A patchy chief
Boy, Ford sure had the sloppiest eyepatch. Even I could tell you it’d look better UNDER the spectacles. Better yet, get a Fritz Lang monocle. Walsh’s eyepatch, covering a big sticking plaster, is kind of gross, but then, Walsh didn’t have an eye.
Walsh was injured when a jackrabbit came through the windscreen of his car. The doctors told him the eye had best come out: “They said it was a mush eye.”
Ford once grumbled to Walsh that his eye was bothering him.
“At least you’ve got an eye.”
Walsh then offered to remove the offending Ford eye with a nearby piece of cutlery if that would help, and Ford got in a huff about the whole thing.
March 29, 2008 at 8:12 pm
John Ford was One Weird Dude.
March 29, 2008 at 8:43 pm
It sure seems that way! I’m resigned to the fact that he’ll never be a big favourite of mine, though I can see that some of his stuff is excellent.
I thought of laying out some of my problems with him in a blog post but that didn’t seem right for Eyepatch Week. Maybe another time.
March 29, 2008 at 8:51 pm
In her memoirs Maureen O’Hara says she once caught him kissing another actor. She doesn’t say who, but I’m betting it was Tyrone Power.
Ford could be a real monster on the set, even with his “stock company.” He was a big one for “teasing” that just fell short of outright sadism. Ward Bond was a favorite target.
However I had the enormous honor and pleasure of interviewing Anne Bancroft several years back, and she told me he was teriffic to her on Seven Women He even called her “Duke”!
March 29, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Yes, the O’Hara story was an eye-opener. It makes me feel that Ford’s flocation shooting was a bit like the fishing trips in Brokeback Mountain, an excuse to get away from the wife.
Some of the stories of his little “pranks” are pretty nauseating. And his surly attitude to interviewers never struck me as very amusing.