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He’s the only four-time Best Director Academy Award winner. Curiously, though, legendary filmmaker John Ford–whose birthday was earlier this month–never won for the movie genre he’s most associated with: westerns. His quartet of Oscars came for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952).
From his early works in the late 1910s, through his long association with such stars as John Wayne and Henry Fonda, and to his final frontier tale in 1964, Ford’s innovative camerawork, grounded yet heroic leads, and epic sense of scale helped to set the tone for Hollywood sagebrush dramas for decades. He also made Arizona’s Monument Valley one of the most familiar locales to 20th-century moviegoers.
For this week’s poll, we’re asking you to saddle up and tell us which John Ford-directed western is your favorite. Is it the groundbreaking Stagecoach? His recounting of the Gunfight at the OK Corral, My Darling Clementine? Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, or Rio Grande from his “Cavalry Trilogy”? Or the epic The Searchers? If you don’t see your pick (We consider The Horse Soldiers and Ford’s chapter of How the West Was Won war films rather than westerns), let us hear about it in the comments.