John Ford's "Pilgrimage"

[Wellesnet]

Thanks to Joseph McBride for the link to this early 1933 John Ford film starring Norman Lloyd, who would later direct "Journey Into Fear" and parts of the "It's All True" project, and then play Billy in Welles's "The Other Side of the Wind."
https://ok.ru/video/1325473794704

[Byron Stayskal]

The post mentions Norman Lloyd, but I think it was Norman Foster that was intended. Lloyd did work with Welles, but it was in theater and radio; he played, for example, the part of Cinna the poet in Welles’s fascist-evoking production of Julius Caesar. Lloyd was, however, almost in a Welles’s film since Lloyd had come to Hollywood to take part in Welles’s film version of Heart of Darkness. After Heart of Darkness fell through, Lloyd returned to NYC. Those who stayed on with Welles’s became part of Citizen Kane. Here’s the Wiki reference to Lloyd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Lloyd


Norman Foster seems only to have film associations with Welles. He was directing the “My Friend Bonito” section of It’s All True before he returned to Hollywood to direct Journey into Fear (wish we could get a nice Criterion release of that film!). Then decades later he played the part of Billy Boyle in The Other Side of the Wind. Like many others on Wellesnet, I think Foster’s turn as Billy is astonishing. His acting is utterly believable, and I find myself admiring and pitying the character at the same time. His timing, intonation, body language, and facial expressions make that character indelible. Looks like that was his last professional activity in the movies before he died in 1976.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Foster_(director)

[Wellesnet]

Thanks for the correction, Byron.

[Le Chiffre]

That's a really fine movie. Foster is good, but the lady that plays his mother is quite wonderful in it. I especially enjoyed the chemistry between her and the other mothers on the pilgrimage. Ford's wonderful eye for visual composition plays a big part in the film as well.

[tonyw]

Yes, Norman Foster it is and Joe McBride wrote a fine section on it in his JOHN FORD book as well as supplying a great DVD audio-commentary.

[JMcBride]

Thanks much, Tony. Actually, the book in which I wrote about
PILGRIMAGE is SEARCHING FOR JOHN FORD, not my earlier JOHN
FORD, which I wrote with Michael Wilmington. I persuaded
Fox to reissue PILGRIMAGE and did the commentary, about
which I was passionate. PILGRIMAGE is based on
a short story by I. A. L. Wylie, the woman who also
provided the source material for an earlier Ford
film about World War I, FOUR SONS. I consider PILGRIMAGE Ford's first great
film, at least among the extant films we have from his
early years. Many of his silent films are lost, but we now
have twenty-five in while or in part. When I started my
research on Ford in the late 1960s, we had only twelve,
and we wrote about one in JOHN FORD, STRAIGHT SHOOTING.
Henrietta Crosman gives a great performance in PILGRIMAGE
as a sort of female Ethan Edwards. The film is overpoweringly
moving and also surprisingly funny, in its unorthodox second
half that is also very Fordian; the film has his characteristic
mixture of comedy and drama. Lucille La Verne is also magnificent
in the film. Norman Foster is callow but right for the role, but
he hated Ford and started shouting when I asked him about his
experiences with him. Oddly, Fox is selling PILGRIMAGE in
a dual DVD with the worst film of his I have seen, BORN
RECKLESS, on which he had the excuse of a co-director. PILGRIMAGE
is also in the FORD AT FOX boxed set, which can now be bought
for reasonable prices used on Amazon or ebay.

[tonyw]

Not at all, Joe. I knew it was one of the two but did not have access to my book collection when I wrote the entry. The 1970s UK British journal FOCUS ON FILM, edited by Allan Eyles, did have a special Ford issue with an interview that he gave (sometimes reluctantly!) before a California college audience. I think there was mention of PILGRIMAGE there but can't remember whether it was the subject of an article or mentioned in the overall context of Ford's career. It is in my office at present (within what is now described as the "war zone" that is officially off- limits) but there is always the temptation of secret expeditions across "No Man's Land" to find out for certain.

FOCUS ON FILM was a good journal but sadly folded because "nobody read it" (according to Anthony Slide in one of his flamboyant comments). Thanks to a now departed UK collector friend, I have every issue of that publication.