John Ford

His father, John Augustine, was born in Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland, in 1854.

Barbara Curran was born in the Aran Islands, in the town of Kilronan on the island of Inishmore (Inis Mór).

John A. Feeney's grandmother, Barbara Morris, was said to be a member of an impoverished branch of a family of the Irish nobility, the Morrises of Spiddal (headed at present by Lord Killanin).

John Augustine and Barbara Curran arrived in Boston and Portland respectively in May and June 1872.

They filed their intentions to marry on July 31, 1875, and became American citizens five years later on September 11, 1880.

The John Augustine Feeney family resided on Sheridan Street, in the Irish neighborhood of Munjoy Hill in Portland, Maine, and his father worked a variety of odd jobs to support the family—farming, fishing, a laborer for the gas company, saloon keeping, and an alderman.

John and Barbara had eleven children: Mamie (Mary Agnes), born 1876; Delia (Edith), 1878–1881; Patrick; Francis Ford, 1881–1953; Bridget, 1883–1884; Barbara, born and died 1888; Edward, born 1889; Josephine, born 1891; Hannah (Joanna), born and died 1892; John Martin, 1894–1973; and Daniel, born and died 1896 (or 1898).

Feeney attended Portland High School, Portland, Maine, where he played fullback and defensive tackle.

He earned the nickname "Bull" because, it is said, of the way he would lower his helmet and charge the line.

John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director and producer.

He is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and was one of the first American directors to be recognized as an auteur.

Ford was born John Martin "Jack" Feeney (though he later often gave his given names as Seán Aloysius, sometimes with surname O'Feeny or Ó Fearna; an Irish language equivalent of Feeney) in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, to John Augustine Feeney and Barbara "Abbey" Curran, on February 1, 1894, (though he occasionally said 1895 and that date is erroneously inscribed on his tombstone).

He later moved to California, and in 1914 began working in film production as well as acting for his older brother Francis, adopting "Jack Ford" as a professional name.

Ford began his career in film after moving to California in July 1914.

He followed in the footsteps of his multi-talented older brother Francis Ford, twelve years his senior, who had left home years earlier and had worked in vaudeville before becoming a movie actor.

Francis played in hundreds of silent pictures for filmmakers such as Thomas Edison, Georges Méliès and Thomas Ince, eventually progressing to become a prominent Hollywood actor-writer-director with his own production company (101 Bison) at Universal.

Ford started out in his brother's films as an assistant, handyman, stuntman and occasional actor, frequently doubling for his brother, whom he closely resembled.

Francis gave his younger brother his first acting role in The Mysterious Rose (November 1914).

Despite an often combative relationship, within three years Jack had progressed to become Francis' chief assistant and often worked as his cameraman.

By the time Jack Ford was given his first break as a director, Francis' profile was declining and he ceased working as a director soon after.

Ford's films used a 'stock company' of actors, far more so than many directors.

Many famous stars appeared in at least two or more Ford films, including Harry Carey Sr., (the star of 25 Ford silent films), Will Rogers, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara, James Stewart, Woody Strode, Richard Widmark, Victor McLaglen, Vera Miles and Jeffrey Hunter.

Many of his supporting actors appeared in multiple Ford films, often over a period of several decades, including Ben Johnson, Chill Wills, Andy Devine, Ward Bond, Grant Withers, Mae Marsh, Anna Lee, Harry Carey Jr.., Ken Curtis, Frank Baker, Dolores del Río, Pedro Armendáriz, Hank Worden, John Qualen, Barry Fitzgerald, Arthur Shields, John Carradine, O. Z. Whitehead and Carleton Young.

Core members of this extended 'troupe', including Ward Bond, John Carradine, Harry Carey Jr.., Mae Marsh, Frank Baker, and Ben Johnson, were informally known as the John Ford Stock Company.

Likewise, Ford enjoyed extended working relationships with his production team, and many of his crew worked with him for decades.

He made numerous films with the same major collaborators, including producer and business partner Merian C. Cooper, scriptwriters Nunnally Johnson, Dudley Nichols and Frank S. Nugent, and cinematographers Ben F. Reynolds, John W. Brown and George Schneiderman (who between them shot most of Ford's silent films), Joseph H. August, Gregg Toland, Winton Hoch, Charles Lawton Jr.., Bert Glennon, Archie Stout and William H. Clothier.

In addition to credited roles, he appeared uncredited as a Klansman in D. W. Griffith's 1915 The Birth of a Nation.

In a career of more than 50 years, he directed over 140 films between 1917 and 1965 (although most of his silent films are now lost), and received six Academy Awards including a record four wins for Best Director for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952).

He married Mary McBride Smith on July 3, 1920, and they had two children.

He is credited with launching the careers of some of Hollywood's biggest stars during the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, including John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara and James Stewart.

Ford's work was held in high regard by his contemporaries, with Akira Kurosawa, Orson Welles, Frank Capra, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Ingmar Bergman naming him one of the greatest directors of all time.

Subsequent generations of directors, including many of the major figure of the New Hollywood movement, have cited his influence.

The Harvard Film Archive writes that "the breadth and measure of Ford’s major contributions to the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema, and to film language in general, remains somewhat difficult to discern.... Rarely recognized in full are Ford’s great achievements as a consummate visual stylist and master storyteller."

Ford is renowned for his Westerns, such as Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); though he worked in many other genres, including comedies, period dramas, and documentaries.

He made frequent use of location shooting and wide shots, in which his characters were framed against a vast, harsh, and rugged natural terrain.

His daughter Barbara was married to singer and actor Ken Curtis from 1952 to 1964.

The marriage between Ford and Smith lasted for life despite various issues, one being that Ford was Catholic while she was a non-Catholic divorcée.

What difficulty was caused by this is unclear as the level of Ford's commitment to the Catholic faith is disputed.

Another strain was Ford's many extramarital relationships.

A Portland pub, named "Bull Feeney's" in his honor, was open from 2002 to 2023.