John Ford - John Wayne "American Masters" Part II

Ted Mahar of the Oregonian gives his preview of the PBS series documentary in today' Sunday Oregonian (see post below for date and time):

Few creative film partnerships were as long or significant as that of director John Ford and actor/director John Wayne. They made about 20 films together, but 14 as star and director, several of which became cultural icons and affected genres and future films.

Their complex personal and professional relationship plays out in the "American Masters" documentary "John Ford/John Wayne: The Filmmaker and the Legend," the title coming from one of the film's many commentators, director/biographer Peter Bogdanovich, who knew both men well.

The documentary is crowded with commentators. Biographers include Ford writers Scott Eyman, Joseph McBride, Tag Gallagher and Ford's grandson Dan. Scholars and critics include Richard Schickel and David Thomson. There are no specific Wayne biographers, but a biography of one has to be a biography of the other.

Commenting directors include Martin Scorsese, Mark Rydell ("The Cowboys"), John Milius and Robert Parrish, who was Ford's wartime film team member and later a director. Wayne's son Pat, actor Harry Carey Jr. and others also chime in.

The credits list a dozen or so more who are not in the film. Clearly, the 90-minute documentary could have been longer, and -- good news, bad news -- it does leave us wanting more.

The film covers a lot of ground. The two met in the late '20s, when Wayne was a USC football player who worked summers on Ford's sets and had tiny roles in several films. Wayne starred in Raoul Walsh's 1930 epic "The Big Trail." Its failure doomed Wayne to B movies for the next eight years and to exile from Ford for the next four.

Ford (1895-1973) exhumed Wayne (1907-1979) for 1939's classic, genre-transforming adventure "Stagecoach." Its huge success boosted both careers and began an association that was both symbiotic and quietly rivalrous -- like many father/son relationships -- from "Stagecoach" to 1964's ho-hum "Donovan's Reef,"

The documentary ignores "Donovan," the muddled "Horse Soldiers," Wayne's cameo in Ford's scenes in "How the West Was Won," "The Long Voyage Home," "Rio Grande" and "The Wings of Eagles," a 1956 fictionalized biopic of Ford and Duke's friend Frank Wead, who wrote the 1945 classic "They Were Expendable."

Ford was a painter and directed dozens of silent films. He instinctively knew how to tell stories and create moods in images. But, even though his films were mostly adaptations, they formed a view of American culture and history -- a view that grew steadily darker. And Wayne embodied characters based on Ford or representing what Ford wished he could be. Compare the brave, plucky Wayne of "Stagecoach" to his characters in the 1956 classic "The Searchers" and 1963's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." The former is an outlaw and sociopath. The latter becomes a disappointed and bitter man. As Eyman says, Wayne in "Valance" echoes Ford, an alcoholic who ultimately feels he has outlived his times and usefulness.

Commentators label Ford a harsh taskmaster, summed up by Bogdanovich in one word: "malice." Ford was famous for embarrassing cast members, and Wayne got his share and more. Ford, a Naval Reservist since 1934, left Hollywood before Pearl Harbor and became a war hero, wounded while filming the Japanese attack on Midway in June 1942. He had filmed the B-25s flying off the USS Hornet for the Doolittle raid in April 1942 and was filming the June 1944 Normandy landings when he spotted former PT Boat skipper Robert Montgomery on the bridge of a destroyer giving covering fire to GIs on the beach.

When they were making "Expendable" in 1945, Ford rode Wayne mercilessly. A star and moneymaker at last, Wayne sat out the war and became a superstar. On the "Expendable" set Ford was again on Wayne until Montgomery -- who saw even more combat than Ford -- rebuked the director, who laid off Wayne for the rest of the filming.

As time wore on, Wayne's popularity and power gradually overtook Ford's. "The Quiet Man" (1952) got made only because of Wayne's clout at Republic Pictures. They were equals on "The Searchers." But Wayne, the big dog on any film he made from the early '50s on, always deferred to Ford. When Ford arrived unannounced on the set of "The Alamo" in 1959, he was a problem that Wayne solved by giving Ford, at considerable expense, a crew and a bunch of extras to film action scenes that may not have made the final cut. One of the most powerful men in Hollywood could not ask his former mentor and benefactor to get lost.

Like Ford, Wayne made a historical film that fudged and even violated history. The famous line in "Valance" -- "When history becomes legend, print the legend" -- informed Ford's work long before 1963 but, Bogdanovich and others say, was never the simplistic notion that it appears out of context. Characters were shown dealing with the effects of protecting the legend when they knew the history.

Various commentators elucidate the complexity, ambiguity and subtlety of Ford's films and the power of Wayne's performances, especially in "Searchers" and "Valance." But Thomson recalls that in the early '70s he could not get his young students to even watch Wayne films. His superpatriotism, background as part of the blacklist and support of the Vietnam War had alienated younger viewers. He had come to symbolize the America that students were protesting. And the liberal Ford finally came around to Wayne's view during Vietnam. Like many World War II vets, Ford could not abide kids burning the flag he had fought for.

Written and produced by Kenneth Bowser, and directed and edited by Sam Pollard, "The Filmmaker and the Legend" is unusually engaging visually. It uses copious footage from Ford's films. It omits much but eloquently presents what it does cover. And it provides the names of several excellent biographers.