2:00

He wasn't even taking care of himself. And

2:02

Bill was upset about him because he peed in the sleeping bag.

2:06

That was the last straw for Bill

2:08

Clothier, author of Mark

2:10

Harris. He was so non-functional

2:13

and soiled and disheveled

2:16

that the guys

2:18

in the house had to sort of contact

2:20

his ship and say, get him out of

2:22

here, come pick him up and take him

2:25

away. Clothier

2:27

screamed into the phone, I don't give a shit

2:29

if he's your commander, get him the hell out

2:31

of here, he's throwing up all over my room.

2:38

John Ford needed to find a way to get back

2:40

on his feet. He needed

2:42

an escape, but he didn't

2:44

want to just go back to his

2:46

usual Hollywood life, to the same old

2:48

grind from studio bosses. I

2:52

wandered away. I was actually getting

2:54

away from Hollywood, getting out of my great

2:56

open spaces. But

2:59

not specifically, I liked getting away from the

3:01

whole background, probably

3:04

particularly studio heads. So

3:07

John Ford went to the desert, to

3:10

a place that would become synonymous,

3:12

not only with the movies of

3:14

John Ford, but with the American

3:16

West itself. A place

3:18

where he could be what he most

3:20

liked to be. In charge.

3:23

Untouchable. A place where

3:26

he could be king. I'm

3:37

Ben Mankiewicz and this is The Plot

3:39

Thickens. This season

3:41

we partnered with novel for

3:43

Decoding John Ford, the most

3:45

influential filmmaker of the last 100

3:48

years. In

3:52

the next few episodes, we're going to

3:55

dive deeper into the legacy of John

3:57

Ford. How he worked off

3:59

screen. as an artist, and

4:01

on set with cast and crew all

4:04

around him. And

4:06

we'll look at the ideas and myths he

4:08

developed on screen. Ideas that

4:10

shaped the way the world still thinks

4:12

about the West, about

4:14

men, and about America. This

4:26

is episode 5, Monument

4:28

Valley. Even

4:30

if you've never seen a John Ford

4:33

film, you know Monument Valley. This

4:35

stretch of desert on the

4:37

Arizona-Utah border is where Wylie

4:39

Coyote chased the roadrunner, where

4:44

Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda rode

4:47

their Harleys into the sunset in Easy

4:49

Rider, where

4:51

the Griswold family spent their

4:53

summer vacation, and

4:57

where Forrest Gump finally stopped running. I

4:59

had run for three years, two months,

5:01

14 days, and 16 hours.

5:09

Monument Valley is the landscape most of

5:11

us think of when we close our

5:13

eyes and picture the American

5:16

West. A

5:18

huge expanse of empty desert,

5:21

populated only by red sandstone

5:23

pillars known as buttes rising

5:26

off the valley floor, like

5:29

monuments built by some

5:31

alien civilization. And

5:34

the reason we have that image in our

5:36

minds is because of

5:39

John Ford. Ford

5:43

first visited Monument Valley just before he

5:45

went to war, after

5:48

a local rancher named Harry Goulding came

5:50

out to Hollywood to lobby

5:52

the studios to come and shoot

5:54

there. Goulding

5:58

ran a trading post in Monument Valley. where

6:00

ranchers and indigenous tribes bartered

6:03

animal hides and rugs for dry

6:05

goods. When

6:07

the Depression hit, Goulding started looking

6:09

for new ways to bring in money and

6:12

jobs for the Navajo who lived there. Goulding

6:15

wasn't in Hollywood long before

6:17

he met up with John Ford and

6:20

convinced him to check out the valley. I

6:24

went up in the preliminary tour to Monument

6:26

Valley. The first couple of days around there

6:28

were terrific wind swarms. Even

6:32

with the whipping wind, it

6:34

was immediately clear this valley held

6:37

something Ford loved most. Epic,

6:40

beautiful scenery. There

6:42

was a big, what do they call those, choirs,

6:44

you know, giant cactus

6:47

in the background there with the mountains and the

6:49

beach, made an interesting

6:51

setup. According

6:55

to actor and Ford stuntman Ben

6:57

Johnson, the place also had

6:59

a sort of ghostliness to it that

7:02

felt magical. I'll

7:04

never forget the first time

7:06

we went into Goulding's landing. We

7:08

got in there just before dark and

7:11

there's a sheer rock wall

7:13

runs along there for probably a

7:15

quarter of a mile. And

7:18

we drove up in this car and got out

7:20

and I heard someone holler way

7:22

across. So just, you can just barely

7:25

hear them. And

7:27

then immediately after, under the

7:29

echo, there's one hollers way

7:32

back over here. And

7:36

right down below us, like a quarter

7:38

of a mile, these Indians start singing

7:41

and dance. And

7:43

this sound bounced back

7:45

against this rock wall and

7:48

out into this valley. And it was the

7:50

most eerie sound. If

7:56

I could have had a recording of that, it

7:58

would have been priceless. It

8:02

just makes the hair stand up on the

8:04

back of your neck. It's really something. Creature

8:12

comforts were scarce in the desert, but

8:15

that didn't deter Ford. In fact, that

8:17

was part of the charm. The

8:19

location was almost a character in

8:22

itself, says Ford biographer

8:24

Scott Eiman. If you want

8:26

to see a great location director, watch

8:28

John Ford. The environment creates character. You

8:30

don't need lines to explain their behavior,

8:32

why they're living in this place. The

8:36

landscape embodied something essential about

8:38

Ford's ideal American man, the

8:41

kind of man he put on screen

8:43

again and again, the kind of

8:45

man he aspired to be himself. Rugged.

8:49

Remote. A little wild. So

8:54

when Ford got a call from Darryl

8:56

Zanuck at 20th Century Fox with

8:59

an idea for how to ease him back

9:01

into civilian work after the war, it

9:04

was an easy yes. Zanuck

9:06

told him, listen John, we've both

9:08

been through a lot over there in Europe.

9:11

Things are a little tough. Once you

9:14

do a nice easy Western, you can go

9:16

back to your favorite spot in Monument Valley

9:18

and I've got a story

9:20

here called My Darling Clementine. I

9:23

like to do that. Forget about the war,

9:25

just go out there and enjoy a Western.

9:28

So that's how I was sighted. Ford

9:32

had spent only a few days in Monument

9:34

Valley shooting stagecoach in the late 1930s, but

9:38

when he returned for My Darling Clementine,

9:41

he settled in. Between

9:43

1946 and 1964, Ford made six films there. There

9:49

was always a guy on horseback, usually

9:51

John Wayne, riding off on

9:54

some honorable mission and

9:56

a pretty girl waiting back in town.

46:01

I go out in the kitchen and then forest sitting out

46:03

there in the kitchen and he's got a crying jag on.

46:06

He drew one all down his chin

46:08

and crying and he died of death.

46:11

The day Harry died, Jack arrived and

46:14

he was alongside him on his knees when he died.

46:18

And I went out into the patio and Jack came

46:20

out and he took a hold

46:22

of me and put his head on my breast and

46:25

cried. And the whole

46:27

front of my sweater was

46:30

sapping wet all the way down the front. He

46:34

cried for at least 15 or

46:37

20 minutes, just solid, solid, sobbing.

46:40

It was dramatically narrow and wealthy. There

46:48

is some tragic irony in Ford's

46:50

behavior in the way he could

46:52

treat people. It may

46:54

well have kept him from the thing

46:56

he seemed to want the most to

46:59

be a real part of the family he

47:01

was building there in the desert

47:03

of Monument Valley. He

47:06

always wanted to be one of the guys. There'd

47:09

be a circle on the set, a group of

47:11

people and he'd see them laughing

47:13

and having a good time and he wanted to be part

47:15

of them. But when he'd come into

47:17

it, it would all stop and everybody

47:19

would, you know, be watching

47:21

what they said. And

47:23

he wanted very much to be a part of that, but he never

47:25

could be, you know. You felt

47:28

that he missed that camaraderie. Maybe

47:32

the only version of camaraderie Ford could

47:34

stomach was one where

47:36

intimacy and male bonding had to

47:38

come with a side of torment

47:41

and abuse. And

47:44

maybe these dual sides of Ford

47:47

weren't actually contradictory at all. Maybe

47:50

that's what happens sometimes when you

47:52

feel the world won't accept your

47:54

true nature. That

47:57

was Catherine Hepburn's theory and

47:59

when she told her...