For a link to the official web site for the documentary about John Wayne and John Ford on PBS's "American Masters" click on the title above for a link. It has a cool timeline for their relationship and movies.
PAPPY AND THE DUKE
by Ken Bowser
John Ford and John Wayne -- a friendship and professional collaboration that spanned 50 years, changed each others' lives, changed the movies, and in the process, changed the way America saw itself. It was a relationship that reflected all the elements and all the paradoxes of 20th century America -- generosity of spirit, abuse of power, a sense of loyalty, and a restless nationalism that didn't quite know what to do with itself...
Between the end of the war in 1945 and Ford's death in 1972, the two men made twelve films together. Those films helped define how we saw ourselves, or put another way, how John Ford wished us to be as Americans. From, THEY WERE EXPENDABLE, through the cavalry series -- FORT APACHE, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, and RIO GRANDE -- Ford made U.S. history both poetic and heroic. He also made John Wayne the personification of that history as well as the American male. Wayne the actor and star brought a reluctant power to those roles. That reluctant power was Ford's principal and cherished idea of America's greatness.....
To read the rest click on the title above for a link
