The Navajos were a hard act to follow. Six of them took to the stage, led by the charismatic Chief Jefferson Begay and the 96-year-old medicine man, Billy Yellow, to perform a sacred ritual blessing before an audience of 800 in the Merrill Auditorium of City Hall in Portland, Maine.
As the Navajos departed to thunderous applause, it was my turn to take the stage, sharing it with 40 choristers from the First Congregational Church of Gorham and 21 musicians from the US Navy Band. I was the final speaker, and the only non-American, in a programme which earlier had featured the Hollywood veterans, Harry Carey jnr, Claude Jarman jnr and Patrick Wayne.
"John Ford would have loved it all," the critic and biographer, Joseph McBride commented afterwards. "The movies, the Navajos, the Irish and the navy, all on the one stage. Everything that meant most to him."
We were all in the attractive New England coastal city to participate in a series of events to celebrate Portland's most famous son, the legendary Irish-American film-maker, John Ford, whose father, John Feeney, emigrated from Galway in 1874. Born Sean Aloysius Feeney on February 1st, 1895, the youngest in the family changed his name to John Ford when he followed his brother, Richard, to Hollywood, in 1913, after graduating from high school in Portland.
Beginning his film career as an on-set labourer, assistant propman and occasional stuntman, John Ford went on to become one of the major figures of the century in world cinema, winning six Oscars as a director - for The Informer (1935), The Grapes Of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and The Quiet Man (1952), and for the wartime documentaries, Battle Of Mid- way (1942) and December 7th (1943). Ford, who was injured by shrapnel while filming Battle Of Midway and rose to the rank of rear admiral in the US Navy, died in 1973.
The Portland City Hall stage presentation came towards the end of a week of screenings recalling Ford's outstanding screen achievements, which also included Stagecoach, Young Mr Lincoln, My Darling Clementine, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and The Searchers.
It was an overdue celebration, as Scott Eyman, the urbane master of ceremonies at City Hall, noted. "When I came here three years ago to begin researching my book on John Ford, I was amazed to find not even a plaque to mark one of the immortals of cinema in his hometown," Eyman said. The individual who made the belated commemoration possible was the wealthy Louisiana philanthropist, Linda Noe Laine, who developed a close and enduring friendship with Ford and his wife, Mary, when Ford was filming The Horse Soldiers in Louisiana. Her father, James Noe, was the state governor at the time. A natural extrovert with a flamboyant dress sense, she took it upon herself to fund the week of honouring John Ford in his home town, culminating in the unveiling of a statue to Ford which she commissioned at a cost said to be in the region of $250,000. With the budget in place for a major celebration, the former mayor of Portland, Jack Dawson, took charge of the organising committee which set about realising her plans.
Flying into Portland on a bright, sunny Friday evening, I was bemused when, checking in at my hotel, I was offered a bag of warm, fresh chocolate chip cookies by the receptionist, a cheerful young woman who is coming to Dublin in September, to work as an intern at the Dail. The man checking in next to me could not restrain himself and proceeded to devour his chocolate chip cookies on the spot, at the reception desk.
I was saving my appetite, despite a day of airline "food" en route from Dublin to New York to Portland. It was one in the morning by my body clock, but dinner called, at Hugo's Portland Bistro, a smart restaurant run by Johnny Robinson, a Dubliner who used to run Trudis in Dun Laoghaire and moved to the US over 10 years ago, first to New York before settling down in Portland where he named his restaurant after his son, Hugo.
The Irish link in the John Ford organising committee was another Dubliner, Ruth Riddick, director of Open Door counselling and former press officer with the Dublin and Cork film festivals. She went to Portland to see her old friend, Johnny Robinson, and has ended up staying for "an extended break from life in Ireland". In the monthly magazine, Mainebiz, Ruth regales the people of Portland with stories of Irish life, most recently on the history of Ruairi Quinn and the Labour Party.
At dinner I was delighted to find myself seated next to Harry Carey jnr, a veteran of nine John Ford movies. A gregarious 77-yearold, he was accompanied by his wife, Marilyn, the daughter of the versatile and remarkable character actor, Paul Fix, who featured in over 300 films. As we munched our crab cakes and lobster pasta, Harry recalled how working with John Ford was as stimulating as it was tough, how Ford was as much an engaging personality as he was a hard task-master, and what a true independent film-maker Ford was. Should a studio executive turn up on the set while Ford was shooting, he recalled, Ford would immediately cease production until the executive had left. Harry Carey jnr was relishing being back in the company of film people for the weekend. "All they want to talk about in Durango is guns," he sighed. He has recounted his experiences in the book, Company Of Heroes: My Life As An Actor In The John Ford Stock Company.
At noon the next day over 100 of us, all guests of Linda Noe Laine, gathered at the Portland ferryport for the boat out to Peaks Island where John Ford worked as an usher at the Gem, a silent movie theatre, back in his schooldays. After an al fresco lunch of clams and Maine lobster, Linda Noe Laine made a presentation to the building fund of the American Legion, who, in turn, posthumously bestowed the title of commander on John Ford. Before we returned to the mainland, our host impulsively announced: "Let's stand up and sing. Let's sing God Bless America."
The gala celebration at City Hall that night was pure Americana. First there was the Presentation of the Colors by men from the USS Carney, then the navy band's rendition of the national anthem, and the Gorham choir's performance of Red River Valley, Gal- way Bay and The Battle Hymn Of The Republic. Following a video tribute to John Ford and a medley from the navy band, Harry Carey jnr took the stage to huge applause.
"I consider Jack Ford the greatest filmmaker who ever lived," he said. "I called him Uncle Jack because he was at my father's ranch the day I was born." He was followed on stage by the Duke's son, Patrick Wayne, who gasped when a clip was shown of him as a teenage actor opposite his father in The Searchers. "I was twice blessed at birth, having John Wayne as my father and John Ford as my godfather," he said. Patrick Wayne has been further blessed with extraordinarily fresh and youthful features which entirely belie the fact that he turned 60 last week.
Next came a stetson-wearing John Mitchum who read his "semi-epic poem" about Ford, with the choir coming on all heavenly with America, America during the closing verses. Claude Jarman jnr who received a special Oscar for his film debut in The Yearling when he was 12, was preceded on stage by a clip from Ford's 1950 western, Rio Grande, in which the 15-year-old Jarman stood while athletically riding two horses at the same time. And he was followed by Roxanna Johnson-Lonergan, whose father, Nunnally Johnson, wrote the screenplay for Ford's film of The Grapes Of Wrath, which also featured her mother, Dorris Bowdon. Then it was the turn of the Navajos before the theme shifted to "John Ford's Ireland" and I delivered my paean to Ford before the choir sang me off stage with Danny Boy. For the grand finale, we all sang from the same "hymn sheet", joining in with the choir and the navy band for a medley of Ford movie songs.
Come one o'clock on Sunday afternoon, and the City Hall cast had re-assembled under a white marquee in Gorham Square - across the road from where John Ford's father ran the saloon bar, Fenneys - for the dedication of the statue which stands 10 feet high and offers a striking depiction, by sculptor George Kelly, of Ford sitting, pipe in hand, in his director's chair. The flags of Maine, Portland, California, the US, Ireland and the Navajo Nation fluttered in the light summer breeze as Linda Noe Laine recalled the "exemplars" in her life, John and Mary Ford, "two friends who enriched my life with kindness, caring and wisdom". She noted how John Ford, "the son of Irish immigrants in one generation could rise to be one of the most celebrated American directors".
Representing the people of Ireland, the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Sile de Valera, described Ford as "one of the greatest and most influential film-makers" and The Quiet Man as "a personal favourite film", before extolling how the Irish story-telling tradition has transferred so successfully to the medium of cinema and the long-time links between Ireland and the US.
The attendance included Dan Ford, the film-maker's grandson, with his two teenage daughters; Rev Fred Morse, the pastor of St Dominic's parish church where John Ford was baptised 103 years ago; John H. Dalton, the US secretary of the navy; Orla O'Hanrahan, the Irish consul-general in Boston; Barry Goldwater jnr, son of the late US senator; and leading figures in the Daughters of the American Revolution.
There was a flyover by two US navy jets as Linda Noe Laine unveiled the statue to John Ford. "Here it is, Portland," she declared as the audience rose in a standing ovation.