JOHN FORD AT FOX
JANUARY 12 - FEBRUARY 24, 2008

Like the characters in many of the movies he directed, John Ford was a wanderer who knew the value of home. Throughout his prolific career, 20th Century Fox was the Hollywood studio closest to being Ford’s base. He directed more than 50 movies there and worked in a wide range of genres, creating some of his enduring masterpieces. Nearly all the movies in this series are featured in the acclaimed new DVD box set Ford at Fox. At the Museum, they will be shown on film, many in restored archival 35mm prints from 20th Century Fox.

Sponsored by Ford at Fox / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.


Becoming John Ford
Saturday, January 12, 1:00 p.m.

2007, 93 mins. Video. Directed by Nick Redman. With Peter Fonda, Joseph McBride, Lem Dobbs. This elegant, articulate documentary about Ford’s artistic growth at Fox is enhanced by readings of the director’s own words.


Just Pals
With live music by Steve Sterner
Saturday, January 12, 3:00 p.m.

1920, 50 mins. 16mm. With Buck Jones. For'’s first movie for Fox was a charming rustic comedy with western star Buck Jones as a good-hearted ne'er-do-well who becomes the town hero.


The Iron Horse
With live music by Steve Sterner
Saturday, January 12, 5:00 p.m.

1924, 132 mins. 35mm. With George O'Brien. Ford's epic drama about the building of the Union Pacific Railroad was his first major success, notable for its period detail, its panoramic vistas, and the intimate drama at its core. Shown in Ford’s preferred domestic version, which was restored by The Museum of Modern Art.


Four Sons
With live music by Steve Sterner
Sunday, January 13, 2:30 p.m.

1928, 100 mins. 35mm. With James Hall, Margaret Mann. In this famously heartwrenching war drama, a Bavarian widow’s four sons fight in WWI, including one on the American side.


Pilgrimage
Sunday, January 13, 5:00 p.m.
Saturday, January 19, 2:30 p.m.

1933, 96 mins. 16mm. With Henrietta Crosman, Heather Angel. A mother sends her son to war to prevent his marriage to a woman she disapproves of. A thoroughly unsentimental morality tale, Pilgrimage is, according to Ford biographer Joseph McBride, the director's "first great film... one of the most extreme examples of Ford’s tendency, as a romantic pessimist, to explore the dark side of his ideals."


Born Reckless
Saturday, January 19, 5:00 p.m.

1930, 82 mins. 35mm. With Edmond Lowe, Lee Tracy. A notorious New York criminal sentenced to fight in the war returns as a hero. Working around the technical problems that plagued early sound films, Ford created some impressive near-silent scenes, including a delightful baseball game sequence.


Air Mail
Sunday, January 20, 2:30 p.m.

1932, 83 mins.16mm. With Russell Hopton, Slim Summerville, Gloria Stuart. Almost never shown, yet one of Ford's best 1930s movies, this lushly photographed flying film pits a reckless pilot against his level-headed boss. Ford briefly left Fox to make this movie for Universal.


Steamboat 'Round the Bend
Sunday, January 20, 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, January 27, 5:00 p.m.

1935, 82 mins. 35mm. With Will Rogers. In this superb slice of Americana, Will Rogers peddles patent medicine and runs a floating wax museum on his ramshackle Mississippi riverboat.


Doctor Bull
Saturday, January 26, 2:00 p.m.

1933, 77 mins. 16mm. With Will Rogers. Will Rogers was given free rein to improvise in this compassionate portrait of a small-town doctor whose campaign against social hypocrisy culminates in his effort to take down a local construction tycoon.


Judge Priest
Sunday, January 27, 2:30 p.m.

1934, 80 mins. 35mm. With Will Rogers. In the second film in his trilogy with Ford, Will Rogers plays a noble judge who wants to rescue rural southerners from their prejudices. He tries to vindicate the secret father of an "orphaned" girl. Dave Kehr wrote that Judge Priest is "one of the most deeply felt visions of community in the American cinema."


Wee Willie Winkie
Saturday, February 2, 2:30 p.m.

1937, 100 mins. 35mm tinted print. With Shirley Temple, Victor McLaglen. Based on a Rudyard Kipling story, this epic features Temple as a girl in India who saves an entire regiment. "My idea," John Ford wrote, "is to forget that it is a Shirley Temple picture... All the hokum must be thrown out, [and] it must be told from the child’s viewpoint, through her eyes."


Young Mr. Lincoln
Saturday, February 2, 5:00 p.m.

1939, 100 mins. 35mm. With Henry Fonda. Exquisitely dramatizing a series of minor, mainly fictionalized events, Ford examines the qualities that made Lincoln his personal hero. Dave Kehr wrote that the film "stirs feelings about the American past that most of us, I suppose, have missed since childhood."


Drums Along the Mohawk
Sunday, February 3, 2:30 p.m.

1939, 103 mins. 35mm. With Henry Fonda, Claudette Colbert. Ford's first color film is an atmospheric Revolutionary War saga about a homesteading couple who deal with emotional hardships and Indian attacks amid the bucolic landscape of the Mohawk Valley.


The Prisoner of Shark Island
Sunday, February 3, 5:00 p.m.

1936, 96 mins. 35mm. With Warner Baxter, Gloria Stuart. The true story of a doctor who unwittingly treated John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln's assassination. Shipped off to an island prison camp, he must deal with a sadistic guard before seeking exoneration.


Seas Beneath
Saturday, February 9, 2:30 p.m.

1931, 90 mins. New 35mm print. With George O'Brien. The gruff captain of an inexperienced naval crew discovers his sweetheart is a German spy. Seas Beneath was beautifully filmed on location on Catalina Island, which fills in for the Canary Islands.


Four Men and a Prayer
Saturday, February 9, 5:00 p.m.

1938, 85 mins. 35mm. With Loretta Young, George Sanders, David Niven. In this engrossing drama, four brothers search through India, South America, and Egypt to discover who killed their father and to overturn his dishonorable discharge.


When Willie Comes Marching Home
Sunday, February 10, 5:00 p.m.

1950, 82 mins. 35mm. With Dan Dailey, Corinne Calvert. In Ford's sardonic war comedy, an enthusiastic WWII soldier is unfortunately stationed in his home town. When he gets a chance to prove his heroism abroad, the secrecy of his mission prevents him from getting due respect.


Tobacco Road
Saturday, February 16, 2:30 p.m.

1941, 84 mins. 35mm. With Charley Grapewin, Gene Tierney, William Tracy. This adaptation of a long-running play based on a scandalous novel by Erskine Caldwell mixes comedy and drama to tell the story of a once-prosperous Southern family on the verge of collapse.


My Darling Clementine
Saturday, February 16, 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, February 17, 5:00 p.m.

1946, 97 mins. Restored 35mm print from UCLA Film & TV Archive. With Henry Fonda, Cathy Downs. The real-life story of reluctant lawman Wyatt Earp is the basis of this masterpiece. The legendary shootout at the OK Corral is transformed into a symbolic showdown between civilization and the frontier. This version includes Ford’s original ending, later cut by Darryl Zanuck. Preservation funded partly by The Film Foundation.


The Grapes of Wrath
Sunday, February 17, 2:00 p.m.

1940, 129 mins. 35mm. With Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell. One of Ford's most enduring classics, this adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about Depression-era Okies on the road to California is distinguished by Gregg Toland's cinematography and Henry Fonda's indelible performance as Tom Joad.


How Green Was My Valley
Saturday, February 23, 2:00 p.m.
Sunday, February 24, 6:30 p.m.

1941, 118 mins. 35mm. With Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Roddy McDowall. One of Ford's most personal films examines a Welsh coal-mining family's conflicts with the labor movement. This nuanced, nostalgic gem beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture.


The World Moves On
Saturday, February 23, 4:30 p.m.

1934, 104 mins. New 35mm print. With Madeline Carroll and Franchot Tone. Inspired by its success with Cavalcade, Fox asked Ford to create an epic, spanning a century, following two Louisiana families through their travels in America and Europe.


War Documentaries: John Ford Simulating Battle of Midway, The Battle of Midway, December 7th
Sunday, February 24, 2:00 p.m.

Archival Prints from the Academy Film Archive. John Ford Simulating Battle of Midway (1942, 6 mins. Silent. 16mm.) This rare behind-the-scenes footage of John Ford filming The Battle of Midway replaces the previously scheduled Torpedo Squadron. The Battle of Midway (1942, 18 mins. 35mm.), a gripping and poetic record of a key naval battle, had an enormous emotional impact on wartime audiences. December 7th (1943, 20 mins. 35mm.) won an Oscar for this docudrama, shot by Gregg Toland, about the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.


What Price Glory
Sunday, February 24, 3:30 p.m.

1952, 111 mins. 35mm. With James Cagney, Dan Dailey. Roughneck banter sparks this Technicolor remake of Raoul Walsh's 1926 classic about two rival officers who fight for the affection of an innkeeper's daughter while the war rages on.


Special thanks to Jim Gianopulos, Schawn Belston, Dorrit Ragosine, and Caitlin Robertson, 20th Century Fox; Brian Block and Rick Yankowski, Criterion Pictures; May Haduong and Joe Lindner, Academy Film Archive; Tag Gallagher; Joe Hunsberger and Todd Wierner, UCLA Film and TV Archive; and Steve Sterner.