Three long shadows lay heavily across the career of the film director Andrew McLaglen, who has died aged 94: those of two actors, his father, Victor McLaglen, and John "Duke" Wayne, and that of the director John Ford. By making mostly westerns, four of which starred Wayne, and by casting many actors from Ford's repertory company, such as Harry Carey Jr and Ben Johnson, McLaglen brazenly invited comparison with the great director. Yet he denied being influenced by Ford. "I never thought of John Ford at all. I knew Ford from the time I was 13 years old because my father worked with him. But once you direct, you become your own person," he said.
Nevertheless, take away Ford's eye for visual composition and poetry, and play up his machismo, slapstick and sentimentality, and you have a movie by McLaglen. With good scripts and Hollywood legends such as Wayne and James Stewart, McLaglen made some entertaining action movies and was able to extend the life of the western beyond the genre's sell-by date.
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