Apache (1948) was the first of Ford's 'Cavalry Trilogy'. Which film completed it in 1950?

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon came between them; all three starred John Wayne.

Fort Apache's story of a glory-seeking colonel drew on which historical disaster?

Henry Fonda's Colonel Thursday resembles Custer; the Fetterman Fight was another source.

Which artist's paintings did Winton Hoch use as the model for She Wore a Yellow Ribbon's look?

Hoch won an Oscar despite fighting Ford over shooting a cavalry column in a real thunderstorm.

Ford dedicated 3 Godfathers (1948) to which recently dead actor, 'Bright Star of the early western sky'?

He had filmed the same story in 1919 as Marked Men, now lost.

Ford named which 1950 film about Mormon pioneers crossing the desert as his personal favourite?

He told Peter Bogdanovich it 'came closest to what I had hoped to achieve'; it was the only film since 1930 he scripted himself.

Republic Pictures agreed to finance The Quiet Man only if Ford, Wayne and O'Hara first made what?

That film was Rio Grande; Republic also insisted The Quiet Man run under two hours.

What was the profession of Sean Thornton, John Wayne's character in The Quiet Man?

He returns from Pittsburgh to buy his family farm in the village of Inisfree.

The Quiet Man's outdoor scenes were shot in which two Irish counties?

Winton Hoch won an Oscar for the lush Technicolor photography.

Which star of John Ford's The Long Gray Line (1955) was originally slated for How Green Was My Valley?

Power was to have played the adult Huw before Zanuck decided the character should not age.

Ford was replaced on Mister Roberts (1955) by Mervyn LeRoy after a rift with which star, whom he punched?

Ford then suffered a ruptured gallbladder needing emergency surgery.

What is the name of John Wayne's character in The Searchers, who hunts for his kidnapped niece?

The niece, Debbie, is played by Natalie Wood; the Comanche chief who took her is called Scar.

John Wayne's catchphrase in The Searchers inspired which Buddy Holly song?

Holly saw the film in a cinema in Lubbock, Texas.

The Searchers was ranked at what position in Sight and Sound's 2012 critics' poll of the greatest films?

Cahiers du Cinéma placed it tenth in its 2008 list of the 100 best films.

The Searchers was reportedly inspired by the 1836 Comanche kidnapping of which nine-year-old?

The screenplay by Frank Nugent came from Alan Le May's 1954 novel.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) was the first film to pair John Wayne with which co-star?

Lee Marvin played the outlaw Valance; unusually for late Ford, it was shot in black and white on Paramount soundstages.

In Liberty Valance, the newspaper editor decides that when myth becomes fact, a paper should do what?

Gene Pitney had a top-10 hit with the Bacharach-David theme song.

Which 1964 film was Ford's last Western, which he called an elegy to the Native Americans?

He cast Navajo people as the Cheyenne and Sal Mineo, Ricardo Montalbán and Gilbert Roland as their leaders.

Ford's last completed feature, 7 Women (1966), is about missionary women in which country?

They are menaced by a Mongolian warlord in about 1935.

At a 1950 Directors Guild meeting over a loyalty oath, Ford gave his name and then described himself how?

He was opposing Cecil B. DeMille's attempt to make the oath mandatory.

Unlike Hitchcock, Ford never used what when planning his shots?

He composed his pictures entirely in his head.

What did Ford habitually chew to shreds while directing on set?

His wife gave him a dozen fresh ones every morning; he was also an inveterate pipe-smoker.

From the 1930s Ford wore dark glasses or a patch over which eye?

The eye was sensitive to light; late in life he briefly lost his sight entirely.

What was the name of Ford's yacht, to which he retreated to drink after clashes with the studios?

It was named for the Aran Islands, his mother's birthplace.

Which producer, Ford's partner in Argosy Pictures, was his frequent collaborator in the postwar years?

Ford had turned down a Fox contract worth $600,000 a year to go independent.

Which president attended John Ford's 1973 AFI Life Achievement Award and gave him the Medal of Freedom?

Ford, who backed the Vietnam War, died of stomach cancer that August in Palm Desert.

Which director, asked to name his favourite filmmakers, answered with Ford's name three times?

Kurosawa, Bergman, Capra and Tarkovsky also ranked Ford among the greatest.

What is the collective name for the actors the director reused, like Ward Bond?

Many of them never met Ford outside of work.

Ford's classic run of 1936-41 has been linked to a six-month affair with which actress?

She starred in his 1936 film Mary of Scotland.

Roughly how many films did Ford direct between 1917 and 1970?

Most of his silent films are now lost.

Ford's daughter Barbara was married from 1952 to 1964 to which singer-actor, later Festus on Gunsmoke?

Ford married Mary McBride Smith in 1920 and the marriage lasted for life despite his affairs.

Which 1939 frontier drama with Fonda and Claudette Colbert was Ford's first film in colour?

William Faulkner made uncredited contributions to the script.

Which lavish yearly Fox contract from Zanuck did Ford refuse after the war to go independent?

He formed Argosy Pictures with Merian C. Cooper instead.

Which 1963 Ford film, shot on Kauai, was his last with John Wayne?

The island doubled for a fictional French Polynesian setting in a morality play disguised as an action-comedy.

In Ford's Civil War segment of How the West Was Won, John Wayne played which general?

Wayne had already played Sherman in a 1960 Wagon Train episode Ford directed for Ward Bond.

Ford was replaced by Elia Kazan on which 1949 film after working only one day, supposedly ill with shingles?

Biographer Tag Gallagher suggests the illness was a pretext for leaving the project.