THE DAY JOHN FORD PUNCHED HENRY FONDA & GAVE BIRTH TO MODERN CINEMA

The most disastrous moment of John Ford’s illustrious Hollywood career took place at the U.S. Navy base on Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean in September 1954.

The legendary film director was starting work on "Mister Roberts," the movie version of the fabulously successful Broadway play, starring his old friend Henry Fonda.


from the moment they got to the location, Ford and Fonda clashed.  Fonda felt it was neither as funny nor as nuanced as the original play.

Producer Leland Hayward arranged for a clear-the-air meeting in Ford’s room in the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters.

Ford was sprawled on a chaise lounge with a tall drink in his hand. Before Fonda could finish explaining his concerns, Ford sprang up and punched him in the face.

The actor fled the room in stunned silence.

Fifteen minutes later, Ford knocked on Fonda’s door and stumbled through a tearful, abject apology, but things were never the same.

Ford, a life-long alcoholic, started grimly working his way through a case of chilled beer each day on the set.

"Mister Roberts" was a box-office hit, and won three Academy Awards, including Jack Lemmon’s first, for best supporting actor.

But Ford and Fonda were both bitterly disappointed. They never worked together again.

The Western had been John Ford’s favorite movie genre ever since he first arrived in Hollywood 40 years earlier in the formative days of moving pictures.

At the moment of Ford’s greatest need, his longtime friend and business partner, Merian C. Cooper, came up with the idea for a Western he thought John Ford would find irresistible.

"The Searchers," a new novel by author and screenwriter Alan LeMay, was a captivity narrative set in Texas during pioneer days.

It was based in part on a true story — the abduction of a nine-year-old girl in East Texas in 1836 by Comanche raiders.

While "The Searchers" pays homage to the familiar themes of the classic Western, it also undermines them.

Its central character possesses all of the manly virtues and dark charisma of the Western hero yet is tainted by racism and crazed by revenge, his quest fueled by hatred.

His goal is not to restore his lost niece to the remnants of their broken family but to kill her, because she has grown into a young woman and has become a Comanche bride.

At the heart of "The Searchers" is John Wayne’s towering performance. Wayne had portrayed morally ambiguous men before, but in "The Searchers" he is darker, angrier and more troubled than ever.

This dark knight is determined to exterminate the damsel and anyone who stands in this way. Still, because he is played by John Wayne, his charisma draws us in, making us complicit in his terrible vendetta.

Largely overlooked in its time — it was not nominated for a single Academy Award –

"The Searchers" has become recognized as one of the greatest of Hollywood movies.

It was extraordinarily influential on a generation of modern American filmmakers —

from Steven Spielberg to George Lucas to Martin Scorsese — imprinting itself on their psyches and their ambitions during their formative years.

Just as Ernest Hemingway noted that “all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn,'”

Film critic Stuart Byron once declared, “in the same broad sense it can be said that all recent American cinema derives from John Ford’s 'The Searchers.'”

Z is for ENDINGS_Where to put the period, why, and how.

To every beginning there is an ending.

But not always ...

In my worldview, the soul has a beginning but no true ending. Perhaps it has a final destination, yet no ending but eternity.

What did Woody Allen say?

Eternity is awfully long ... especially towards the end.

But for novels there has to be an ending. But where?

Remember the multiple "endings" to the movie, RETURN OF THE KING. I was with my date who kept starting to get up scene after scene. Peter Jackson just didn't seem to want to end his epic tale.

Of course those of us who had read the book knew what the true ending would be. But most in the audience hadn't read the book.

And like my date, they were frustrated and a bit miffed at Peter for misleading them scene after scene.

Not unlike an old car that just wouldn't stop after the key is turned off.

Finally, the epic ends with the closing of the door to Sam's home. But it was too late. Most felt dissatisfied at the false endings.

Take John Ford's classic Western, THE SEARCHERS.

It, too, ends with the closing of a home's door -- but the perspective is switched. The audience sees from the inside out to the figure of John Wayne beyond.

A cover story in New York magazine called it the most influential movie in American history.

The opening and closing shots, of Ethan arriving and leaving,

framed in a doorway. The poignancy with which he stands alone at the door,

one hand on the opposite elbow (his arm having been wounded by an arrow earlier in the film),

forgotten for a moment after delivering Debbie home. These shots are among the treasures of the cinema.

Ethan (John Wayne) cannot enter the home which represents civilization, home, and forgiveness. He is too wounded (hence the gesture of holding his formerly wounded arm.)

Ethan's story is the tragedy of the loner : we see Ethan at the end of the film, as we saw him at its beginning : alone, lonely, haunted by the past, and deeply wounded.

John Ford had this ending in mind when he filmed the beginning. I believe to have a truly focused novel, we as authors should have the ending in view from the very start of our story. Doing so provides that emotional impact of the closing lines which touches the reader's head as well as heart.

Of course, there are different ways to do that :

Snipping all the loose ends neatly.

Bracketing the novel with book-end type scenes as Ford did with THE SEARCHERS.

Or ending with a cliff-hanger, drawing the reader into an anxious anticipation for the next chapter in an on-going story -- as life is on-going.

How do you decide when to end your novel and why?
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