11 Directors Who Won Oscars For Completely The Wrong Movie

2. John Ford

Won For... The Informer, The Grapes Of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, & The Quiet Man

Should Have Won For... The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance OR The Searchers

John Ford might be the most decorated director of all time in terms of Academy Awards, but his three best films didn't even win. To be fair, he was nominated for wins a lot more - to the extent that him winning more might have looked a bit too much like favouritism.

The Grapes Of Wrath is probably the best of Ford's four wins, but the fact that neither The Searchers nor The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - literally the two greatest Westerns OF ALL TIME - didn't win him Best Director is nothing short of a scandal. The idea that How Green Was My Valley should somehow be remembered as a better achievement in directing is ridiculous.

Both feature astonishingly beautiful scenes and both basically invented the vocabulary of Western movies as we probably all imagine them now. Ford inspired career-high performances from John Wayne (aside from True Grit obviously), and that's no mean feat at all (it sometimes feels like it would be akin to turning marble into rubber).