John Ford (February 1 1894 – August 31 1973) was a four-time Academy Award-winning American film director of Irish heritage famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach and The Searchers and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath. His four Best Director Academy Awards (1935, 1940, 1941, 1952) is a record still unmatched, although only one of those films, How Green Was My Valley, won Best Picture.
His style of film-making has been tremendously influential, leading colleagues such as Ingmar Bergman and Orson Welles to name him as one of the greatest directors of all time. In particular, Ford is a pioneer of location shooting and the extreme long shot which frames his characters against a vast, harsh and rugged natural terrain. Ford has further influenced directors as diverse as Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah, Peter Bogdanovich, Sergio Leone, Wim Wenders, David Lean, Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard.
John N. Ford (born May 3, 1942) is a funeral director, insurance agent, and consultant in Memphis, Tennessee. He is a former Democratic member of the Tennessee State Senate. He is the younger brother of former U.S. Representative Harold Ford, Sr. and hence the uncle of former Tennessee U.S. Representative and 2006 United States Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr. In April 2007 he was convicted on Federal bribery charges.
Ford resigned from the Tennessee State Senate on May 28, 2005 in a letter to the Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee, John S. Wilder, and was placed under FBI house arrest. He stated in his letter of resignation that "I plan to spend the rest of my time with my family clearing my name".
Ford is from Memphis' most prominent and active African American political family. The Fords' involvement in politics is generally thought to have been linked to the connection between N. J. Ford, father of John and Harold, Sr., and Memphis political boss E. H. Crump. Crump, who died in 1954, is widely believed to have been responsible for directing the business of the families of black persons who died unattended in the former City of Memphis Hospital to N. J. Ford's funeral home (still operated under the name "N. J. Ford and Sons Funeral Home", although N. J. Ford himself is now deceased).
Five of N. J. Ford's sons became very active in elective politics. Harold Sr. was, in 1974, the first African American elected to Congress from the Southeast since Reconstruction; he served until 1997, when he was succeeded by his son. Another brother, Joe, has long been involved in local politics in and around Memphis, with varying degrees of success; a fourth, James, is currently a Shelby County commissioner. Emmett Ford served several terms as a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives. John Ford was a Tennessee state senator for over 30 years.
John Ford (born 1 July 1948, Fulham, London, England) is an English singer-songwriter and musician.
