EVOLUTION

First there was Hopalong Cassiday, aka Hoppy.

Then Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.
And then James Stewart, Gary Cooper, and Henry Fonda.

There were others, I know…but these were…special.

And then we discovered the quintessence of the Western Type, two individuals who impressed this aging devotee of the American West: first John Wayne and then the great Robert Duvall.

And so it went…this Old Fella got older and recognized the changes which were taking place in the movie presentations and in his own opinion of what was closest to the real thing.

And now, this month, has occurred a further refinement of this process.

We discovered a biography of an American who not only dramatized the American West in great, superb movies…but who lived a life which would scarcely be believable if it were not true.

As Mark Twain [we think it was] said, “The only difference between fiction and truth is that fiction has to be believable.”

This individual is John Ford, Director.

The biography is Searching for John Ford, Joseph McBride.

720 pages of small-print text, heavily referenced.

Superb thus far…the story of a life as monumental as any of the dramatizations he brought to the screen.