At the end of The Searchers, John Wayne famously stands in the doorway as the family he has helped to reunite disappear into the darkness of the cabin in front of him. Before turning away into the four winds that will carry Ethan Edwards away to an unknown future, Wayne clutches his lower right arm … Read more
I first met Andrew McLaglen in the early summer of 1998. A producer friend of mine, Gareth Owen, who is still based at Pinewood, suggested we send Andrew a copy of my script for a film called Connemara Days, which is based around the making of The Quiet Man.It turned out that he was a … Read more
By my reckoning the first film John Wayne appeared in that touched upon the subject of the second World War was John Ford’s rather melancholy The Long Voyage Home, released in 1940. The boat on which Wayne serves as a (Swedish?) crew member is attacked by a German fighter plane. The boat is eventually sunk … Read more
…and slightly beyond.Like a lot of people who grew up in the 50s and 60s – mostly boys I have to admit – John Wayne was the ultimate hero and John Wayne Westerns were the best movie experience. He kicked arse like no one else onscreen. You could say he was an equal opportunities arse … Read more
Back in the early 90s I was reading a book by the now-deceased British film director Lindsay Anderson (he directed If, O Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital among others) when I came across the mention of a meeting Anderson had with John Ford in Dublin, in 1951, while Ford was in Ireland shooting location footage … Read more
I first made contact with Harry Carey Jr., or ‘Dobe’; as he came to be known, back in 1998. I’d met up with the film director Andrew McLaglen at Pinewood studios to discuss a script I’d written about the making of The Quiet Man on which he had worked as an unaccredited assistant director in … Read more
In the preface to a book dedicated solely to a collection of essays on The Searchers (The Searchers: Essays and Reflections on John Ford’s Classic Western, edited by Eckstein and Lehman) one of the editor’s mentions a video installation set up in the desert a few miles to the east of Los Angeles back in … Read more
They say you should never meet your heros as they’re bound to let you down or disappoint in one way or another. I’ve been very lucky to have met both my musical hero, Brian Wilson, and also my film hero, Ray Harryhausen, and neither one disappointed me. The meeting with Brian Wilson was kind of … Read more
Early John Wayne Films Directed by John Ford There is a suggestion in a number of Wayne filmographies that his first appearance in a John Ford film was as an extra in the silent Mother Machree, released in 1928. The film, however, was actually shot in 1926 but held back for release until 1928 whilst … Read more
This is a short celebration of some of those great movie double bills that I remember from the 1960s. Prior to the advent of video / DVD, the only way you could watch one of your favourite movies again after their original release was to hopefully catch it on re-release at the local flea pit. … Read more