Ireland's Ambassador Michael Collins presented Clint Eastwood with the Irish Film & Television Academy's first John Ford Award, named for the renowned Irish-American director of "The Grapes of Wrath", and some of the best westerns ever.
Eastwood's "J. Edgar" premiered in Washington at the Newseum in November.
The selection of Clint Eastwood for the inaugural John Ford Award "draws a direct line between two of Hollywood's greatest and most inspirational and creative figures," Ambassador Collins said at a ceremony in Burbank, CA on December 14.
Accepting the award, Eastwood said, "Any kind of association with John Ford is most directors’ dream, as he was certainly a pioneer of American filmmaking...His Westerns had a great influence on me, as I think they had on everybody."
Eastwood's first two of his five Academy Awards were for the western "Unforgiven" in 1993. He won Best Director and Best Picture Oscars also for "Million Dollar Baby” in 2005. He received the Academy's Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1995.
Ford won six Oscars, and holds the record of four Academy Awards for Best Director -- for "The Informer", "The Grapes of Wrath", "How Green Was My Valley", and "The Quiet Man".
What Ma Joad said of her life in "The Grapes of Wrath" is true of Ford's films: "It's all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on."
Ford's extraordinary legacy includes 136 films created during more than a half-century.
The first "John Ford Ireland" annual symposium, including screenings, discussions, and master classes, will be held in Dublin next June by the Irish Film & Television Academy, in association with the John Ford Estate and the Irish Department of Arts, among others, Ambassador Collins announced.
IFTA chief executive Áine Moriarty hailed Ford and Eastwood both as "unique visionaries whose films have great integrity...and deal with themes of migration, identity, redemption and faith in the human spirit.”
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