Link Copied!
John Ford Quotes (1894-1973)
Director
About John Ford
John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 β August 31, 1973), known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director. He is remembered both for Westerns such as Stagecoach (1939), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), as well films in other genres such as The Grapes of Wrath (1940).
Best John Ford Quotes
Shortest
Earliest
Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful John Ford quotes.
βMaureen O'Hara is one of the actresses I most dislike. Everybody thought I was her lover. Actually, I hated her and she hated me, but she was right for the parts.β
βDo you know that Eugene O'Neill loved The Long Voyage Home [(1940), based on a cycle of O'Neill's one-act sea plays]? Every month he had a print screened for him. It's a little thing that made me very proud of this picture.β
βWhat? [...] I understood the question but what does it mean? [...] I don't have a method. I tell them what to do. They do it. If I'm not satisfied, I correct their errors, I tell them to raise their voice, or to emphasize such-and-such sentence, and they do it again; that's all. Anyway, most of the time the actors are very good friends of mine and I know their personality and their range. There's no method involved there."β
βThe people who say such things are crazy. I am a Northerner, I hate segregation, and I gave jobs to hundreds of Negroes at the same salary the whites were paid. I had production companies hire poverty-stricken Indians and pay them the highest Hollywood salaries for extras. Me, a racist? My best friends are black: Woody Strode, and a caretaker who has worked for me for thirty years. I even made Sergeant Rutledge, about a character who was not just a nice black guy but someone nobler than anybody else in the picture. They wouldn't let me make that picture because they said that a movie about a 'nigger' wouldn't make any money and couldn't be exhibited in the South. I got angry and told them they could at least have the decency to say 'Negro' or 'colored man,' because most of those 'niggers' were worth better than they. When I landed at Omaha Beach there were scores of black bodies lying in the sand. Then I realized that it was impossible not to consider them full-fledged American citizens.β
John Ford Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of John Ford quotes by topic.
John Ford on Melancholy 2 quotes
βMelancholy Is not, as you conceive, indisposition Of body, but the mind's disease.β
John Ford on Marriage 2 quotes
βA bachelor May thrive by observation on a little, A single life's no burthen: but to draw In yokes is chargeable, and will require A double maintenance.β
John Ford on English proverbs (alphabetically by proverb)
βDiamonds cut diamonds.β
-100px.png)
John Ford on Honor
βTitles of honour add not to his worth, Who is himself an honour to his titles.β
Quotes About John Ford
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about John Ford from others.
Mary Astor on John Ford
βI think "laconic" is a good word for John Ford and for his technique of direction. No big deal about communication with John. Terse, pithy, to the point. Very Irish, a dark personality, a sensitivity which he did everything to conceal, but once he said to me while I was doing a scene with Ray Massey, "Make it scan, Mary." And I said to myself, "Aha! I know you now!".β
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on John Ford
βSteinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath and the subsequent John Ford movie promulgated a populist mythology about depression-era migrants to California who were dubbed "Okies," no matter what southwestern or midwestern state they hailed from. But most Californians regarded Okies as dirty, shifty, lazy, violent, and ignorant.β
Elia Kazan on John Ford
Anna Lee on John Ford 2 quotes
βJohn Ford came in and I was very scared of him. A rough character. I heard he despised the English, so I invented an Irish grandfather and told tales to him that simply were not true. [...] I found Ford to be a very curmudgeonly taskmaster, but always very fair. He always knew what he wanted in a scene. He never overshot. God help you if you didn't deliver what he wanted. And he liked me well enough that I finally told him that my Irish grandfather was fictional. He roared over that one. We've been close friends ever since. He used me a lot over the next few decades.β
Arthur Miller on John Ford 2 quotes
βA good picture, as we all know, starts with a story. The next thing is to tell that story pictorially. [...] Fast-moving, pictorial, not overloaded with dialogue. You could see that picture without dialogue and know what it was all about. That was the secret of John Ford's pictures. You could run any one of his pictures silent, and you'd still know what they were all about.β
About John Ford
John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 β August 31, 1973), known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director. He is remembered both for Westerns such as Stagecoach (1939), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), as well films in other genres such as The Grapes of Wrath (1940).