The Legend

Is there any difference directing men and women? No. Why did you direct so many men and so few women? I don't know, just... Subject matter. Just happened. There's always been women in my picture. I thought you were going to say there's always been women in your life, but not in your pictures. You can't say that. Catherine Hepburn and John Ford were close, but they argued about all kinds of things, including politics. I would not think that I could tell you, even after all these years, what his political philosophy is. Ford, meanwhile, thought his politics made perfect sense. I'm a registered Democrat, family influence. I've never voted. It's in the last election. I voted for Barry Goldwater. Now that I can't understand. Well, he's a close personal friend. Oh. I voted for Dick Nixon, but he's a close personal friend. Well, then this is insane, you see. This shows that you have no political philosophy. I have no political philosophy at all. He has no real interest. There he was. Ford and Hepburn made only one movie together back in 1936, Mary of Scotland. If they did have an affair, as the rumors insist, it was around that time. They might seem like an unlikely pair, but they were actually pretty similar. Like Ford, Hepburn was brash and refused to take any shit from anyone. Hepburn won more Academy Awards for Best Actress, Ford, than anyone else. Ford holds the same record for Best Director, also Ford. And just like John Ford, Catherine Hepburn never once showed up to accept her Oscar in person. They understood each other. Ford almost never let other people define him, but he agreed with Hepburn's take on his approach to moviemaking. But he has the artistic point of view of a real old sort of Renaissance craftsman, you know. He just could do it. He had a real gift for the business. It was not a sort of mechanized thing. No? Yes, I think that's pretty good. I think so. Humbly. In case you missed that, Ford added that he humbly agreed with Hepburn. I think Jack was, although he never would admit it, was an enormously ambitious man. And he had a tremendous amount of energy so that he wasn't about to sit back and accomplish nothing. Even as he got older and had less energy, John Ford found it hard to just sit back and reminisce about way back when. The studios started looking to younger directors. And though the industry wanted to celebrate Ford, they didn't want to hire him. Ford didn't handle this shift well. He still had the ambition of a younger man, but his body betrayed him. He grew tired and he grew angry. More and more often, when looking for comfort, he'd turned to alcohol. But when he was on set with his eye patch, his pipe, and his growing frailty, Ford still broke new ground. His choices were bold, challenging both the Hollywood establishment and his own difficult legacy. John Ford didn't need a doctor to tell him he didn't have much time left. But he was determined, as ever, to show the world what he could do when he stepped behind a camera. The End I'm your host, Ben Mankiewicz. You're listening to Season 5 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 100 years. This is Episode 7, The Legend. As you can imagine, as a host on TCM for more than 20 years, I watch a lot of movies. But I can no longer watch one specific John Ford film without thinking about what a disaster it was behind the scenes. How it became one of the biggest debacles of Ford's life. Will Mr. Roberts report Topside immediately? Mr. Roberts, Topside Mr. Roberts is a comedy about a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II. It started out as a best-selling book and became a Broadway play with one of Ford's favorite actors as the lead, Henry Fonda. Look, Doc, the war's way out there and I'm here. Well, I don't want to be here. I want to be out there. I'm sick and tired of being a lousy spectator. In 1948, Henry Fonda left Hollywood and headed east, taking up residence at the Alvin Theater on Broadway. He played Mr. Roberts for eight shows a week for three years. John Ford was a fan of the play. Here's Henry Fonda. And when I did Roberts, he came back through four times during the three years that I was in the play in New York. He didn't always see it from the front. He used to come backstage and hang around backstage. The play was a smash hit, so Warner Brothers bought the rights to make it into a film. And when the studio asked Fonda, who should direct? I said, there's only one man. It's just John Ford. He's a Navy man. He's a location man. He's a man's director for every reason you can think of. He's the only one. Ford then returned to the favor and cast his leading man. It's Henry Fonda as Mr. Roberts. The two had been close for decades. Ford was far more similar to Fonda than really anybody else. Here's my colleague at TCM, Scott McGee. They were highly intelligent men who were very introverted and had a lot of demons. Fonda used to regularly pal around with Ford on his ship, The Aronner. Mr. Roberts was their seventh collaboration. They'd both served in the Navy, and now they were making a movie about the Navy set in the South Pacific. Ford even used his military connections to film on Midway Island on a real Navy cargo ship. It was two old friends doing what they loved in a tropical paradise no less. It should have been a great experience. What I hadn't counted on when I asked who should direct this picture was that Pathy was also an Eagle Maniac, an Irish Eagle Maniac. Roll on your feet. Action! Almost as soon as cameras started rolling on Mr. Roberts, the star and the director started butting heads. Henry Fonda had played Mr. Roberts for three straight years. He won a Tony for the role. He knew every beat, every rhythm of the play. But when it came to making the movie, John Ford thought he knew better. He was changing it because he had to do it a different way. Fonda usually deferred to Ford, but he was too attached to this role to stay silent. Here's film historian Scott Eiman. Fonda challenged his authority, which had never happened before. It just didn't happen. Actors didn't challenge it. Fonda thought Ford was directing the scenes too fast. I knew what the timing was, and I knew that the audiences would laugh so that you had to wait between lines. You had to wait until the laugh was gone before you could say it. Also, if you didn't put one line on top of another, it was a funnier scene because they're relishy. And Ford had to reverse that and played it with one line coming right on the other, like that. Fonda was there and he makes his displeasure known. And Ford was not used to an actor standing there grumbling about what Ford was doing. A few days into filming, Henry Fonda received a message. John Ford wanted to see him. And I went at the pappies wrong. And he's sitting in a worker chair and pappies says, what's the matter? He says, I don't know. Something's eat you. So then I started the whole story that I had said he was the best man in the business. There wasn't anybody else. But then I got to the criticism and I got about as far as the pappie. You know, and I don't know how many words I got out, but this was going to be a criticism. He rose out of his chair and... He'd sucker punched him, essentially. He'd gone over the desk and sucker punched Fonda as Fonda was explaining what was wrong with what Ford was doing. And Ford blew. He just lost it. Ford walloped Fonda so hard, he knocked him to the ground. I don't know where he hit me and it didn't hurt, but it knocked me over back against the chair and knocked over a water pitcher and something. And Ford is windmilling, throwing punches wildly at Fonda until they pulled him off. And it was so embarrassing that I just walked out of the room. And a half hour later, Pappie came into my room to apologize. Not a big deal, just said I'm sorry, something like that. And from then on, it was sort of embarrassing. It was never the relationship that it had been. Production continued the next day, but word had spread. The South Pacific set grew ice cold. Ford felt his authority had been contravened. And Fonda felt, well, one thing, my director assaulted me, you know? And Ford basically would sit there and direct Mr. Roberts and turn to Fonda and say, is that okay for you? Is that okay for you? In a kind of sarcastic way? You know, the communication simply ceased. There was no way to repair what had happened. Ford had argued with his cast and crew before, but he'd never punched his leading man. Then he did something else shocking. John Ford broke his one cardinal rule. He started drinking during production. He almost knew and said to me, they didn't blow it somehow because he had never and all of my experience with him and anybody else that I know had ever drunk during shooting. But he did then, he started then and it was as bad as it can be. And he finally had to be dried out in a hospital. When Ford finished shooting on location, he took the production back to Hollywood to film scenes on the Warner Brothers lot. But Ford wasn't up to the task physically. He got sick. He was in pain and vomiting. He was rushed to the hospital and scheduled for gallbladder surgery. He couldn't continue on Mr. Roberts. Now, there are those who say his gallbladder didn't blow up, that he took himself off the picture or Jack Warner fired him because Fonda wanted him fired, etc., etc. His gallbladder did blow up. I know it blew up because Betsy Palmer, who was on the picture, acting in the picture, said she went to see Ford in the hospital and he showed her his scar from the surgery to take out his gallbladder. The studio could have paused production to allow him to recover. That didn't happen. Between punching Henry Fonda and drinking on the set, it seemed people were finally starting to tire of Ford's behavior. Two other directors, Mervyn Leroy and Joshua Logan, came in to finish Mr. Roberts. Ford did manage to repair his professional reputation. The next year, in fact, he made the searchers. But the damage to one of his closest friendships was done. The relationship was gone after that and I've been sad about it the rest of my life and the rest of his life. It was an unfortunate experience and an unfortunate end to a love story, really, for me. John Ford and Henry Fonda barely spoke after this and they never worked together again. Six years after Mr. Roberts, in 1961, Ford made a Western with a hell of a title. The man who shot Liberty Valance. Out of the flame and fury of the frontier, the Old West lives again, as only John Ford can recreate it. But at 67 years old, Ford started to view the Western differently. The genre was at its peak during the 50s and into the early 60s, but the 1960s were also a decade of seismic change. Many artists feel gradually alienated from the environment that they once thrived in because countries change, politics change, optimism can be curdled. And I think some of those things happened with Ford. The most important thing for John Ford was a sense of control and Ford got a little darker as he got older. The man who shot Liberty Valance didn't look like Ford's other Westerns. He shot it in black and white and he didn't go on location. There's no Monument Valley to be found in this. It was shot in the back lot at Paramount, but it could have been shot in the back lot of any 1960s movie studio because they all had Western streets. It's a generic setting as opposed to Monument Valley, which is so specific and carries such lavish visual splendor. The man who shot Liberty Valance is an indoors movie. Ford set the main action in newsrooms and saloons and schoolhouses. Ford did cast familiar faces from his stock company, Andy Devine, Vera Miles, Woody Strode. And there are two leading men here, Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne. Well, take some advice, pilgrim. You better start packing a handgun. Stewart plays a young attorney dedicated to law and order. Wayne is the opposite, a man of action and retribution, a gunslinger. Well, I know those law books mean a lot to you, but not out here. Out here, a man settles his own problems. Ford brought in a newcomer to his company to play the title role, a tough, long-faced actor named Lee Marvin. He became the bandit named Liberty Valance. Liberty Valance is a sadist. He doesn't just rob and murder people. He beats them with a steel-plated whip. Toward the end of the film, Jimmy Stewart's character faces off with Liberty Valance in a shootout. This time right between the eyes. Jimmy Stewart kills the villain. At least it appears he does. Stewart then becomes famous as the man who shot Liberty Valance. Here's TCM Scott McGee again. That's what helped him become a senator. That's what helped him become an elder statesman. He's the one that enjoys, indeed, the rest of his life living that lie. The lie is that it wasn't actually Jimmy Stewart who pulled the trigger. Lurking out of sight was John Wayne. He fired the bullet that killed Liberty Valance. He's the hero. He's the secret hero of the entire movie. He was the one that actually shot Liberty Valance, but he's forgotten to history. When the press learns the truth, when they find out that Jimmy Stewart's career is based on a myth, they choose not to reveal it. Instead, they bury the story. When asked why, the newspaper editor delivers the most famous line in any John Ford picture. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. When you consider the line, the famous last line of the man who shot Liberty Valance, we really don't want to know the ugly truth of violence in America. We don't want to know how we shaped our destiny, how we formed this country. We really don't want to know those stories because they're too ugly. We would rather cling to the myth. Young John Ford said so much about America and his movies, ideas about the honor and decency of the men who conquered the West. He enjoyed being a myth maker, but as he aged, Ford saw things more clearly. Myths about the West and about America no longer appeal to him. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford showed us that myths are just a fancier word for lies. It's one of his saddest movies ever, and Ford was not by nature a morose filmmaker. Mostly his films end on a note of hope, but Liberty Valance ends on a note of resignation and a sort of acknowledgement that this is the way the world is, and it's not necessarily the way the world should be, but it is the way the world is. When John Ford made his next Western, he tore down the biggest myth of them all. John Ford, the only director ever to have been honored with six Academy Awards, brings to the screen Marie Sando's powerful historical narrative, Cheyenne Autumn. Cheyenne Autumn marked John Ford's final Western. He wanted it to be an epic, his biggest production yet. It was. The cast and crew numbered 865 people, and he went back to his favorite place, Monument Valley. Cheyenne Autumn filmed in Technicolor with giant Super Panavision 70 cameras and a supporting cast of thousands. The story was a Hollywood version of real events. In 1878, displaced Cheyenne Indians left their reservation in Oklahoma and walked hundreds of miles north to reclaim their original land near Wyoming. In the past, Ford's movies had been occasionally sympathetic to Native Americans, but most of his portrayals were shallow stereotypes or worse, bloodthirsty savages. Cheyenne Autumn was different. It was the first time Ford tried to include an authentic Native perspective. The white man's words are lies. When he cast the picture, the main Cheyenne chief was played by a Mexican actor, Ricardo Montalban. I did a picture with Mr. John Ford, the typical Cheyenne Autumn, and I played, what? Indians, of course. As a Latin, you play Indians, you know. These are my wives. I'd pray the young one will give me sons. Montalban had never worked with John Ford before, but he'd heard talk about what the old man was like. Mr. Ford was a very sentimental man, a good Irishman, very, very sentimental. He could be brutal if you let him, and I never let him, and we became very good friends. One day, out in Monument Valley, Montalban got a long-distance phone call. His son, back in Los Angeles, was in the hospital. My son, delivering papers for his younger brother, he was sick. He didn't want to lose his route, you know. He was hit by a car and broke his leg. When John Ford heard the news, he immediately stopped production. He arranged for me to go and visit my son. They were delaying, so he had to change the schedule on their day, and I went and I spent a day with my son, and I came home, and I never forget Mr. Ford, his kindness. Ford paused production one other time during the filming of the movie. Here is a bulletin from CBS News. On Friday, November 22, 1963. From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time. Vice President Lyndon Johnson has left the hospital in Dallas, but we do not know to where he has... Ford was a proud supporter of John F. Kennedy long before he became president, and not merely because Kennedy was Irish-American. Joe Kennedy, the father of beloved Jack Kennedy, was a good friend of mine. Ford remembers the Navajos on set, who were playing Cheyennes, were particularly shaken by the news. They became very gloomy. They were sad. I saw work for the day. The country fell into mourning. But after the weekend, John Ford and his crew went back to work. Still, a sense of despair hung in the air, even in beautiful Monument Valley. Cheyenne Autumn was a major departure from Ford's previous westerns. The film didn't glorify the idea of America conquering the West. It showed the reality of it. We are asked to remember much. The white man remembers nothing. Cheyenne Autumn is a movie about America through the lens of the way it's treating its most hated people, its most hated denizens, and its most chastised and harassed people. And you have to hand it to him that that is exactly the way you tell the story of America. This is film critic Scout Defoea. I think he was aware that it was a subversion. I think he was aware that it was not the kind of thing that people were used to seeing. He gave interviews where he said, I've killed more Indians than Custer. I think it's the quote. Maybe Ford had a change of heart, or maybe he simply grew tired of printing the legend. There's another way to read the change. Perhaps Ford recognized that in 1963, his earlier ideas would no longer find an audience. He was seeing the way that the tides were turning there, and he understood that you can't keep making those kinds of Westerns anymore. Even Ford started to realize that maybe the treatment of Indigenous people in film and particularly his contribution to it wasn't probably the best. Adam Perone is the director of the Sundance Institute's Indigenous program. And so Cheyenne Autumn, it's sort of his apology piece to Native Americans. You know, him trying to do something that showed that he was willing to kind of listen or to change to some extent. Cheyenne Autumn made a bold statement. The Indians were no longer the villains. They were the victims of the picture. John Ford was synonymous with the Western, but at the end of his career, he redefined the genre once again. He took a hard look at his previous movies and decided it was time to start telling the truth. Coming up, Ford's drinking spirals out of control. Suddenly, he's off the picture. He was hitting the Guinness. Until finally, he admits he has a problem. He said, look, kid, I'm an alcoholic. Your mother's an alcoholic. Don't throw your life away. Cheyenne Autumn was not a hit. It made over $3 million at the box office, but its production budget swelled to better than $6.5 million. Warner Brothers lost money. In Hollywood, no matter how many hits you've directed, you're often just one flop away from irrelevance. John Ford's problems, though, went even deeper. For the first time in his career, he couldn't keep up with the pace of making a movie. Cheyenne Autumn, his energy simply ran out. He just, he wanted to basically stay as close to the hotel as possible. Scott Eiman again. He just didn't have the stamina anymore. He wasn't going to be able to take a four-week location on Monument Valley. Those days were gone. And also, no one was going to hire him to direct a big action picture anymore, because that was past him at that point. This must have been an incredibly painful realization for Ford. Though he always downplayed moviemaking, it was his life's work. He did manage to land a job directing a film called Young Cassidy, a biopic about a famous Irish playwright. The film was set to be shot in Ireland, so Ford took a trip there in May of 1964 to do some location scouting. But by the time his flight landed in Dublin, Ford was so drunk, he needed to be rolled off the plane in a wheelchair. And after a week or ten days, suddenly he's off the picture. His health isn't good. Well, he was drinking Guinness, at least. He was hitting the Guinness. It wasn't just Guinness. Producers found two grocery bags full of scotch in Ford's hotel room. He would go on a bench, and he would, you know, drink until he got it out of his system. This is Dan Ford, John Ford's grandson. He's devoted much of his life to chronicling his grandfather's legacy, good and bad, including the drinking. And I've asked people why he did that, and they would all say pretty much the same thing, and they said to shut off his mind. So it stopped thinking. Why did he want it to stop thinking? Why would he want that? I don't know. You know, maybe just the pressures, the pressure's constant, decision-making and making a set. You know, that goes over there. That's the wrong wardrobe. No, come in this door. You need to do this way. Just constant, constant, constant. And I think it exhausted John Ford. And drinking would just... And drinking shut it off. Ford's drinking increased as he got older. He seemed to understand he had a problem, and that he wasn't alone. In 1963, Harry Carey Jr., who everyone called Doby, was drinking at a saloon across from Universal Pictures, when his wife called the bar. And Marilyn called the bar that I was sitting in drinking, and she said, you're supposed to be at John Ford's house a half an hour ago, and they want you over there right away, and want to let me tell him. And I said, tell him I'm drunk. So the next morning when I came to, I was terrified, man. You know, terrified and full of guilt and the whole bloody mess. The Fords and the Carries were extremely close. John Ford got his start in silent pictures alongside Harry Carey Sr. Ford cast Doby Carey and his mother Olive in many of his films. Still, Doby didn't know what to expect from Ford's call. And I said, hello, Uncle Jack. And he said, hello, old dope. He said, look, kid, I'm an alcoholic. Your Aunt Mary's an alcoholic. Barbara's an alcoholic. Pat's an alcoholic. He said, your mother's an alcoholic. And he says, and Harry couldn't drink. So he said, why don't you go back to those AAAs? And he said, like a good kid. Ford, of course, meant AA. He was an alcoholic synonymous. And he said, don't throw your life away. You know, nice as he could be. And I didn't. I hadn't had a drink since. John Ford didn't open up to many people. But he saw something in Doby Carey, something he recognized in himself. Something he knew was a problem. Ford could never get clean and sober. And that weakness weighed on him. He clearly agonized over it. He wanted a better life for Doby, even if he couldn't have it himself. Doby wasn't the only person John Ford tried to help. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous and Campaign for Others to Join Too. Though he sometimes forgot the anonymous part. Like on the set of his next movie with an actress named Betty Field. He loved Betty Field. And she's a hell of an actress. And Betty says that they're on the set and all of them are all sitting around. I don't know. They're talking about drinking. He said, well, Betty hears an AA. He says, she's an alcoholic. And he says, I'm an AA. So he says, everybody here that raised their hand that's an AA. And he raised his hand. And Betty says, she didn't know what to do. She raised her hand. And about four or five guys up in the things, you know, raised, you know, the hands that they were in AA. There was about three or four of them there. Betty said, God, she was so embarrassed. You know, Even though he attended meetings, John Ford was still drinking now, even on set. His alcoholism had become a major liability. But producers were still willing to gamble on Ford if the price was right. Ford managed to convince MGM to put up money for a smaller movie set in China in the 1930s. Ford had made low budget films before. What made this one different is that it was about women. Seven of them. John Ford, who has won fame and Academy Awards with his He-Man exploits, now storms a screen with a dramatic adventures of seven women. Most of the actors in Seven Women hadn't worked with Ford before, but he did cast some members of a stock company. Annalise signed on for her eighth movie with Ford. Woody Strode was back for his fourth. This time, Strode, who was black, played a Mongolian raider. T-Wrap and Seven Women. I'm honest that we were a bunch of Chinese kids. I'm a little embarrassed because I got the best role. Chinese kids said, Woody, there's more Chinese than Woody, that's great. Today, this would undoubtedly be a problem. But at the time, Woody Strode believed John Ford was helping him. John Ford said, Woody, I can't make a star, but I'm going to make you a character actor. That was the end of the time, there was no black stars. Woody said, I'll make you a character actor and you will make money. Seven Women is the story of Christian missionaries whose pious lives get a dose of reality when a doctor arrives on the scene. Are you the doctor? But you're a woman. Unless a lot of men have been kidding me. The doctor is played by Anne Bancroft. This came one year before her most famous role as the seductive Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Would you like me to seduce you? What? Is that what you're trying to tell me? In Seven Women, Bancroft is tough, protective. And when she walks, she's got a little John Wayne in her. Bancroft seemed to be imitating Duke's signature strut. What you all need is a good stiff drink. John Ford originally wanted Seven Women to star an old friend of his. Catherine Hepburn. What lousy part did you ask me to play? The leaf. No, I'm killing you, Ted. It was a rotten part. Hepburn and Ford spoke about the movie in 1973. Truth is, they didn't speak so much as bicker. It was a mean old thing. Well, that isn't true, Kate. Now, I want you to play the leaf. It'll be great. Who played the lead then? And Bancroft. No, it wasn't that part that you wanted me to play. Yes, it was. Hepburn had the better memory here. Ford did not offer her and Bancroft's role. He wanted Hepburn to play the self-righteous head of the mission. She didn't want that part, so she turned him down. Seven Women finished production without incident. When it opened in theaters, a few influential writers thought it was magnificent, though most critics savaged it. They complained the film looked cheap, having been shot on indoor sets and that women's pictures were passe and old-fashioned. Audiences stayed away. Seven Women bombed at the box office. It is the last feature film John Ford ever directed. And the entire time he was making it, Ford was harboring a secret. I don't think anybody ever knew that he was ill at all. That's when we return. At EDF, we don't just encourage you to use less electricity. We actually reward you for it. That's why when you use less during peak times on weekdays, we give you free electricity on Sundays. How you use it is up to you. EDF, change is in our power. Households to ship weekdays to the city. We have a lot of people who are interested in it. We have a lot of people who are interested in it. We have a lot of people who are interested in power. Households to ship weekdays to the city. We pay peak usage by 40% to earn up to 16 hours of free electricity for the subject of fare usage tax. For all two seasons, visit EDF.energy.com. Now, Seven Women was interesting because everybody said that John Ford doesn't really like working with men. Even men to rent. This is Anna Lee. She worked with Ford several times, including on Seven Women. There he had seven women, all different. And I think he had more fun on that picture than he had to fit anything else. He was marvelous. He was very kind, just light, and didn't swear too much. Ford was on his best behavior, neither grouchy nor irritable. I don't think anybody ever knew that he was ill at all. He obviously had to have started being ill at that time. John Ford had three addictions. Smoking, drinking, and working. He was always so busy making movies or recovering from making movies that he rarely saw a doctor. But in 1971, his stomach started to hurt. Tests revealed he had severe heart disease, as well as colorectal cancer. At his age, in his health, it was inoperable. At the same time, Ford's work dried up. Studios stopped funding his projects. He was sick, he was dying, and he was no longer able to make movies. And that's exactly when movies started to be made about him. Directed by John Ford. These words have appeared on over 135 movies. Among them, some of the most popular and memorable ever made. Peter Bogdanovich made a memorable documentary about Ford. Film students began studying Ford's movies. Some even tried to meet Ford. Steven Spielberg, and just a teenager, briefly spoke to Ford in his office. He had seen Spielberg included in his 2022 movie, The Fablemen's. They tell me you want to be a picture maker. Yes, sir, I do. Why? This business, it'll rip you apart. If you've seen The Fablemen's, then you know that Ford gave Steven Spielberg some valuable filmmaking advice. Spielberg told the story in 2011. He said, when you're able to distinguish the art of the horizon at the bottom of a frame or at the top of the frame, but not going right through the center of the frame, when you're able to appreciate why it's at the top and why it's at the bottom, you might make a pretty good picture maker. Now get the f*** out of here. Another Ford visitor was a young reporter named Joseph McBride. Years later, McBride wrote perhaps the definitive biography of John Ford. In 1870, he was just a kid with a press pass and a tape recorder. Oh, really? I'm 22. Huh? 22. I need you and you're going to write a book. But I arrived in Ford's office. He was very testy as he always was. He was kind of an impossible guy to interview. I spoke with Joe McBride last year. He would often pretend not to remember films that he had made or he'd give him monosyllabic answers or kind of curt non-answers. But sometimes he'd come up with a very thoughtful commentary and witty or insightful, often brief comments on filmmaking. Could I ask you about Southern women a little bit? You know, go ahead. Were you surprised when it didn't do well? It was over their heads. I didn't give a god damn what they liked of them all. I liked the story and I got paid for it and I thought it was a swell story and a good script, so I did it. Before I didn't give very many interviews, he would get huffy. But I came at a terrible time. It turned out to be the last day of his 54-year career in films. In the course of the interview, he kept asking his secretary very nervously, Have you heard from the gentleman from Italy yet? Has the man from Italy called? Roar! I got that letter from an Italian gentleman, a gentleman from Italy, haven't you? Today's an awfully busy day for him. Okay, I've got to call up Roar. He was expecting a phone call and she kept saying, No, Mr. Fordy hasn't called. I didn't know what was going on. But toward the end of the interview, I said, I'm sorry for asking some stupid questions. Fordy said, Well, it wasn't that, but all your people ask the same questions. All you people, you all ask the same questions. I'm sick and tired of trying to answer them. Because I don't know the answers. I'm just a hard-nosed, hard-working, ex-director. And I'm trying to retire gracefully. There was that long pause, very moving, before he said ex-director. So he retired during our interview. And that kind of stunned me. I didn't know what prompted it. But many years later, when I went through his papers at Indiana University in Bloomington, I was looking at his correspondence for that week. He was expecting a letter or a phone call from an Italian producer who was hopefully going to make a spaghetti Western for Ford. Ford was facing the fact that day that the project was not going to happen. He basically realized his career was over. So it was a very painful and dramatic moment for me to be there. John Ford and his wife, Mary, sold their home in Bel Air and moved to Palm Desert, California in 1972. Leaving Los Angeles didn't really bother Ford. But he was terribly depressed when he had to let go of his boat, the air inner. Upkeep had become too expensive. And without a salary coming in, the Fords needed the cash. The air inner, 106 feet long, was sold for $25,000 in 1969. Those moves left John Ford landlocked outside Palm Springs and sick. He took steroids to dull the pain, downers to fall asleep, uppers to wake back up. And he never stopped drinking or smoking. But at the end of March, 1973, Ford mustered the strength for one last public appearance. The American Film Institute presents a salute to John Ford. Ford became the first recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award. One night and just one honoree, John Ford. Unlike most award shows, Ford showed up for this one. The ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel was stacked with Hollywood A-listers. The first guest was John Heston, Jimmy Stewart, Maureen O'Hara, Jack Lemon. Henry Fonda was not there. But his daughter Jane was. She was protesting outside the hotel. Two, four, six, eight, position in order, water, king. The protests were aimed, not at Ford, but at one of his friends, a special visitor from Washington. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, and Mrs. Nixon, and our guest of honor for the evening, Mr. John Ford. John Ford and Richard Nixon made their grand entrance together. Ford came out first, sitting in a wheelchair, pushed by his chauffeur. He looked pale and gaunt. He wore a tux and his trademark eye patch. And between his fingers, he held a lit cigar. Behind him, walked the President of the United States. Nixon was smiling. Ford was not. Mr. President? The evening was a series of speeches, tributes to Ford. Naturally, John Wayne spoke. At 65 years old, Wayne was still very much a movie star. A star who owed his career to Ford. And he knew it. I was lucky enough to be a part of what we lovingly call the Ford Stock Company. There have been few partnerships in the movies, like John Ford and John Wayne. Their careers, their fame, their lives were intertwined. I could talk of Pappy through personal experience and anecdote, but tonight I prefer to speak of him as the artist. They never had a chance to be honest. They'd never been openly emotional with each other. That just wasn't their way. But here, with all of Hollywood watching, Duke decided to tell his old friend, his mentor, his surrogate father, just how much he meant to him. He helped me through those rough years of early success and a certain amount of adulation, which is hard for the young and the immature with. I love him. I could say more. Thank you. Many of the speeches that night from those Hollywood luminaries praised Ford for his poetry and his eye for beauty. Ford, no doubt, was mortified. When it was Nixon's turn, the president gave Ford his second award of the night. A presidential medal of freedom. Then, Nixon did something only a president could do. Some have called him boss. And others have called him Jack. And most have called him Peppy. But there was one term that I did not like. They called him a rear admiral. John Ford was never rear. And as commander in chief of the armed forces for the balance of this evening, John Ford is a full admiral. It may have been strictly an honorary title, but Ford was visibly moved. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm overcome with gratitude. I wish I had the words to express my feelings, but I don't. God bless Richard Nixon. Thank you. Thank you. I think he was thrilled with his position in the Navy and his honors in the Navy and his functioning in the Navy. That really absolutely fascinated him, but he has taken an enormously distinguished artistic career absolutely for granted. After the AFI ceremony, John Ford returned to Palm Desert, where he rarely left home. In fact, he rarely left his bedroom. He stayed in bed, shades drawn to keep out the heat, air conditioning on full blast. The room reeked of cigar smoke. Down and up the room. Dan Ford showed up to interview his grandfather about his life. You're not taping this. Yeah, I am. Oh, shit. He had other visitors too. Old directors who lived in the desert dropped by. Fellow legends like Howard Hawks and Frank Capra. Obviously, Catherine Hepburn came to see him too. Other actors and friends drove out from LA to say goodbye without ever having to say the words goodbye. As volatile as John Ford could be, he instilled intense loyalty from the people who worked with him. Friends, family and colleagues streamed in to pay their respects, even though they knew Ford no longer had any pull in Hollywood. As his cancer progressed, Ford needed full-time caretaking. Dan Ford says Woody Strode flew in straight from a film set to be by his side. When John Ford was dying, Woody Strode was spending the nights with him sleeping on the floor beside him. Now, how much more can you love a man than that? One former collaborator who did not make the trip to the desert was John Wayne. It took Dobie Carey to prod Wayne into action. Here's Carey talking to PBS. Of course, he was very young and he came back and he says you were right, he's really sick. John Wayne and John Ford drank brandy and reminisced into the afternoon when Wayne had to leave. He was due back on a movie set. The day after John Wayne left, August 31st, 1973 at 6.35pm, John Ford died. He was surrounded by family. A priest was there. So was a nurse and one other person. Woody Strode was with him which is only right because he just adored Woody and they were very close and I think Woody was holding his hand when he passed away. John Ford lived to be 79 years old. He was born in 1894 which made him roughly as old as the movies themselves. He directed by our count 142 films. Many of the biggest names in movies came to Ford's funeral at the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Hollywood. Many of the biggest names in movies came to Ford's funeral at the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Hollywood. Henry Fonda showed up. So did Jimmy Stewart, Woody Strode and so many others. Some knew him well some only by reputation. John Wayne accompanied Ford's wife Mary. His eyes were red from crying. John Ford's casket was draped with a tattered American flag that had flown at the Battle of Midway. My mission this season was to decode John Ford to figure him out. I can't say I've entirely succeeded. I'm certain that John Ford loved making movies. He especially liked making them away from Hollywood. I've lived in this place with a smog and fog and traffic and freeways and I like to get out and live in the open. You work hard, you get up early, you work late to eat dinner and after that you sleep well. I like the actors, the actresses, the grips, the electricians. Regardless of what the story is I'd like to work in pictures. I'm certain Ford was often lonely though throughout his life he did experience genuine friendship. I've never had more fun in my life than on locations with Ford whether it was playing pitch or campfires or whatever. And just remembering it I get emotional about it. I'm also certain Ford was incredibly tough to deal with around him and often cruel but now I believe like Catherine Hepburn that a hidden gentleness played an outsized role in defining his legacy. His sensitivity to life and to people is so enormous that he just gets that message very, very fast. That's why I think he's such a good director. I think he was everlastingly having to prove himself to give himself confidence to go on. Yeah. I think he did not sit easily in the world at all. Maybe because of that Ford didn't always treat people well. One could argue though he regularly treated himself even worse. What I do know what so many of us know is that along the way John Ford created some of the most beautiful, emotional and impactful movies ever made. Normal. What the hell is so normal about my life? If I ain't got a soul of his own just little piece of a big soul. You have no any right to live. What have I done? We're the victims of a foul disease called social prejudice my child. What do you want me to do? Draw your picture? Spell it out? Don't ever ask me. As long as you live don't ever ask me more. Trying to understand Ford has been frustrating and elusive. But I take solace in knowing that despite his demons and a lifetime of mistakes John Ford became the very thing he wanted to be. 120 years ago before movies even had sound young John Ford stared out at the horizon off the coast of Maine and had an idea. As a kid I thought I was going to be an artist. I used to sketch and paint a great deal and I think for a kid I did pretty good work. I was a knife for composition that's all I did had. Angela Carone is our director of podcasts. Story editor is Karen Duffin. Yako Friedman is our senior producer. Script writing by Yako Friedman, Maya Croath and James Sheridan who also fact check every episode for us. Audio editing and sound design by Brandon Ardell, James Kim and Mike Volgaris. Mixing by Glenn Mutillo. Research by Matt Goldberg. Production support from Liz Winter, Allison Fire Matthew Onbee, Julie Beton Emma Morris, Susan B. Sack, Dory Stegman and Phil Richards. Thanks to our legal team John Renault and Kristen Hassel and the talents of TCM staffers Teran Jacobs, Katie Daniels, David Byrne Diana Bosch, Caroline Wigmore, Michelle Haight 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 Lily Library. Special thanks to Prudence Doherty and Chris Burns from the Silver Specials Collections Library at the University of Vermont. Special thanks to Joseph McBride for allowing us to use his interview with John Ford. From Novel Thanks to producer Philip Goodrich Story editor Veronica Simmons Researcher Valeria Raqqa Assistant producer Nadja Mehdi Production managers Shari Houston and Charlotte Wolfe Executive producer Max O'Brien and Creative director Lard Foxton. Thomas Avery of Toon Welders composed our theme music. This has been season 5 of the Plot Dickens a podcast from Turner Classic Movies in partnership with Novel I'm Ben Mankowitz. All of us at TCM are so glad you listen.