When John Ford Punched Henry Fonda - and How It Led to One of the Greatest Westerns Ever
February, 14, 2013 8:59 am | Comments On #Movies
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.
It should have been a great project, but from the beginning almost everything went wrong.
The biggest problem, surprisingly, was Fonda. Ford had gone to bat for him against the studio executives at Warner Bros. who wanted a younger, sexier and more potent box-office attraction like Marlon Brando or William Holden for the title role of Doug Roberts, the young Navy officer.
Nonetheless, from the moment they got to the location, Ford and Fonda clashed. Fonda didn’t...
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Description
Glenn Frankel worked for nearly 30 years for the Washington Post, as a reporter, a foreign correspondent and editor of the Washington Post Magazine. As Jerusalem bureau chief, he won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for "sensitive and balanced reporting from Israel and the Middle East." His first book, "Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on the Hard Road to a New Israel," won the National Jewish Book Award. His second, "Rivonia's Children: Three Families and the Cost of Conscience in White South Africa," was a finalist for South Africa's prestigious Alan Paton Award. Frankel is currently the Director of the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.
