No, the head of Ealing Studios, Sir Michael Balcon, did not invite the great American director to work at his studio, even though it would have been quite feasible. Ford had broken with 20th Century Fox, with whom he had made Young Mr Lincoln (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and My Darling Clementine (1946). By 1948 he was working for Herbert J. Yates at the much smaller Republic Pictures. This had proved very successful. It was at Republic that he made the cavalry trilogy—Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and…