John Ford

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. 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).

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. 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."