How Green Was My Valley - 1941

A compelling, classic, heart-wrenching drama of a Welsh coal-mining family over a fifty-year period, adapted from a story by Richard Llewellyn. Told in voice-over narration and flashback as intelligent and sensitive 10 year-old Huw Morgan (McDowall) nostalgically looks back on a bygone way of life. Huw is the youngest of seven children (six sons and one beautiful daughter Angharad (O'Hara)) in the Morgan family, led by elderly Mr. and Mrs. Morgan (Crisp and Allgood). Tensions in the family grow at the beginning of the 20th century, during periods of labor unrest and workers' strike.

When stern Mr. Morgan resentfully refuses to join a miners' union, calling it "socialist nonsense," the family is split and the older brothers depart for a boarding house. Among other crises and losses that devastate the community, Angharad's romantic love for the local preacher Mr. Gruffydd (Pidgeon) is ultimately thwarted. The film concludes with Huw's understanding of the vanished old way of life.

The Searchers - 1956

Searchers (Movies) Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.
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The Searchers (1956) is considered by many to be a true American masterpiece of filmmaking, and the best, most influential, and perhaps most-admired film of director John Ford. It was his 115th feature film, and he was already a four-time Best Director Oscar winner (The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952)) - all for his pictures of social comment rather than his quintessential westerns. The film's complex, deeply-nuanced themes included racism, individuality, the American character, and the opposition between civilization (exemplified by homes, caves, and other domestic interiors) and the untamed frontier wilderness.

With dazzling on-location, gorgeous VistaVision cinematography (including the stunning red sandstone rock formations of Monument Valley) by Winton C. Hoch in Ford's most beloved locale, the film handsomely captures the beauty and isolating danger of the frontier. It was even a better film than Ford's previous Best Picture-winning How Green Was My Valley (1941). However, at its time, the sophisticated, modern, visually-striking film was unappreciated, misunderstood, and unrecognized by critics. It did not receive a single Academy Award nomination, and was overwhelmed by the all-star power and glamour of the Best Picture winner of the year, Around the World in 80 Days (1956).

The film's screenplay was adapted by Frank S. Nugent (director Ford's son-in-law) from Alan Le May's 1954 novel of the same name, that was first serialized as a short story in late fall 1954 issues of the Saturday Evening Post, and first titled The Avenging Texans. Various similarities existed between the film's script and an actual Comanche kidnapping of a young white girl in Texas in 1936. The film's producer was C.V. Whitney - a descendant of Eli Whitney, who was a pioneer in the mass production of muskets in the first firearms assembly factory in New Haven, CT.

My Darling Clementine - 1946

My Darling Clementine Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.
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My Darling Clementine (1946) is one of the greatest classic Westerns of all time, directed by one of Hollywood's most honored directors, John Ford. This film foreshadowed other great, more complex westerns that Ford would later direct - The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). It was filmed in his favorite locale - Monument Valley in northern Arizona, in only forty-five days. The film's title was not chosen in honor of any of the central characters or the shoot-out, but after the name of Earp's civilizing, female acquaintance in the town of Tombstone.
The film's screenplay, by Samuel G. Engel, Sam Hellman and Winston Miller, was taken in part from the 1931 novel Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal by Stuart N. Lake.

Although the book claims to be an accurate account of Earp (an historical, heroic Western character) and of the legendary O.K. Corral incident from the US past - it imaginatively includes a number of fabrications. Ford's film similarly retells the violent episode of the gunfight-shootout at the O.K. Corral (an actual historical event that occurred on the afternoon of October 26, 1881), the story of the duel between two families - the good one represented by the Earps and the notorious one represented by the Clanton family.

The Grapes of Wrath - 1940

The Grapes of Wrath Framed Art Print
14.75 in. x 12 in.
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The Grapes of Wrath (1940) is director John Ford's most famous epic drama in black and white - the classic adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1940 Pulitzer Prize winner, widely read 1939 novel. [The sentimental film is much more closely linked to social protest plays of Ford, the indicator (1935) and How Green Was My Valley (1941) as his masterly westerns.] This film was the most popular film Left Socialists on the subject before the World War II Hollywood.

The film's title is taken from the Battle Hymn of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe ("My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, He is trampling on vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored, it loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, His truth is on "). On the screen, the film honestly and realistically recreates the socioeconomic impact of the Great Depression and drought of the mid-30s on a family representative - the Joad. The epic theme of moving to a new house oppressed parallels the biblical story of Exodus. Their name, Joad, also evokes the biblical character of Job.

Nunnally Johnson script is remarkably faithful to its source material Steinbeck. Not present in the novel or screenplay is a ledge it ends in the movie sentimentally optimistic and affirms the strength and dignity of the individual mind. Many other times, Hollywood has capitalized on other Steinbeck works and adapted for the screen: Of Mice and Men (1939), Tortilla Flat (1942), The moon is down (1943), Pearl (1948 ), the Red Pony (1949), East of Eden (1955), and Cannery Row (1982).