"Through a career that spanned decades and included work on dozens of films - among them such American masterpieces as The Searchers, The Grapes of Wrath, The Quiet Man, Stagecoach, and How Green Was My Valley - John Ford managed to leave as his legacy a body of work that few filmmakers will ever equal. Yet as bold as the stamp of his personality was on each film, there was at the same time a marked reticence when it came to revealing anything personal.

Basically shy, and intensely private, he was known to enjoy making up stories about himself, some of them based loosely on fact but many of them pure fabrications."--BOOK JACKET. "Now, in this definitive look at the life and career of one of America's true cinematic giants, noted biographer and critic Scott Eyman, working with the full participation of the Ford estate, has managed to document and delineate both aspects of John Ford's life - the human being and the legend."--BOOK JACKET.

"Drawing on more than a hundred interviews and research on three continents, Scott Eyman explains how a saloonkeeper's son from Maine helped to shape America's vision of itself, and how a man with only a high school education came to create a monumental body of work, including films that earned him six Academy Awards - more than any filmmaker before or since.

He also reveals the truth of Ford's turbulent relationship with actress Katherine Hepburn, recounts his stand for freedom of speech during the McCarthy witch-hunt - including a confrontation with archconservative Cecil B. DeMille - and discusses his disfiguring alcoholism as well as the heroism he displayed during World War II."--BOOK JACKET.