by Rick Curnutte

Richard A. Curnutte, Jr. is the Editor of The Film Journal. He has studied English and Film at Ohio University and The Ohio State University. He is a founding member of the Central Ohio Film Critics Association and a member of the Online Film Critics Society .

Due to several substantive factual errors, Tag Gallagher's introduction to the John Ford interview published in our current (April 2005) issue has been removed. The article, titled "Introduction: Two Big Missing John Ford Stories", contained several references to the work of Joseph McBride, a Ford biographer, which claimed that McBride had ignored and/or had not been interested in the interview, which was originally published in The American Legion Magazine in June 1964. In fact, this was categorically untrue, as McBride does indeed quote from the interview in his biography of Ford (Searching for John Ford) in the section on Ford's involvement with D-Day, located in Chapter Ten of the book, "Yes - This Really Happened" (pages 394-403; the interview by Martin is cited in Chapter Ten's source notes, on page 756). Additionally, the scandal behind the filming and subsequent censoring of the government-commissioned December 7th is covered in the same chapter, though Gallagher seemed to believe it had not been done adequately. Upon reading the rather in-depth analysis of December 7th, we determined that this was essentially an unfair, if merely misguided, reading of McBride's text.

Mr. McBride graciously brought this to our attention in a letter to the editor, and we greatly appreciate his patience and understanding while we did the factchecking that should have been done before the piece was published. For this, we apologize to Mr. McBride and to you, our readership.

The interview with Ford that was published in The American Legion Magazine remains, of course, as it remains a valuable piece of writing on and about Ford.

- Rick Curnutte, Editor