We feel things, like, very deeply. Were it otherwise we would be apathetic brutes.
The Horrible Human Cost of Being an Abusive Brute
it has long been my considered opinion
John Ford seems to have been a particularly unhappy man
Between projects he would become manically drunk, locking himself up and behaving like an auditionee for THE LOST WEEKEND. Ford was only happy on set where - famously - his directoral style was to abuse, belittle, and persecute certain members of the cast, and fire crew members. Ford hated Stout, despite the fact that he had hired him; yet he signed him up again, for WAGONMASTER. Most actors he abused. Reducing an actress to tears, he told her, "Good. I wanted to see you cry." The cameras weren't rolling at the time. Ward Bond he constantly insulted for being stupid; Wayne he persecuted for other reasons, which biographers don't specify.
Ford steered clear of abusing Ben Johnson, rightly suspecting that the former cowboy-become-actor wouldn't take an insult sitting down. But he lost it over dinner on RIO GRANDE, which they shot together right after WAGONMASTER. Ford misheard something Johnson said to Harry Carey, Jr., and ordered Johnson to repeat the remark. Johnson replied softly that it was a private comment, and declined to do so. Ford, used to being obeyed by all, lost it, and yelled at Johnson across the table, calling him stupid.
All went quiet. Johnson rose, walked round the table to Ford, and whispered something in the director's ear. No one knows what he said. He refused to work for Ford again for fifteen years.
I already liked Johnson a lot, as an actor. But reading that story in Scott Eymann's biography of Ford made me admire him even more. When people like Ford abuse people below them in the hierarchy, it indicates only one thing: that they are, in equal measure, abused by those they perceive as being above them. Nothing is worse than an abusive creep; nothing nicer than a man or woman who ain't cowed by money or power.
via Coxblog
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