|
|
Article: The Mythmaker.(Review)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- December 31, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Mr. Roberts, a professor of history at Purdue University, is author, with James S. Olson, of John Wayne: American.
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 ...