The Mythmaker

Print: the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford, by Scott Eyman (Simon & Schuster, 656 pp., $40)

JOHN Ford’s career as a director spanned the American century. He got his first job in Hollywood in 1914, the same year that the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand jump-started the Great War, and he directed his last film in 1971, when America was fighting in Vietnam. In between, his mythic vision of the American West helped to shape and define what it meant to be an American hero. John Wayne and Henry-Fonda were the actors who embodied that ideal on-screen. Ford was the driving creative force that put them there.

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Randy Roberts

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Print: the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford, by Scott Eyman (Simon & Schuster, 656 pp., $40)

JOHN Ford’s career as a director spanned the American century. He got his first job in Hollywood in 1914, the same year that the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand jump-started the Great War, and he directed his last film in 1971, when America was fighting in Vietnam. In between, his mythic vision of the American West helped to shape and define what it meant to be an American hero. John Wayne and Henry-Fonda were the actors who embodied that ideal on-screen. Ford was the driving creative force that put them there.