"My name is John Ford and I make Westerns," announced the director who elevated the movie genre to an art form but would have disdained so lofty a description of his accomplishments. Ford's "invisible technique," which blended taut storytelling and splendid visuals with psychological insight, could seem offhand but always bore the stamp of a master.

Ford (1894-1973) was born Sean Aloysius O'Feeney in Cape Elizabeth, Me., the youngest of 13 children of Irish immigrants. Upon graduation from high school, he went to Hollywood to join his brother, director/writer/actor Francis Ford. John Ford began directing silent movies in 1917 and turned out a number of Westerns starring Harry Carey along with two significant films, The Iron Horse (1924) and Four Sons (1928).

But it was his work in sound films that elevated Ford to his status as one of America's great filmmakers. Moving easily from social drama to Westerns and comedies, he won Oscars® as Best Director for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and The Quiet Man (1952).

The latter movie starred John Wayne, who became a star in Ford's landmark Western Stagecoach (1939) and acted in more than 20 of the director's films. Other highlights among the Ford/Wayne collaborations included 3 Godfathers (1948), an allegorical retelling of the Christmas story set in the West; She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), the middle part of Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy" and one of Wayne's best acting vehicles; and The Searchers (1956), the stunning Western epic that many consider Ford's masterpiece.

According to TCM host Robert Osborne, "The capper of the Ford salute, and the best chance yet for all of us to get a direct, unvarnished look at the legendary Ford, is Peter Bogdanovich's documentary Directed by John Ford. It's a re-edited, re-vamped and expanded version of a film Bogdanovich compiled in 1971 that was only briefly shown at the time and has not been seen for the past 30 years. Flash ahead to 2006: with the help of TCM and producer Frank Marshall (and the inclusion of 20 additional minutes of new footage), you can review Ford's entire career, see some magnificent film clips and watch as Wayne, Stewart, O'Hara, Henry Fonda, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood and others give fascinating, personal insights into Ford, the filmmaker, and Ford, the man. There's also priceless footage of Ford himself being interviewed. Watching this gift from Peter Boganovich will make it even clearer why Orson Welles once said, "I learned filmmaking by studying the Old Masters - and by that I mean John Ford, John Ford and John Ford."

by Roger Fristoe