Gloria Stuart shows up again in The Prisoner of Shark Island. She was
interviewed on line re Titanic in 1997 by Cinemania:

Gloria Stuart: The first picture I made with John Ford, Air Mail  he
was not a great big famous director [then]. He was hired independently
at Universal. And I think the Yiddish word is potchkeh [time-wasting] 
it was really a potchkeh picture, low-budget and everything. James
Whale's movies were the only ones I made at Universal of quality,
distinction, talent.
Cinemania: Ford's The Prisoner of Shark Island, which you made for Fox,
is a superb film.
Gloria Stuart: It was a major production, but I didn't have much to do
in that. In both Ford pictures I don't remember what I call directing.
He was very good with the camera. I don't remember much dialogue between
John and actors. He always had top scripts and top actors. It's very
hard to go wrong that way.

***

To which I'll add that I much prefer Lillian Bond in Air Mail. Patricia
Neal was also unappreciative of Ford (or Vidor or Sternberg), not to be
compared with Martin Ritt: there's a REAL director. Ford and those
others were good with other things, like lights.

It was fun to have a sleeping bag in Algeria! One could sleep anywhere,
anytime.
Bette Davis is also good in 1932 in George Arliss's Man Who Played God
(if you like Arliss, and I love him!) and Wellman's So Big. I think
Wellman's early 30s pictures are fabulous and I suspect influenced
mid-30s French cinema.

>
> I need to see it again, but I remember feeling that the
> film was rather shockingly dark, and certainly not "typical
> of action genres" (and Karl Freund's lighting seemed
> surprisingly dark, but in an expressive way: very Murnau).
>
> --Bob Keser

Very Murnau. Very moods. I wrote a long comparison between it and Only
Angels Have Wings; I much prefer Ford.

For me personally, American Tragedy is as good as anything von Sternberg
did (I'm told we're supposed to say von Sternberg, and that he's a V not
an S, regardless of European usage) -- for the first half. His autobio
gives a misleading portrait of himself as disinterested in social
problems, but they're all there in this movie, and his sympathies are
with the proletarian, in contrast to George Stevens in his remake.
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/19/sternberg.html

Tag Gallagher.