John ford

John Ford, #RIP

John Wayne and director John Ford at a familiar door shot on set of THE ALAMO (1960)

John Ford — The Bright and Dark Sides to the Finest Director in History

Shooting days run long. Actors can be divas. Making movies can be Hell. It's hard to fault directors for adopting an unstylish way of life. But they don't all amble around in sweats all day. Here, we salute the motion picture architects who toiled behind the lens with flair, from the debonair icons of cinema's golden age to the contemporary masterminds

Richard Avedon. John Ford, film director, Bel Air, California. April 11, 1972. Gelatin silver print. 16 1/8 × 15 11/16" (40.9 × 39.8 cm). Horace W. Goldsmith Fund through Robert B. Menschel. 495.2009. © 2024 The Richard Avedon Foundation. Photography

As an actor — and an acting teacher — Anson Mount knows the value of research. To play Cullen Bohannon in Hell on Wheels, Anson Mount has done more than his share of homework, watching westerns both famous and obscure. Some were longtime favorites he eagerly revisited; others, classics he sampled for the very first time. Here are some of his observations. “Of all the genres, the western is perhaps the most masculine. Even more so than the straight-up war movie, which at its best is nothing…

The 1939 movie Stagecoach created three icons: John Wayne, John Ford, and the 30,000 acres of glory on the Utah-Arizona border known as Monument Valley. It was a pioneering rancher, Harry Goulding, who brought Hollywood to his home, and helped shape America’s vision of the West.

John Ford

John Wayne has been in the news lately for some things he said decades ago. I don't have anything to say about that. But I did grow up with a father who liked Westerns, and so I had a steady diet of John Wayne movies. To be honest, the John Wayne character on display in those movies reminded me of my dad. Wayne was a tough guy with a soft side, a rugged individualist. He represented a model of American manhood. There are still some Wayne movies I watch and like. When Wayne died of cancer, I…

The Searchers.