4. John Ford Trolls A Hungover Vince McLagen To Oscar Glory The Informer
Unsurprisingly for the man who once made Shirley Temple cry more effectively on camera by telling her that her someone had ran over her dog, John Ford could be a bit bonkers with how he wrung the last bit of talent out of his actors. Yet strangely, this was always a good thing Temple never performed better than when she teamed up with Ford for Wee Willie Winkie and the later Fort Apache. Though this brand of lunacy didnt win an award for Temple, Ford had already struck Oscar gold for an earlier effort from her Apache co-star, Victor McLaglen. Effectively, all the way through filming this 1935 Northern Ireland-set drama, Ford acting like a massive tool to McLaglen in order to enhance the mans surly demeanour. In fact, if this happened in modern times, the only explanation you could give was that Ford was effectively trolling him. Honestly, Im not kidding hed change the shoot schedule at the last minute, often when McLaglen was already on the lot, and inform the actor mid-take that his effort-filled performance didnt matter because they werent filming. Yet the most colossal dick move Ford managed was to tell McLaglen when he had days off, only to rescind those breaks the morning they started. Now much like everybody at the time McLaglen was a mans man, and loved himself a drink and a party. So obviously the mans going to be nursing a hangover in his mornings off, while sleeping under a blanket of naked women as befitting his status as a war veteran, hard man and movie star. Yet Ford would still drag his sullen corpse out of bed and make him act, even when he was filled with nausea. But McLaglen cant really complain the performance did net him the Best Actor Oscar.