John Ford

John Ford won four Academy Awards for Best Director—still a record—for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952). None of those four were Westerns, despite Ford being best known for the genre.

The Searchers (1956), starring John Wayne as a Civil War veteran obsessively searching for his niece kidnapped by Comanches, is widely considered Ford's masterpiece and one of the greatest American films ever made. Ford directed Wayne in numerous other classics including Stagecoach (1939) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

Ford served as a commander in the United States Navy, heading the Field Photographic Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. He filmed combat footage at the Battle of Midway and at the D-Day landings at Normandy, and was wounded during the filming of Midway.

Ford filmed many of his most iconic Westerns in Monument Valley, a striking red-rock region straddling the Utah-Arizona border, frequently working with members of the local Navajo community. His repeated use of the location made it permanently synonymous with the American West in the popular imagination, even though many of his films were nominally set in Texas or Oklahoma.