Why did John Ford call James Stewart a racist?

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For a time, John Ford and James Stewart were two of the biggest names in Hollywood in the 20th century. While they worked on several projects together, fans usually cite their 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as their greatest collaboration.

Considered one of the greatest films of the 1960s, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance stars Stewart as a U.S. senator who arrives in an unnamed frontier town for the funeral of a local resident. Structured as a flashback, the film slowly explores the bond between the senator and the poor rancher.

Alongside John Wayne, this 1962 masterpiece is generally considered one of Ford’s greatest works. However, his legacy is complicated by the significant disagreement between the director and Stewart. According to Michael Munn, who wrote the biography Jimmy Stewart: The Truth Behind the Legend, their feud was sparked by Stewart’s alleged racism.

Munn claimed he conducted an interview with Woody Strode, who also appeared on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. According to the details of their interview, Strode allegedly told Munn: Stewart was never rude to me, he was never rude to anyone. But I could tell he’d rather be with Lee Marvin or John [Wayne] than me.

Many scholars have pointed out that Munn was notoriously unreliable. In another interview, Stewart himself opened up about the infamous confrontation between him and Ford. When the director asked him what he thought of Strodes’ costume, the actor disapproved of the outfit and said he looked a little too much like Uncle Remus.

Ford got the whole team together and called Stewart saying, One of the actors here doesn’t like Uncle Remus. In fact, I don’t even think he likes niggers. According to Munn, Strode later admitted that Ford manipulated him into hating Stewart and that the incident made the actor even more uncomfortable around him.

While Ford was quick to call Stewart a racist, many prominent filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee have pointed out that Ford’s films are inherently racist. In an interview with Henry Louis Gates, Tarantino said: To say the least, I hate him. Forget the faceless Indians he killed like zombies. It’s really people like that who have brought this idea of ​​Anglo-Saxon humanity to life in relation to everyone else’s humanity.

Listen to Stewarts’ version of the incident below.

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