Ford's Pro-Vietnam War Doc

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Eric Spiegelman, writing on a blog called Bus Your Own Tray, has made available a 1971 documentary executive produced by John Ford called Vietnam! Vietnam! Narrated by Charlton Heston, it was reportedly (and is evidently, to judge from having watched about 20 minutes' worth) a work of propaganda commissioned by the U.S. government in support of the Vietnam War.

Vietnam! Vietnam! from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

It is also, to put it mildly, a stain upon Ford's hallowed reputation. An Irish Catholic and an unfettered patriot for most of his life, Ford was a rabid reactionary toward the end of his life, and took particular issue with anti-war movement and the whole long-hair hippie movement. Snarrrl!

Production on Vietnam! Vietnam! "began a few months after the Tet Offensive, and by the time the film was completed at the end of 1971, American policy toward the war shifted toward withdrawal and negotiation for peace," Spiegleman writes. "As such, the film’s message was obsolete and embarrassing the moment it was ready for distribution. It was never released.

"Federal law at the time prohibited the domestic exhibition of any motion picture financed by the U.S. Information Agency, which included Vietnam! Vietnam!. Ford’s last documentary remained locked away in a vault for the next 27 years (i.e., until this year), when a change in the law allowed the National Archives to make it available to the public.

Spiegelman "learned about the existence of Vietnam! Vietnam! three years ago," he writes. "Curiosity led me to pull the ancient reels from the National Archives and have them digitized. Years of neglect badly damaged the audio portion of the first half of the film, and my cousin painstakingly restored the soundtrack to the best of his ability.

"The documentary is, actually, quite terrible. Nothing about it even approximates a John Ford masterpiece. Accounts vary as to the extent that Ford was actively involved in the production -- he apparently spent time on location in Vietnam toward the beginning of the shoot, but his advanced age and poor health kept him home during almost all of the principal photography. According to Ford scholar Tag Gallagher, Ford supervised the editing of the film and rewrote its scenario.

"Regardless, John Ford clearly wanted his name associated with Vietnam! Vietnam! -- it reflected his strong belief in the cause -- and it is incontrovertibly part of his repertoire.

"I offer the film here because it’s a little piece of American history that very few people have seen, and for that reason alone it belongs on the internet."

Any words, Joe McBride?

comment #1

BurmaShave says ...

I was kind of hoping those random names and artists would go on forever.

comment #2

Bob Violence says ...

Any words, Joe McBride?

McBride saw the film in the early '70s and discussed it in a Sight and Sound article ("Drums Along the Mekong", August '72). I'm glad this will finally get some semi-wide dissemination (loathsome a film as it may be), but this is hardly a new discovery.

comment #3

kidkosmic says ...

Ford would be no more stained than Kennedy, but we rarely hear Kennedy and Vietnam mentioned in the same sentence. My father went to Vietnam under a Democratic President (Johnson).

comment #4

Terry McCarty says ...

An interesting passage from Joseph McBride's John Ford bio SEARCHING FOR JOHN FORD:
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this little-known episode of Ford's life is that privately he had a highly skeptical view of the Vietnam War. After making two trips to Vietnam in the winter of 1968 and the spring of 1969, Ford wrote his high school classmate Alnah Johnson, "What's the war all about? Damned if I know. I haven't the slightest idea what we're doing there." But when asked to lend his name and talents to the cause, Ford reflexively fell into the "My country, right or wrong" attitude of his service as a government filmmaker in World War II and Korea. Perhaps he was partly influenced by his characteristic attachment to lost causes, for by the time he joined up, seven months after the Tet Offensive, the Vietnam War was already widely regarded as a disaster for the United States and had split the nation into bitterly opposed camps of "hawks" and "doves." Once again, Ford had found the moment of defeat.

comment #5

JoeGreenia says ...

Who is Eric Spiegelman?

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