John FordFilmography

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sex Hygiene

Crew: Director

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

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

Women in Defense

Crew: Director

Actors: Katharine Hepburn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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 Informer

Crew: Director

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Heather Angel, Preston S. Foster, Margot Grahame, Wallace Ford

Synopsis: The Informer, Liam O'Flaherty's novel of the the Irish "troubles" of the early 1920s, was first filmed in England in 1929, with Cyril McLaglen in the lead. When director John Ford remade The Informer in 1935, the role of the tragic Irish roisterer Gypo Nolan went to Cyril's brother Victor 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

The Whole Town's Talking

Crew: Director

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Jean Arthur, Wallace Ford, Arthur Hohl, Donald Meek, Arthur Byron

Synopsis: The film that revived Edward G. Robinson's career after a string of flops, along with A Slight Case of Murder (1938), it was one of the few comedies on his lengthy list of credits. The gangster-comedy was unusual in the composition of its writing staff, which included frequent Frank Capra Read More

The World Moves On

Crew: Director

Actors: Madeleine Carroll, Franchot Tone, Lumsden Hare, Raul Roulien, Reginald Denny, Dudley Digges

Synopsis: In the tradition of Fox Studios' Oscar-winning Cavalcade, The World Moves On covers over one hundred years in the lives of two Louisiana families: The Girards, of French extraction, and the Warburtons, formerly of Manchester. Forming an alliance by marriage in 1825, the families rapidly corner the Read More

The Lost Patrol

Crew: Director

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Boris Karloff, Wallace Ford, Reginald Denny, J.M. Kerrigan

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1929, Philip MacDonald's novel Patrol was lensed by director John Ford as The Lost Patrol in 1934. Sergeant Victor McLaglen is in charge of a World War I-era British cavalry regiment, stranded somewhere in the Mesopotamian desert. McLaglen hasn't asked for the responsibility Read More

Judge Priest

Crew: Director

Actors: Will Rogers, Tom Brown, Anita Louise, Henry B. Walthall, Rochelle Hudson, David Landau

Synopsis: Will Rogers stars as Judge William "Billy" Priest, the common-sense Kentucky jurist created by humorist Irvin S. Cobb. The Judge's easygoing manner bothers many of the self-righteous good citizens of his small 19th-century hometown, imperiling his chances for re-election. The anecdotal plot boils Read More

Doctor Bull

Crew: Director

Actors: Will Rogers, Vera Allen, Marian Nixon, Howard Lally, Berton Churchill

Synopsis: Will Rogers is Dr. Bull, a small-town physician with precious little book learning. This doesn't stop him from ministering to the citizens, often substituting advice and witticisms for pills and sutures. There are those who resist Dr. Bull's everyday doses of common sense and humanity, especially Read More

Pilgrimage

Crew: Director

Actors: Henrietta Crosman, Heather Angel, Norman Foster, Marian Nixon, Maurice Murphy

Synopsis: John Ford directed this emotional drama, which was a considerable change of pace from the westerns and war pictures for which he was best known. Hannah Jessop (Henrietta Crosman) fears being abandoned by her son Jim (Norman Foster), and she doesn't approve of his romance with Mary Saunders (Marian Nixon Read More

Air Mail

Crew: Director

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Ralph Bellamy, Russell Hopton, George "Slim" Summerville, Gloria Stuart

Synopsis: The air-mail pilots who fly from a small airport in the Rocky Mountains are determined but not paid well, and there are occasional fatal crashes. It's a tradition of long standing that when this happens, chief pilot Mike Miller (Ralph Bellamy) makes the next flight himself. Daredevil Duke Talbot (Pat O'Brien Read More

Flesh

Crew: Director

Actors: Wallace Beery, Karen Morley, Ricardo Cortez, Jean Hersholt, John Miljan

Synopsis: Flesh was one of the few big-studio films to deal with the subject of professional wrestling--at least until Hulk Hogan came along in the 1980s. Wallace Beery stars as a thickheaded waiter in a German beer garden who uses his muscles to clear out rowdy patrons. Beery channels his strength into a Read More

The Seas Beneath

Crew: Director

Actors: George O'Brien, Marion Lessing, Mona Maris, Walter "Judge" Kelly, Walter McGrail

Synopsis: The first of director John Ford's three films for 1931 was the now-forgotten The Seas Beneath. Essentially a reworking of Ford's 1930 effort Men Without Women, the story concentrates on the WWI submarine crew captained by rough-and-tumble Bob Kingsley (George O'Brien). While trying to coerce a Read More

The Brat

Crew: Director

Actors: Sally O'Neil, Alan Dinehart, Virginia Cherrill, June Collyer

Synopsis: Arguably John Ford's weakest film, The Brat was based on a popular 1917 stage play written by and starring Maude Fulton, which in turn was made into a popular comedy for Alla Nazimova in 1919. Although vivacious and pretty, Sally O'Neil was hardly in Nazimova's league but here she is in the title Read More

Arrowsmith

Crew: Director

Actors: Ronald Colman, Helen Hayes, Richard Bennett, A.E. Anson, Clarence Brooks, DeWitt Jennings

Synopsis: One of the more prestigious films of its time, John Ford's film adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has a sleek Art Deco look strangely out of tune with its tale of moral struggle. Ronald Colman stars as Martin Arrowsmith, an idealistic young doctor, who, after graduating Read More

Men Without Women

Crew: Director

Actors: Kenneth MacKenna, Frank Albertson, Paul Page, Warren Hymer, Walter McGrail

Synopsis: John Ford directed this undersea adventure from the early days of the sound era; it features talking sequences along silent passages with intertitles. After a brief shore leave in Singapore, where sailors have the opportunity to slake their thirsts for both liquor and women, the crew of a U.S. Read More

Born Reckless

Crew: Director

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Catherine Dale Owen, Lee Tracy, Marguerite Churchill, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: This drama is set during the mid Twenties when gangsters were a bit more genteel than their 1930s counterparts. Based on a true story, it profiles the experiences of a young gangster who, after getting caught during a robbery is given a choice: he can either go to prison or join the military and Read More

Up the River

Crew: Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Claire Luce, Warren Hymer, Humphrey Bogart, William Collier, Sr.

Synopsis: The one-time-only combination of director John Ford and actors Spencer Tracy (in his first film) and Humphrey Bogart (in his second) should be recommendation enough for the offbeat comedy-drama Up the River. Tracy and Warren Hymer play Saint Louis and Dannemora Dan, two hard-boiled but likeable Read More

Strong Boy

Crew: Director

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Leatrice Joy, John Farrell MacDonald, Clyde Cook, Kent Sanderson

Synopsis: In this comedy drama, an enormous baggage handler earns the reputation of being an all-'round good joe and soon gets promoted. He is in love with Joy, a pretty newsstand girl. Despite his good work, which includes stopping a train robbery, she realizes that her lovable lug will never rise to Read More

Salute

Crew: Director

Actors: George O'Brien, William Janney, Frank Albertson, Ward Bond, Helen Chandler, Joyce Compton

Synopsis: One of the few pre-1930 John Ford films currently available, the part-talkie Salute was co-directed by Ford and David Butler. George O'Brien is cast as cadet John Randall, star player for the Army college football team. His principal gridiron opponent is Navy player Paul Randall (William Janney) Read More

The Black Watch

Crew: Director

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Myrna Loy, David Rollins, Roy D'Arcy, Lumsden Hare, Walter Long

Synopsis: In this early talkie from director John Ford, a Scottish captain and his regiment are sent to India during WW I and assigned to quell a native uprising in the Northern mountains. Unfortunately, soon after arriving, he gets drunk and seemingly kills another officer during a barroom fight. He Read More

Mother Machree

Crew: Director

Actors: Belle Bennett, Philippe DeLacy, Neil Hamilton, Victor McLaglen, Ted McNamara

Synopsis: Technically, Mother Machree was director John Ford's first sound film -- even though the sound was limited to a Fox Movietone musical score and sound-effects track. The story begins in a tiny Irish village at the turn of the century. Having lost her husband to a lightning storm, Ellen McHugh (Belle Bennett Read More

Riley the Cop

Crew: Director

Actors: John Farrell MacDonald, Louise Fazenda, Nancy Drexel, David Rollins, Harry Schultz

Synopsis: All evidence suggests that Riley the Cop was a delightful vehicle for John Ford "regular" J. Farrell McDonald. New York policeman James Riley is asked to retrieve neighborhood boy Joe Smith (David Rollins), who skipped town after being falsely accused of theft and is now living a sinful life in Read More

Four Sons

Crew: Director

Actors: Margaret Mann, James Hall, Earl Foxe, June Collyer, Charles Morton, George Meeker

Synopsis: Long though lost, Four Sons reemerged in the 1960s, proving anew that the silent films of director John Ford were every bit as accomplished as his talkies. More "Germanic" in tone and texture than later Ford films, Four Sons is the story of the Bernle family of Bavaria. Mother Bernle (Margaret Mann Read More

Hangman's House

Crew: Director

Actors: Victor McLaglen, June Collyer, Larry Kent, Earl Foxe, Hobart Bosworth

Synopsis: Long believed lost, this fascinating John Ford-directed silent film was rediscovered and restored in the early 1970s. Based on the 1926 novel by Donn Byrne, the film stars Hobart Bosworth as Irish "hanging judge" James O'Brien. Even on his deathbed, O'Brien cannot stop meddling in the affairs of Read More

Upstream

Crew: Producer

Actors: Nancy Nash, Earl Foxe, Grant Withers, Lydia Yeamans Titus, Raymond Hitchcock

Synopsis: This long-lost John Ford production was based on The Snake's Wife, a story by Wallace Smith. The scene is a theatrical boarding house, populated by all manner of colorful show-biz characters. Knife-thrower Jack (Grant Withers) is in love with his vaudeville partner Gertie (Nancy Nash), but she Read More

Shamrock Handicap

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Leslie Fenton, John Farrell MacDonald, Louis Payne, Claire McDowell

Synopsis: Based on a story by Peter B. Kyne, the long-lost John Ford silent Shamrock Handicap begins in Ireland. Because he refuses to collect rent payments from his impoverished tenants, kindly Irish nobleman Sir Miles Gaffney is in danger of losing his estate. He is forced to sell off part of his racing Read More

Three Bad Men

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: George O'Brien, Olive Borden, Lou Tellegen, John Farrell MacDonald, Tom Santschi

Synopsis: Long thought lost, the silent Three Bad Men is an vital ingredient in the cinematic canon of director John Ford. Often described as a film version of Peter B. Kyne's Three Godfathers (which Ford would direct in 1948), Three Bad Men is actually based on Over the Border, a novel by Herman Whitaker. Read More

Blue Eagle

Crew: Director

Lightnin'

Crew: Director

Actors: Jay Hunt, Madge Bellamy, Wallace MacDonald, John Farrell MacDonald, Ethel Clayton

Synopsis: Director John Ford was out of his element with this comedy, based on the hit Broadway play by Winchell Smith and Frank Bacon (Bacon also played the role of Lightnin' Bill on-stage). On the border between California and Nevada there is a hotel run by Mother Jones (Edythe Chapman). Her husband Read More

Thank You

Crew: Director

Actors: George O'Brien, Jacqueline Logan, Alec B. Francis, John Farrell MacDonald, Cyril Chadwick

Synopsis: The wild behavior of Kenneth Jamieson (George O'Brien) has finally gone too far and his millionaire father (George Fawcett) hands him a small allowance and sends him to live on a chicken farm in the tiny hamlet of Dedham. The pastor there, David Lee (Alec B. Francis), is an old friend of Read More

Kentucky Pride

Crew: Director

Synopsis: John Ford directed this sentimental horse opera set among the racing crowd in Kentucky. Henry B. Walthall, of Griffith's Birth of a Nation fame, starred as Beaumont, a horse breeder losing everything he owns on the horse Virginia's Future. His upwardly mobile wife (Gertrude Astor) having deserted Read More

The Iron Horse

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: George O'Brien, Winston Miller, Peggy Cartwright, Madge Bellamy, Charles Edward Bull, Cyril Chadwick, James Gordon, Fred Kohler

Synopsis: John Ford directed this epic-scale silent western, which was one of his first major successes and was hugely influential on outdoor films that followed. David Brandon (James Gordon) is a surveyor in the Old West who dreams that one day the entire North American continent will be linked by Read More

Hearts of Oak

Crew: Director

Actors: Hobart Bosworth, Pauline Starke, Theodore Von Eltz, James Gordon

Synopsis: Hearts of Oak is, alas, one of the many "lost" silent films of pantheon director John Ford. Filmed not long after Ford's epic western The Iron Horse, Hearts was the story of elderly seaman Terry Dunnivan (Hobart Bosworth). In love with the much-younger Chrystal (Pauline Starke), Terry is incensed Read More

Face on the Barroom Floor

Crew: Director

Actors: Ruth Clifford, Walter Emerson, Alma Bennett

Synopsis: The G. Marion Burton poem served as inspiration for several films (including the 1914 comic satire by Charles Chaplin), but this melodrama, directed by John Ford, was the most sincerely done. In a barroom, artist Robert Stevens (Henry Walthall) drunkenly relates his sad story -- he was engaged to Read More

Hoodman Blind

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Frank Campeau, Gladys Hulette, David Butler, Eddie Gribbon

Synopsis: While this isn't one of director John Ford's best early efforts, it does feature a thrilling storm and shipwreck. Gladys Hulette has a dual role. John Linden (Marc MacDermott) leaves his wife (Trilby Clark) because of a misunderstanding created by lawyer Mark Lezzard (Frank Campeau). He takes up Read More

North of Hudson Bay

Crew: Director

Actors: Tom Mix, Frank Campeau, Frank Leigh, Fred Kohler

Synopsis: Cowboy star Tom Mix takes a break from the far West to play a rancher headed for the far North in this action-adventure. Michael Dane (Mix) is headed for gold country to join his brother Peter (Eugene Pallette) and his partner, where they have struck it rich. On the boat he meets fetching Estelle Read More

Silver Wings

Crew: Director

Actors: Mary Carr, Lynn Hammond, Knox Kincaid, Joseph Monahan, Maybeth Carr

Synopsis: For the first few decades of the twentieth century, films that carried the sentimental theme of a mother's love were almost guaranteed good box office (this trend reversed itself in the 1960s, when mothers became a subject of satire). In the silent era, character actor Mary Carr was well known for Read More

Little Miss Smiles

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Ever-ebullient Shirley Mason is ideally cast in Little Miss Smiles. This is the story of a just-getting-by Jewish family in New York. While Mason, the family's daughter, sets her sights on a handsome doctor (Gaston Glass), her prizefighter brother (Arthur Rankin) runs afoul of gangsters. Evidently Read More

Action

Crew: Director

Synopsis: With this picture, Western star Hoot Gibson graduated to full-length features. He plays Sandy Brouke, one of three prospectors who wind up buying a ranch from Molly Casey (Clara Horton), whose father has been killed. But some bandits believe that there must be gold on the property and manipulate Read More

The Wallop

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Director John Ford based this silent western on The Girl He Left Behind by Eugene Manlove Rhodes, turning it into a fine vehicle for the veteran Harry Carey as a prospector who strikes it rich but loses his girl in the process. The husband-to-be is Carey's best friend, William A. Steele, a Read More

The Big Punch

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Buck Jones, Barbara Bedford, George Siegmann, Jack Curtis, Jack McDonald

Synopsis: Filmed in late 1920 and released in early '21, The Big Punch was director John Ford's second film for Fox. Buck Jones starred as a divinity student jailed for a crime actually committed by his outlaw brother (Jack Curtis). Upon his release, Jones is befriended by Salvation Army girl Barbara Bedford Read More

The Prince of Avenue A.

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Barry O'Connor (former heavyweight champion James J. Corbett, otherwise known as "Gentleman Jim") is the son of Patrick O'Connor (Richard Cummings), the district boss for New York's Lower East Side. The elder O'Connor has a rival, the up-and-coming Edgar Jones (Harry Northrup), who isn't too fond Read More

Just Pals

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This picture was a departure, both for star Buck Jones and director John Ford (in those days known as Jack Ford). Instead of a manly Western, the focus here is on simple character study, even if it does end with a flurry of action. Bim (Jones) is the town ne'er-do'well, but he proves to be of some Read More

Fight for Love

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this tale of the Canadian Northwest, Harry Carey plays Cheyenne Harry, who is on the lam after getting tangled up with some cattle rustlers. He hides out at an Indian camp, where he encounters a lovely young Native-American maiden (Neola May). But along comes half-breed whiskey runner Black Read More

Bare Fists

Crew: Director

Synopsis: After the father of Cheyenne Harry (Harry Carey) is shot dead, His mother makes him promise to put down his guns. He agrees, though this is easier said than done in the Old West. A pair of rustlers, Boone Travis (Joe Harris) and Lopez (Vester Pegg), hear about Harry's pledge and believe his cattle Read More

The Outcasts of Poker Flat

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Bret Harte's story gets an unusual adaptation in the hands of director John Ford (in the days when he was known as Jack Ford) and western star Harry Carey. Carey takes a break from his usual "Harry Carey" role to play a man in love with a much younger woman (Gloria Hope). He is convinced however Read More

Roped

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Ranch owner Cheynne Harry (Harry Carey) winds up romancing Easterner Aileen Judson-Brown (Neva Gerber) because of an advertisement run by his friends as a joke. Harry and Aileen fall in love, though, and he goes to New York to marry her. But her mother (Molly McConnell) sees Harry only as a meal Read More

Gun Fightin' Gentleman

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: When rancher Cheyenne Harry (Harry Carey, in the recurring role he made famous) won't cooperate with a packers' trust, cattle-king John Merritt (J. Barney Sherry) boldly takes his land. So Harry goes to see Merritt in Chicago, but he accomplishes nothing other than finding his Western ways the Read More

Rider of the Law

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this Harry Carey/John Ford collaboration, Carey plays Texas Ranger Jim Kyneton. Jim's foster brother Nick (Vesta Pegg) has fallen in with a pack of bandits who rob a mine. For this particular Ranger, duty comes before family, and Jim arrests all of them, including Nick. But Roseen (Claire Anderson Read More

Riders of Vengeance

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Legendary director John Ford began his long, eventful screen career helming Harry Carey westerns for Universal. He got that job courtesy of big brother Francis Ford, but the youngster quickly established himself as the Ford to watch. He was not quite there yet, but Riders of Vengeance was a Read More

Marked Men

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This heartwarming Harry Carey Western was based on the story Three Godfathers by Peter B. Kyne, which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. Harry is in jail on a train robbery charge, along with his two pals Tom Gibbons (Joe Harris) and Tony Garcia (Ted Brooks). They break out of jail and go Read More

Scarlet Drop

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: The Scarlet Drop was one of John Ford's seven directorial efforts for the year 1918 -- none of which, alas, seem to have survived. Ford also wrote the screenplay, while his friend and mentor Harry Carey essayed the leading role. Briefly dropping his standard "Cheyenne Harry" characterization, Carey Read More

Bucking Broadway

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Bucking Broadway was John Ford's eighth feature film. Harry Carey, who starred in most of Ford's earliest productions, is here cast as cowpuncher Cheyenne Harry, who has just saved up enough money to marry the boss' daughter. Alas, the girl has already been promised in marriage to a wealthy Read More

Hell Bent

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Harry Carey, Neva Gerber, Duke Lee, Joe Harris

Synopsis: John Ford's fourteenth film is a fast-paced Harry Carey western vehicle featuring Carey as his popular Cheyenne Harry hero. From the Plains, Harry rides into the disorderly western town of Rawhide, where he makes an immediate friend in Cimmaron Bill (Duke Lee). Harry then falls for dance-hall girl Read More

Three Mounted Men

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Harry Carey returned in his traditional role of "Cheyenne Harry" in this early John Ford effort. Here Cheyenne Harry is in jail, as is a forger, Buck Masters (Joe Harris). The warden's mercenary son (Harry Carter) has Masters lend his craftsmanship to the prison books so he can steal funds. But Read More

The Craving

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: Most moviegoers tend to associate Francis Ford with the "loveable drunk" characterizations he essayed for his director brother John in the 1930s and 1940s. In the teen years, however, Francis Ford was not only a virile action hero, but an accomplished director in his own right. In The Craving (aka Delirium Read More

Woman's Fool

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Based on a novel, Lin McLean, by Western writer Owen Wister, this Harry Carey feature was one of John Ford's early directoral efforts. Carey's pictures often added touches of comedy to a Western atmosphere, and in spite of a tragic end, this picture is no exception. Lin McLean (Carey) is a cowboy Read More

Tornado

Crew: Screenwriter

Trail of Hate

Synopsis: John Ford hadn't quite yet gotten his directorial career off the ground when he starred in this melodrama. He plays Lieutenant Jack Brewer, who has worked his way up through the ranks and is now based at a fort in the West. He has won the respect of his men, with the exception of Captain Dana Read More

Cheyenne's Pal

Crew: Screenwriter

Marked Man

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: This Western was one of the early collaborations between actor Harry Carey and John Ford, then a fledgling director. Cheyenne Harry (Carey) is a bandit on the run from a posse, but for years he has been deceiving his mother, writing her that he owns a ranch and is happily married. He finds refuge Read More

Scrapper

Crew: Screenwriter

Soul Herder

Crew: Director

Synopsis: John Ford -- then billed as Jack Ford -- had recently begun directing his own features when he made this Western with Harry Carey. Harry wakes up one morning in jail with a hangover, and is informed by the sheriff that because of his wild behavior the night before he is to get out of town. On the Read More

Bandit's Wager

The Purple Mask

Synopsis: The popular action adventure team of Grace Cunard and Francis Ford (older brother of John) wrote, directed, and starred in this 16 chapter serial in which Cunard plays a female Robin Hood. Playing lovely Patricia Montez by day, Cunard turns into The Queen of the Apaches, an outlaw who steals from Read More

Peg O' the Ring

Lumber Yard Gang

Broken Coin

Crew: First Assistant Director

The Birth of a Nation

Actors: Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper, Mae Marsh, Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, Ralph Lewis

Synopsis: The most successful and artistically advanced film of its time, The Birth of a Nation has also sparked protests, riots, and divisiveness since its first release. The film tells the story of the Civil War and its aftermath, as seen through the eyes of two families. The Stonemans hail from the Read More

Three Bad Men and a Girl

Doorway of Destruction

Crew: First Assistant Director

Hidden City

Mysterious Rose