John Ford Filmography

Hollywood Mavericks

Actors: Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Peter Bogdanovich, D.W. Griffith, Erich Von Stroheim

Synopsis: This documentary respectfully interviews a number of important American directors who have in one way or another "bucked the system." It also explores the life and work of earlier American mavericks through the tributes, reflections, and recollections of the first group. Prominent among the living Read More

The Great American West

Actors: John Ford, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, John Wayne

Synopsis: After several feature-length documentaries (Elvis: That's The Way It Is, Soul to Soul), filmmaker Denis Sanders returned to the short-length form with The Great American West. This 55-minute film was initially a TV special, titled The Great American West of John Ford. The life story of the fabled Read More

Directed by John Ford

Actors: Henry Fonda, John Ford, John Wayne

Synopsis: This documentary profiles the great American filmmaker John Ford (1895-1973). Among the films he directed were The Young Lincoln, Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Grapes of Wrath. Ford's work was distinguished by its great emotional clarity, which some see as sentimentality Read More

Seven Women

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Anne Bancroft, Sue Lyon, Margaret Leighton, Flora Robson, Mildred Dunnock

Synopsis: John Ford's final film is set in China in 1935, where a group of American women, led by Agatha Andrews (Margaret Leighton), work as missionaries. One of the women, Florrie (Betty Field), is pregnant and accompanied by her husband, Charles (Eddie Albert), while the others are single and on their Read More

Young Cassidy

Crew: Director

Actors: Rod Taylor, Julie Christie, Edith Evans, Michael Redgrave, Flora Robson

Synopsis: Young Cassidy is based upon the autobiographical writings of firebrand Irish author Sean O'Casey. Rod Taylor is Cassidy, a boisterous boy who digs ditches to support his mother (Flora Robson) and sister (Sian Phillips). In his spare time, Cassidy is active with the Irish revolutionary movement Read More

Cheyenne Autumn

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, James Stewart, Edward G. Robinson, Karl Malden

Synopsis: John Ford's last western film, Cheyenne Autumn was allegedly produced to compensate for the hundreds of Native Americans who had bitten the dust in Ford's earlier films (that was the director's story, anyway). Set in 1887, the film recounts the defiant migration of 300 Cheyennes from their Read More

Donovan's Reef

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Jack Warden, Elizabeth Allen, Dick Foran, Cesar Romero

Synopsis: John Ford's last film to deal with World War II, Donovan's Reef is an alternately comical and sentimental look back on the fighting Navy men from that war, and how and where -- in Ford's eyes, and Frank Nugent and James Edward Grant's script -- they should have ended up. Michael "Guns" Donovan Read More

How the West Was Won

Crew: Director

Actors: James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, Richard Widmark, George Peppard, Karl Malden, John Wayne

Synopsis: Filmed in panoramic Cinerama, this star-studded, epic Western adventure is a true cinematic classic. Three legendary directors (Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall) combine their skills to tell the story of three families and their travels from the Erie Canal to California between 1839 Read More

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: John Wayne, James Stewart, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Edmond O'Brien

Synopsis: Like Pontius Pilate, director John Ford asks "What is truth?" in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--but unlike Pilate, Ford waits for an answer. The film opens in 1910, with distinguished and influential U.S. senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) returning to the Read More

Two Rode Together

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: James Stewart, Richard Widmark, Shirley Jones, Linda Cristal, Andy Devine

Synopsis: One of director John Ford's least characteristic films, it derives from the latter part of his career, when the director's belief in the myth of the West had faded, and he was beset by failing health and personal problems. In the cynicism of its humor, the director seems be to taking a page from Read More

Sergeant Rutledge

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jeffrey Hunter, Constance Towers, Billie Burke, Woody Strode, Carleton Young, Juano Hernandez

Synopsis: The first big budget Western to feature a black hero, this military courtroom drama from director John Ford starred his long-time stock player Woody Strode. When a cavalry commander and his daughter are discovered murdered, racism amidst the 9th Cavalry immediately leads to suspicions that Read More

The Horse Soldiers

Crew: Director

Actors: John Wayne, William Holden, Constance Towers, Althea Gibson, Hoot Gibson

Synopsis: Based on an actual Civil War mission, Colonel Marlowe (John Wayne) and Major Kendall (William Holden) are ordered by General Grant to take three regiments 300 miles into enemy territory. They must destroy the railroad line between Newton Station and Vicksburg in hopes of choking off supplies to Read More

The Last Hurrah

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Jeffrey Hunter, Dianne Foster, Pat O'Brien, Basil Rathbone, John Carradine

Synopsis: Spencer Tracy stars in John Ford's sentimental adaptation of Edwin O'Connor's novel about the final campaign of a big city mayor, loosely based upon the life of Boston politician James Curley. Tracy is Frank Skeffington, the political boss of an Eastern city dominated by Irish-Americans. Read More

Gideon of Scotland Yard

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jack Hawkins, Dianne Foster, Anna Lee, Anna Massey, Andrew Ray, Cyril Cusack

Synopsis: Director John Ford traveled to England to film this adaptation of the novel by J.J. Maraca, which details a typical day in the busy life of a detective for Scotland Yard. Inspector George Gideon (Jack Hawkins) begins his working day by confronting one of his fellow officers who is believed to be Read More

The Wings of Eagles

Crew: Director

Actors: John Wayne, Dan Dailey, Maureen O'Hara, Ward Bond, Ken Curtis

Synopsis: The Wings of Eagles is filmmaker John Ford's paean to his frequent collaborator--and, it is rumored, drinking buddy--Cmdr. Frank "Spig" Wead. John Wayne stars as Wead, a reckless WW1 Naval aviator who (it says here) was instrumental in advancing the cause of American "air power". In private life Read More

The Rising of the Moon

Crew: Director

Actors: Noel Purcell, Cyril Cusack, Jimmy O'Dea, Denis O'Dea, Eileen Crowe

Synopsis: To make the Rising of the Moon, American filmmaker John Ford returned to his Irish roots. An obscure and highly personal film for Ford, it is comprised of three episodes--each offering insight into Irish culture and values. All are introduced by Tyrone Power. In "The Majesty of the Law," a police Read More

The Searchers

Crew: Director

Actors: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood

Synopsis: If John Ford is the greatest Western director, The Searchers is arguably his greatest film, at once a grand outdoor spectacle like such Ford classics as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950) and a film about one man's troubling moral codes, a big-screen adventure of the 1950s that Read More

Rookie of the Year

Crew: Director

Mister Roberts

Crew: Director

Actors: Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, Jack Lemmon, Betsy Palmer

Synopsis: Henry Fonda returned to films after an eight-year absence in this masterful adaptation of the actor's Broadway hit Mister Roberts. Written and partially directed by Joshua Logan, the film stars Fonda as Lt. Doug Roberts, chief cargo officer of the supply ship "Reluctant." WW2 is in its last few Read More

The Long Gray Line

Crew: Director

Actors: Tyrone Power, Maureen O'Hara, Robert Francis, Ward Bond, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: The life story of West Point athletic director Marty Maher was the inspiration for John Ford's The Long Gray Line. Told in flashback, the film recalls the first days at the Point for Irish immigrant Maher (Tyrone Power), a pugnacious boy who can't seem to fit in with the institution's regimen of Read More

The Sun Shines Bright

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Charles Winninger, Arleen Whelan, John Russell, Stepin Fetchit, Russell Simpson

Synopsis: Director John Ford, notoriously difficult to please, regarded The Sun Shines Bright as his favorite film. Laurence Stalllings' screenplay is based on several short stories by Kentucky humorist Irvin S. Cobb, some of which had previously been cinematized in Ford's 1934 Will Rogers vehicle Judge Priest Read More

Mogambo

Crew: Director

Actors: Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Donald Sinden, Philip Stainton, Eric Pohlmann

Synopsis: The 1953 Clark Gable film Mogambo is a remake of Gable's 1932 seriocomic adventure Red Dust. Where the earlier film was lensed on the MGM backlot, Mogambo was shot on location in Africa by director John Ford. Gable is safari leader Victor Marswell, who plays "host" to stranded Eloise Y. Kelly (Ava Gardner Read More

The Quiet Man

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Victor McLaglen, Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond

Synopsis: Returning to the Ireland of his birth, director John Ford fashions a irresistable valentine to the "Auld Sod" in The Quiet Man. Irish-American boxer John Wayne, recovering from the trauma of having accidentally killed a man in the ring, arrives in the Irish village where he was born. Hoping to Read More

What Price Glory?

Crew: Director

Actors: James Cagney, Dan Dailey, Corinne Calvet, William Demarest, Craig Hill, Robert Wagner

Synopsis: James Cagney signed on to play Captain Flagg in 20th Century Fox's 1952 remake of the 1926 classic What Price Glory after being told that the old property was being converted into a musical. By the time Cagney learned that Fox had no intention of adding songs and dances to the venerable Maxwell Anderson Read More

This is Korea

Crew: Director

Synopsis: With This is Korea!, filmmaker John Ford returned to the wartime-documentary genre he'd deployed so well in the 1940s. Produced through the auspices of the U.S. Navy, this 50-minute film offers a clear-eyed history of the Korean War. Special attention is paid to the Marine advance through Seoul Read More

Wagon Master

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Ben Johnson, Harry Carey, Jr., Ward Bond, Joanne Dru, Charles Kemper, Alan Mowbray

Synopsis: Wagon Master, splendidly directed by John Ford, is a superlative western. The film is the outwardly simple tale of a Mormon wagon train headed for Utah. Along the way, the group, led by Elder Wiggs (Ward Bond) hook up with two horse traders Travis Blue (Ben Johnson) and Sandy Owens (Harry Carey Read More

Rio Grande

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Ben Johnson, Claude Jarman, Jr., Harry Carey, Jr.

Synopsis: John Wayne stars as Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke, whose devotion to duty has cost him his marriage to his beloved Kathleen (Maureen O'Hara). Yorke gets word that his son, Jeff (Claude Jarman Jr.) -- whom he hasn't seen in 15 years -- has been dropped as a cadet from West Point, and that he lied about his Read More

When Willie Comes Marching Home

Crew: Director

Actors: Dan Dailey, Corinne Calvet, Colleen Townsend, William Demarest, Jimmy Lydon, Mae Marsh

Synopsis: A rare comedy from director John Ford, this story about a WWII soldier trying to gain some respect is based on the published war memoirs of Sy Gomberg. Bill Kluggs (Dan Dailey) is the first man in his small West Virginia town to enlist, and his father Herman (William Demarest) and the locals give Read More

Mighty Joe Young

Crew: Producer

Actors: Terry Moore, Ben Johnson, Robert Armstrong, Frank McHugh, Mr. Joseph Young, Douglas Fowley

Synopsis: Hoping to make the magic of King Kong happen again, the production team of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack came up with the 1949 special-effects smorgasbord Mighty Joe Young. Robert Armstrong reprises his Kong portrayal of Carl Denham as hot-shot showbiz entrepreneur Max O'Hara. While in Read More

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: John Wayne, Joanne Dru, John Agar, Ben Johnson, Victor McLaglen

Synopsis: The second of John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy", She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is the only one of the three to be lensed in Technicolor. In an Oscar-calibre performance, 42-year old John Wayne plays sixtyish Cavalry Captain Nathan Brittles. In his last days before his compulsory retirement, Brittles must Read More

The Three Godfathers

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: John Wayne, Harry Carey, Jr., Ward Bond, Mae Marsh

Synopsis: John Ford had already directed one of the three previous film versions of Peter Kyne's novel under the title Marked Men (1919) with his mentor Harry Carey, a great cowboy star of the silent era who had recently died. It's not difficult to see how the story's sentimentality and Christian symbolism Read More

The Fugitive

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Henry Fonda, Dolores Del Rio, Pedro Armendáriz, J. Carrol Naish, Leo Carrillo

Synopsis: The Fugitive was shot on location in Mexico by that country's premiere cinematographer, Gabriel Figueroa. Henry Fonda plays a Christ-like priest in an unnamed Latin-American country where religion has been outlawed. Though incognito in a backwater village, Fonda cannot help but seem more spiritual Read More

Fort Apache

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Ward Bond, Shirley Temple, John Agar, Pedro Armendáriz, Dick Foran

Synopsis: The first of John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy", Fort Apache stars John Wayne as captain Kirby York and Henry Fonda as Custer clone Lt. Col. Owen Thursday. Resentful of his loss in rank and transfer to the West after serving gallantly in the Civil War, the vainglorious Thursday insists upon imposing Read More

My Darling Clementine

Crew: Director

Actors: Henry Fonda, Linda Darnell, Victor Mature, Jane Darwell, Walter Brennan, Cathy Downs, Ward Bond

Synopsis: One of the greatest movie Westerns, John Ford's My Darling Clementine is hardly the most accurate film version of the Wyatt Earp legend, but it is still one of the most entertaining. Henry Fonda stars as former lawman Wyatt Earp, who, after cleaning up Dodge City, arrives in the outskirts of Read More

They Were Expendable

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, Donna Reed, Cameron Mitchell, Ward Bond

Synopsis: John Brickley (Robert Montgomery) believes in PT boats, and as a lowly U.S. Navy lieutenant stationed in the Philippines, that makes him a radical thinker. "Your boats maneuver beautifully," an admiral (Charles Trowbridge) tells him, "but if I'm going into combat, I prefer something a little more Read More

At the Front

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This 41-minute wartime documentary was a joint effort of the Women's Army Corps and the U.S. Signal Corps. Lensed in Technicolor, the film is highlighted by an authentic tank battle, which is over all too quickly. Also shown are the tireless efforts of the Red Cross to minister to the wounded Read More

December 7th: The Movie

Crew: Director

Actors: Walter Huston, Harry Davenport

Synopsis: This is a restored, 82-minute version of 1943's December 7th, originally commissioned by the U.S. Navy to document the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Cinematographer Gregg Toland and filmmaker John Ford quietly made a full-length feature that intimated that the attack Read More

December 7th

Crew: Director

Actors: Walter Huston, Harry Davenport, Dana Andrews

Synopsis: Produced on behalf of the U.S. government, December 7th is just as slick and professional as any of director John Ford's "civilian" films. With the not inconsiderable contribution of cinematographer Gregg Toland, Ford literally recreates the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, and even manages to build Read More

The Battle of Midway

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Highlights from World War II are documented in this award-winning film. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

How Green Was My Valley

Crew: Director

Actors: Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowall, Barry Fitzgerald, Anna Lee

Synopsis: Spanning 50 years, director John Ford's How Green Was My Valley revolves around the life of the Morgans, a Welsh mining family, as told through the eyes of its youngest child Huw (Roddy McDowall). Over the years, the family struggles to survive through unionization, strikes, and child abuse. As Read More

Tobacco Road

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Grapewin, Marjorie Rambeau, Gene Tierney, William Tracy, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: Erskine Caldwell's once-scandalous novel Tobacco Road resulted in an equally steamy stage play by Jack Kirkland, which became one of the longest-running productions in Broadway history. This story of indigence and amorality amongst inbred "poor whites" (based on people Caldwell had known while Read More

Sex Hygiene

Crew: Director

The Grapes of Wrath

Crew: Director

Actors: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charles Grapewin, Doris Bowden

Synopsis: The adaptation of Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of dirt-poor Dust Bowl migrants by 4-time Oscar-winning director John Ford starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, who opens the movie returning to his Oklahoma home after serving jail time for manslaughter. En route, Tom Read More

The Long Voyage Home

Crew: Director

Actors: John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell, Ian Hunter, Barry Fitzgerald, Wilfred Lawson

Synopsis: John Ford welded four of Eugene O'Neill's one-act plays about the sea, Bound East for Cardiff, The Long Voyage Home, The Zone, and Moon of the Caribees, into this melancholy film about wayfaring seamen, changing the setting from the turn of the century to WWII. This was O'Neill's favorite of the Read More

Stagecoach

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Claire Trevor, John Wayne, Andy Devine, Thomas Mitchell, George Bancroft, John Carradine

Synopsis: Although there were Westerns before it, Stagecoach quickly became a template for all movie Westerns to come. Director John Ford combined action, drama, humor, and a set of well-drawn characters in the story of a stagecoach set to leave Tonto, New Mexico for a distant settlement in Lordsburg, with Read More

Young Mr. Lincoln

Crew: Director

Actors: Henry Fonda, Alice Brady, Marjorie Weaver, Arleen Whelan, Pauline Moore, Richard Cromwell

Synopsis: John Ford's fine direction distinguishes this highly fictionalized account of the early life of Abraham Lincoln. The film shows Lincoln (Henry Fonda) as he rises from a country boy born in a log cabin to a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois defending two young men unjustly accused of murder. The Read More

Drums Along the Mohawk

Crew: Director

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Henry Fonda, Edna May Oliver, Arthur Shields, Eddie Collins, Ward Bond, John Carradine

Synopsis: John Ford directed this outdoor adventure set in the American Colonial period. Gilbert and Lana Martin (Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert) are a young couple trying to make a home in New York State's Mohawk Valley, but repeated attacks by Indians drive them, along with other settlers in the Read More

Four Men and a Prayer

Crew: Director

Actors: Loretta Young, Richard Greene, George Sanders, David Niven, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: This saga spans the globe as the three young heroes search for the man who killed their much-admired, beloved father, a cashiered officer who was wrongly dishonorably discharged before he was murdered. Their quest takes them from India to South America, London, Egypt, and the U.S. As the progress Read More

Submarine Patrol

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Greene, Nancy Kelly, Preston S. Foster, George Bancroft, George "Slim" Summerville

Synopsis: Set during World War I, Submarine Patrol stars Preston S. Foster as a naval officer demoted for dereliction of duty. He is forced to commandeer a battered old submarine chaser and its ragtag crew. Anxious to redeem himself, Foster transforms his loser underlings into a crack combat team, chalking Read More

Wee Willie Winkie

Crew: Director

Actors: Shirley Temple, Victor McLaglen, C. Aubrey Smith, June Lang, Michael Whalen

Synopsis: In this lovely John Ford film, Joyce Williams (June Lang) and her young daughter, Priscilla (Shirley Temple), travel to India to live on a British Army base with Joyce's father, Colonel Williams, Aubrey C. Smith). Once there, sweet, young Priscilla manages to win the love and affection of the Read More

The Hurricane

Crew: Director

Actors: Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith, Thomas Mitchell

Synopsis: Framed in a flashback related by doctor Thomas Mitchell, The Hurricane is in essence the story of a struggle between individual freedom and colonial oppression. Jon Hall plays Terangi, a tempestuous native of the French-controlled island of Manakoora. After marrying childhood sweetheart Marama (Dorothy Lamour Read More

Mary of Scotland

Crew: Director

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Fredric March, Florence Eldridge, Douglas Walton, John Carradine

Synopsis: Maxwell Anderson's blank-verse play Mary of Scotland was adapted for the screen by Dudley Nichols and directed with a surprising paucity of verve by John Ford. Katharine Hepburn, in one of the "icy" roles that would later earn her the onus of "box office poison", stars as Mary Stuart, who serves Read More

The Prisoner of Shark Island

Crew: Director

Actors: Warner Baxter, Gloria Stuart, Claude Gillingwater, Arthur Byron, Harry Carey, O.P. Heggie

Synopsis: Warner Baxter plays Dr. Samuel Mudd, American history's most famous victim of circumstance. In 1865, Dr. Mudd, a known Confederate sympathizer, sets the broken leg of a mud-caked stranger who stumbles into his home. The injured man turns out to be John Wilkes Booth, and Mudd is accused of Read More

The Plough and the Stars

Crew: Director

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Preston S. Foster, Barry Fitzgerald, Denis O'Dea, Arthur Shields, Eileen Crowe

Synopsis: John Ford, whose fierce pride in his Irish heritage often manifested itself in his work, directed this historical drama which uses as its backdrop the 1916 Easter Rebellion of Irish patriots against British rule. Nora Clitheroe (Barbara Stanwyck) runs a rooming house in Dublin and tries to stay Read More

Steamboat Round the Bend

Crew: Director

Actors: Will Rogers, Anne Shirley, Irvin S. Cobb, Eugene Pallette, John McGuire

Synopsis: Two of America's most distinguished humorists, Oklahoma's Will Rogers and Kentucky's Irvin S. Cobb, costar in Steamboat Round the Bend. Cobb isn't much of an actor, so it is Rogers who carries the comic weight of this fast-paced slice of Americana. Will uncharacteristically sticks to the script Read More