John Ford

John Ford
John Martin O'Feeney
Birthday	Thursday, February 01, 1894
Birthplace	Cape Elizabeth, Maine, U.S.
Died	Friday, August 31, 1973
Occupation	Film director/producer

Ford, John,

1586–c.1640, English dramatist, b. Devonshire. He went to London to study law but was never called to the bar. The early part of his playwriting career was taken up with collaborations, primarily with Dekker. His three major tragedies, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Broken Heart, and Love's Sacrifice, and a historical play, Perkin Warbeck appeared between 1627 and 1634. Ford was the most important playwright during the reign of Charles I. His plays are characterized by a sympathetic treatment of thwarted love, and they stress the conflict between the power of human passion and the laws of conscience and society. They are intense, melancholy, and violent, often revealing his interest in abnormal psychology and taboo subjects—'Tis Pity She's a Whore deals with incest.

Bibliography

See biography by D. K. Anderson (1972); studies by M. Stavig (1968), F. Ali (1974), and D. Anderson (1986).

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Ford, John,

1895–1973, American film director, b. Cape Elizabeth, Maine, as John Martin Feeney. Ford began directing in 1917 after an apprenticeship with his brother Francis. Over the next 50 years, he brought a painterly eye, an appreciation of his actors' strengths, and a deep love of Americana to over 200 feature films. Although Ford set films in other parts of the country or world, including several in Ireland, he returned to the Western repeatedly throughout his career. These films merge a beautiful pictorial style, using the buttes and mesas almost as architectural features, with stories that frequently deal with the nature of military command. Among his films are The Iron Horse (1924), The Informer (1935), Stagecoach (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Fort Apache (1947), The Quiet Man (1952), The Searchers (1957), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Ford won six Academy Awards. During World War II he served in the U.S. navy and made the acclaimed documentary June 7th (1944).

Bibliography

See biographies by A. Sinclair (1979), S. Eyman (1999), and J. McBride (2001); studies by P. Bogdanovich (1968), J. McBride and M. Wilmington (1974), and T. Gallagher (1986).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia™ Copyright © 2013, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Ford, John

 

(real name, Sean Aloysius O’Feeney). Born Feb. 1, 1895, in Cape Elizabeth, Me.; died Aug. 31, 1973, in Palm Desert, Calif. American film director. Irish by nationality.

Ford attended the University of Maine. In 1914 he went to Hollywood, becoming an assistant director and, in 1917, a director. From 1920 to 1930 he made westerns; he was to become known for enriching the traditional western by his concern for social issues and for presenting characters with psychological depth. Ford’s films manifest a mastery of the director’s art and the use of artistic solutions to problems of filming; they are characterized by narrative rhythm and a precisely reconstructed atmosphere. Ford’s best films are those adapted from literary works, which as a rule he enriched by his cinematographic treatment. Ford portrayed the exceptional in ordinary circumstances, the heroic in the everyday, and the humorous in tragic situations. His prime concern was the study of individuals in the face of adversity.

Ford’s films include Arrowsmith (1932, from the novel by S. Lewis), The Lost Patrol (1934, from a novel by P. MacDonald), The Informer (1935, from the novel by L. O’Flaherty), The Plough and the Stars (1937, from the play by S. O’Casey), Submarine Patrol (1939; Soviet title The Journey Will Be Dangerous), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940, from the novel by J. Steinbeck), The Long Voyage Home (1940, from the plays of E. O’Neill), How Green Was My Valley (1941, from the novel by R. Llewellyn), My Darling Clementine (1946), Rio Grande (1950), What Price Glory (1952), The Last Hurrah (1957), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). Ford also made the documentary films The Battle of Midway (1942), We Sail at Midnight (1943), and This Is Korea (1951).

REFERENCES

Eizenshtein, S. Mister Linkol’n mistera Forda. Izbr. proizv, vol. 5. Moscow, 1968.
Mitry, J. John Ford, vols. 1–2. Paris, 1954.
Kezich, T. John Ford. Parma, 1958.

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Ford, John

 

Born April 1586 in Ilsington; died circa 1639; place of death unknown. English playwright.

The conflict between reality and the ideals of honor and nobility constitutes the theme of Ford’s early poetry and prose (for example, the pamphlet Honour Triumphant, 1606). In 1613, Ford turned to the writing of plays, collaborating with T. Decker or W. Rowley. Ford steeped himself in psychology and depicted his characters as grappling with fatal passions and as the victims of a tragic fate (’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, 1633; The Broken Heart, 1633). Ford also wrote the historical chronicle play Perkin Warbeck (1634). His work marks the culmination of English Renaissance drama.

WORKS

Five Plays. Edited and with an introduction and notes by H. Ellis. New York, 1957.

REFERENCES

Istoriia zapadnoevropeiskogo teatra, vol. 1. Moscow, 1956.
Anderson, D. K. John Ford. New York, 1972.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Ford, John (b. Sean Aloysius O'Feeney or O'Fearna)

(1895–1973) film director; born in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He left Maine for Hollywood in 1913 and worked as a set laborer and propman. He began directing in 1917, and was to turn out over 125 features, making his debut with a western, The Tornado. Over the years, he developed his own little stock company, which featured John Wayne, Ward Bond, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, and many others. Adept at all genres, he frequently explored his Irish roots, but achieved his greatest renown for poetic visions of the American West—its rugged heroes, pioneering families, and sense of male camaraderie. He won Academy Awards four times for directing features—The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952)—and two others for World War II documentaries. He received the first American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1973.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.