NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
In the late 1960s, director John Ford sat down with a reporter for an interview. As they spoke, the reporter described himself as an atheist. Ford responded by pulling out his rosary beads and pressing them into the young man’s hands.
Such a public display of faith was atypical for Ford, to say the least. For as long as anyone could remember, Ford, who was christened John Feeney, cared almost as much about his reputation as a tough guy as he did about his films. In his Portland, Maine, high school, his classmates called him “Bull” Feeney and as a director, he bullied stars and studio executives in equal measure. He was, said character actor Henry Brandon, “the only man who could make John Wayne cry.”
Besides his temper, Ford had problems that put him at odds with his Church, including his marriage to a Protestant divorcee, a wandering eye, and an addiction to alcohol. Yet Ford never left the Church; he just didn’t obey her.
Regardless of his personal struggles, Ford’s private charity was as legendary as his public gruffness. As one story goes, during the Depression he publicly rebuked a man who asked him for $200 (to pay for his -wife’s surgery), then privately gave the man $1,000, flew in a specialist to perform the operation, and bought the couple a house.
Ford also brought a distinctly Catholic vision to his films, which depict redemption unfolding within a community and where grace abounds in the midst of everyday life. With roughly 150 films to his credit, Ford was one of Hollywood’s most prolific Catholic directors and, arguably, its greatest.
His work includes the monumental World War II documentaries shot for the U.S. Navy and the films that earned him Academy Awards for Best Director: The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man.
Ford died on August 31, 1973. His funeral Mass took place in his parish, Hollywood’s Blessed Sacrament Church.
