John Ford

Ex railroad man, Yankee Colonel John Marlowe leads an irregular troop on a mission into the Confederacy, feuding every step of the way with his company doctor Major Kendall. Also confusing issues is Hannah Hunter, a Southern Belle who learns of their plans and must be brought along for security reasons. They succeed in their ‘dirty’ raid on a railhead town, but escape back to Union lines looks grim, with several rebel armies closing in from all sides – including a company of children from a confederate military academy.Read More »

Synopsis:
Ordinary man-in-the-street Arthur Ferguson Jones leads a very straightforward life. He’s never late for work and nothing interesting ever happens to him. One day everything changes: he oversleeps and is fired as an example, he’s then mistaken for evil criminal killer Mannion and is arrested. The resemblance is so striking that the police give him a special pass to avoid a similar mistake. The real Mannion sees the opportunity to steal the pass and move around freely and chaos results.Read More »

Synopsis:
Few historical figures are as revered as Abraham Lincoln, and few director-star pairings embody classic American cinema as perfectly as do John Ford and Henry Fonda. In Young Mr. Lincoln, their first collaboration, Fonda gives one of the finest performances of his career as the young president-to-be struggling with an incendiary murder case as a novice lawyer. Compassionate and assured, this indelible piece of Americana marks the beginning of Ford and Fonda’s ascent to legendary status.Read More »

Synopsis:
Pinky, a light skinned black woman, returns to her grandmother’s house in the South after graduating from a Northern nursing school. Pinky tells her grandmother that she has been “passing” for white while at school in the North. In addition, Pinky has fallen in love with a young white doctor, Dr. Thomas Adams, who knows nothing about her black heritage. Pinky says that she will return to the North, but Granny Johnson convinces her to stay and treat an ailing white woman, Miss Em. Meanwhile, Dr. Canady, a black physician from another part of the state, visits Pinky and asks her to train some African American students, but she declines. Read More »

Synopsis:
Colonel Loring Leigh, British Indian Army, appears to have issued an order that cost 90 lives. Cashiered, he returns home, tells his sons of a conspiracy by an arms syndicate to supply the rebels…then is found dead, an apparent suicide. To clear their father, the four sons must globetrot in a hazardous search for evidence, closely followed by Geoffrey’s sweetheart Lynn Cherrington.Read More »

A society novelist brings a brash young chorus girl home in order to study her for inspiration for his new novel. His family is distraught, but soon her behavior has forever altered their snobbish ways.Read More »

Plot:
The film represents Henry Fonda’s return to the screen after an absence of seven years, part of which was spent playing the eponymous officer in the immensely successful stage version of Thomas Heggen’s novel. As cargo officer and second in command on a supply ship during World War II, the easygoing Lt. Doug Roberts is excluded from a much desired combat role while playing whipping boy to dyspeptic tyrant Captain Morion (James Cagney). Ensign Frank Pulver (Jack Lemmon), a brash yet cowardly wheeler-dealer, entertains Roberts with his elaborate pranks while the fatherly Doc (William Powell in his last screen appearance) offers advice. The young crew tries every available means of killing boredom, including eyeballing the nurses on a nearby island through a telescope, and Roberts does what he can to get them the R and R they badly need.Read More »

A documentary on the life and films of director John Ford.

Plot Synopsis by Clarke Fountain
This documentary profiles the great American filmmaker John Ford (1895-1973). Among the films he directed were The Young Lincoln, Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Grapes of Wrath. Ford’s work was distinguished by its great emotional clarity, which some see as sentimentality, and storytelling which evokes and defines what it is to be American. The film features interviews with Ford and with many of his stars, as well as exemplary clips from his films. Many of Ford’s films were westerns, and interviews with him are filmed in Monument Valley, one of his favorite film settings. It is narrated by director Peter Bogdonavich, whose own work shows Ford’s influence. Among the actors interviewed are John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda.Read More »

Synopsis:
The story of an Arkansas farm woman and her son. When the son expresses his desire to marry a girl who comes from a family that the mother thinks is trash, she enrolls him in the army.

Review:
In this sentimental film directed by John Ford a mother disapproves of her son’s marriage and gets him drafted; he is killed in the war, and she comes to realize her error.

In Three Cedars, Arkansas Hannah Jessop (Henrietta Crosman) works in the field with her son Jim (Norman Foster). She reads to him from the Bible about the dangers of an evil woman, and he says he wants to enlist. Jim meets Mary Saunders (Marian Nixon) at night, putting her drunk father to bed and hiding his jug in the hayloft. Mary asks Jim not to enlist. Jim tells his mother he wants to earn wages so that he can marry. Hannah tells Mary to stay away from Jim and gets Jim put in the army. Jim gets off a troop train and kisses Mary, who tells him she is going to have a baby. He tries to stay to marry her, but he is forced back on the train. Jim fights in the trenches. In a rain storm Mary’s father asks Hannah to help deliver Mary’s baby. A telegram to Hannah reports that Jim was killed. She pieces together a torn photo of him.Read More »