John Ford

John Ford’s first sound picture. Victor McLaglan plays a British Army Captain who decamps for India on a secret mission to infiltrate the forces of Yasmani, a mysterious figure threatening the Crown’s interests. Myrna Loy plays Yasmani, carrying over her silent-era typecasting as an exotic vamp.

John Ford’s second sound picture. George O’Brien joins the Naval Academy, endures hazing from the upperclassmen, and rivals his older brother, a West Point cadet, for a girl. John Wayne and Ward Bond have small parts as O’Brien’s upperclassmen tormentors. The film culminates with the big Army-Navy football game pitting brother against brother.

Perhaps the first of Ford’s early sound pictures that rated his full attention. After an accidental collision, an American submarine drifts toward the ocean floor. MacKenna plays a disgraced British officer serving under an assumed name on the sinking sub. When the sub’s commander succumbs to stress, MacKenna assumes command and reveals his true identity. The lighthearted opening belies the transition to taut drama. Though the surviving prints are a mix of dialogue and title cards, Ford’s confident execution shines through. John Wayne appears as a radio operator on the surface.

A botched jewel robbery lands gangster Lowe in court. Up for re-election, the judge seizes the publicity opportunity and sentences Lowe to fight in World War I. In France, he plays baseball, sees some action, and returns a war hero. Back in New York, Lowe opens a nightclub, falls for socialite Owen, and crosses his former gang. The mix of comedy, wartime drama, and gangster film never gels, but Ford’s formal execution—love the final shootout—makes it passable. Look fast for Ward Bond as a drill sergeant.

The debut feature for both Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart. A lighthearted comedy that sees Tracy as the beloved ace pitcher for a prison baseball team. Tracy befriends another convict played by Bogart who’s nearing parole. Bogart’s sweet on an inmate in the neighboring woman‘s prison. Once Bogart’s released, her former partner, a scam artist, gets wind of the romance and blackmails Bogart. Just before the big game against a rival prison, Tracy escapes to help Bogart.

An uneven amalgam of war picture, spy drama, and romance. In late WWI, O’Brien captains a naval crew aboard a decoy ship posing as merchant marines. They’re hunting for a notorious German U-boat.

Sally O’Neil plays the titular Brat, a young street urchin with a heart of gold who opens the film before a night court judge, on trial for stealing a meal. Alan Dinehart plays Mac Forrester, an aristocrat novelist who’s buddy-buddy with the judge and sitting in on the court for story ideas.

Ronald Colman charms as a promising young doctor who tries small-town medicine but finds himself drawn to research. After landing at a prestigious New York institute, he discovers a cure for bubonic plague. A West Indies outbreak provides an opportunity to test his work but also tests his resolve to maintain a detached, scientific approach.

Henrietta Crosman plays a rural woman who, rather than see her only son leave home and marry his local sweetheart, signs him up for World War I, where he perishes. After the war, she travels with a group of other mothers to visit her son’s grave.

The first of three collaborations between star Will Rogers and director John Ford. Rogers plays a country doctor battling small-town prejudice while romancing a wealthy widow.

During World War I, a group of British cavalrymen, lost in the Mesopotamian desert, falls prey to unseen Arab snipers.

A would-be epic tale, starting in 1825 with two cotton merchant families uniting in a pact to protect their mutual interests, then jumping forward almost a hundred years to find the families on opposite sides of the first World War. After the war, the survivors reunite and reaffirm the pact, becoming titans of industry before the crash of 1929 wipes them out.

A folksy judge (Will Rogers) outwits his rivals in a small southern town.

A mild-mannered office clerk (Edward G. Robinson) discovers that he’s a dead ringer for a notorious gangster (Edward G. Robinson).

A slow-witted Irishman (Victor McLaglen) sees his world crumble around him after he informs on a fellow countryman.

Will Rogers plays a medicine man turned steamboat operator racing to New Orleans to save his nephew from the gallows.

For treating President Lincoln’s assassin, Dr. Samuel Mudd is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on Dry Tortugas island where he fights an outbreak of yellow fever.

A fictionalized biography of Mary Stuart’s return to Scotland, through her imprisonment and death at the hands of her rival, Elizabeth I of England.

I thought Hitchcock’s adaptation of Seán O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock was bad, but it proves masterful compared to John Ford’s take on O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars.

The precocious granddaughter (Shirley Temple) of a British army colonel charms a soldier (Victor McLaglen) and a hostile native (Cesar Romero) in colonial India.

In the South Pacific, a colonial governor’s (Raymond Massey) hard-nosed stance complicates the lives of a native couple (Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall) much to the dismay of his wife (Mary Astor) and physician (Thomas Mitchell).

Attempting to clear their father’s name, four men (Richard Greene, George Sanders, David Niven, and William Henry) uncover a conspiracy.

John Ford’s Stagecoach reinvented the western genre and marked the debut of the “John Wayne” persona that the legendary actor refined over the next 40 years.

Fledgling lawyer Abraham Lincoln (Henry Fonda) defends two brothers accused of murder.

A frontiersman (Henry Fonda) and his new bride (Claudette Colbert) settle in upstate New York only to face hostile Indians and the Revolutionary War.

Fresh out of prison, a man (Henry Fonda) rejoins his sharecropper family in Oklahoma, only to find them forced out of their homes and preparing to travel to California in search of work.

A group of merchant seamen endures the early days of World War II.

How Green Was My Valley doesn’t start well.

PT boat captains (Robert Montgomery and John Wayne) defend the Philippines against the Japanese in World War II, despite little initial support from Navy brass.

Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and Doc Holliday (Victor Mature) shoot it out with old man Clanton (Walter Brennan) and his sons at the O.K. Corral.

A Cavalry officer (John Wayne) watches as his ambitious and arrogant commanding officer (Henry Fonda) leads the company into a massacre.

A group of outlaws (John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz, and Harry Carey Jr.) adopts a dying woman’s baby in the desert and vows to bring it to safety.

A cavalry captain (John Wayne) nearing retirement, leads a final patrol to stop a pending Indian attack.

During World War II, a young musician (Dan Dailey) enlists in the Army eager for combat, only to wind up stationed in his hometown.

A Mormon leader (Ward Bond) hires a pair of horse traders (Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr.) to lead his followers to a colony across the Utah desert.

The estranged wife (Maureen O’Hara) and son of a Cavalry officer (John Wayne) join him at a fort out west.

A man (John Wayne) moves home to Ireland and falls in love with a woman (Maureen O’Hara) whose ornery brother picks a fight.

A marine captain (James Cagney) rivals a sergeant (Dan Dailey) for an innkeeper’s daughter in World War I France.

A married anthropologist (Grace Kelly) and a chorus girl (Ava Gardner) fight over a hunter (Clark Gable) in Africa.

The Long Gray Line is a whitewashed, but nonetheless entertaining look at life at the United States Military Academy at West Point through the eyes of an Irish immigrant, played by Tyrone Power.

Considering all the drama involved behind the scenes, it’s amazing Mister Roberts is even watchable, let alone good.

The Searchers is a very good film about a very flawed man.

The life story of pioneer Navy aviator and Hollywood screenwriter Frank W. “Spig” Wead (John Wayne).

Power introduces a trio of Irish vignettes, the first about a reluctant policeman’s arrest of a proud, old-fashioned man for assault, the second about a train’s prolonged layover in small railways station, and the last about the escape of an Irish Nationalist before his planned execution.

An aging Irish-American political boss (Spencer Tracy) endures a final bid for reelection as mayor of a New England town.

During the Civil War, a Union Cavalry Colonel (John Wayne) clashes with a pacifist surgeon (William Holden) assigned to his outfit for a raid deep into confederate territory.

Hunter plays a Cavalry Lieutenant defending a black officer, played by Woody Strode, accused of raping and killing a white woman.

Two Rode Together is a passable western from director John Ford that echoes his earlier film, The Searchers.

An idealistic tenderfoot lawyer confronts the fiercest outlaw in a small western town.

An epic look at one family’s trials and tribulations over the course of four generations as they seek their fortune in the American west through the middle of the 19th century.

A fictionalized account of the early life of playwright Sean O’Casey (Rod Taylor).

7 Women is notable chiefly as director John Ford’s last film before his death in 1973. It’s a well-done drama that’s devoid of the usual touches of humor that graced many of his films, though it’s the better for it.