THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503020435
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
IT IS NOT generally known that, in preparation for the filming of ``Citizen Kane,'' Orson Welles prepared by watching, again and again, John Ford's ``Stagecoach.''
``I'd learned whatever I knew in the projection room,'' Welles told director Peter Bogdanovich, ``from Ford. After dinner every night for about a month, I'd run `Stagecoach,' often with some different technician or department head from the studio, and ask questions. `How was this done?' `Why was this done?'
``It was like going to school.''
Some school. Today Ford (1895-1973), who won four well-deserved Academy Awards, and who specialized in monumental Monument Valley westerns, is an acknowledged megafigure in motion picture history. His early silent work featured leathery actor Harry Carey, who died in 1947, as ``the good bad man,'' a roughneck redeemed by the love of a stalwart woman.
Now Carey's son, the durable character actor Harry Carey Jr., has written a riveting account of his own close encounters with the wild, one-eyed film director, Company of Heroes: My Life as an Actor in the John Ford Stock Company (Scarecrow Press, 218 pp., $29.50).
The book is a powerful first-person account of the making of nine unforgettable Ford films, among them ``She Wore a Yellow Ribbon'' (1949), ``Wagonmaster'' (1950) and ``The Searchers'' (1956).
The volume not only paints Ford in his true daybreak colors, but it also shows dramatically what moviemaking was like before a motion picture evolved into a ``package'' that had to become a blockbuster to break even.
``If I had to make the choice again,'' confides the author in a characteristically direct aside, ``I would use Dobe Carey as my professional name and escape all those remarks by shop girls and gas station attendants about Japanese suicide.''
Dobe (short for ``adobe,'' the red Western brick that matched his hair) grew up regarding Ford as a sort of unpredictably grumpy uncle and John Wayne as a savvy if erratic older brother. Wayne's career was made with ``Stagecoach'' (1939). Carey made his first Ford movie, ``Three Godfathers'' (1948), appearing as The Abilene Kid, with Wayne and would make several more.
According to Carey, Ford was a brilliant bully. His leadership style was to intimidate compliance out of people. It was the calculated technique of not only an egotist but also a potentially vulnerable person.
``He was really a very lonely man,'' Carey notes of his ``Uncle Jack.'' ``He wanted very much to be `one of the boys,' but to do that, he would have to give up that mystique and authority he possessed.''
Ford loved rough-as-they-come location shooting. Death Valley was a big sandbox to him. And it was his willingness to inflict privation upon his company that made spectacular settings achieve the full status of characters in his films.
Typical Carey insight: ``Movie horses get the smarts real quick about the cue `flee the scene.' One situation that drives directors crazy is the classic scene where guys come flying out of the saloon or sheriff's office, mount up, and ride hell-for-leather out of town. Ninety-nine percent of the time, depending on the number of men flying out the door, some of them don't manage to get mounted. . . .
``I used to hate being in those scenes, but they are fun to watch.''
Ever the conscientious supporting player, Carey allows Ford center stage throughout, but the author emerges as an arresting figure himself as he moves from callow extra to seasoned veteran, making a rugged detour through alcoholism along the way.
He is also a Navy veteran and family man. But his life between films is sketched, not developed. Carey keeps the lens squarely and revealingly on such colorful associates as Wayne and actors Ward Bond and Richard Widmark.
Harry Carey Jr. has always been a creditable actor. Now, at 74, he emerges as a terrific observer and meticulous senior historian of filmmaking. One can only hope there will be more perceptive and evocative books from his pen before Sir Dobe rides off into the sunset. MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Landmark film director John Ford, left, makes John Wayne and Harry
Carey Jr. sing. Character actor Carey has written a colorful account
of his time working with Ford, ``Company of Heroes.''
by CNB