British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1449. Photo: 20th Century Fox.
Spanish postcard. Photo: Robert Coburn / Columbia. Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford in Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946).
German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 4245. Photo: Columbia Film. Glenn Ford in Cowboy (Delmer Daves, 1958).
Young female fans begging for his autograph
Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford was born in 1916, in Sainte-Christine-d'Auvergne, Quebec. He was the son of Hannah Wood (née Mitchell) and Newton Ford, an engineer with the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1922, when Ford was six, the family moved first to Venice and then to Santa Monica, California. Newton became a motorman for the Venice Electric Tram Company, a job he held until he died at age 50 in 1940. While attending Santa Monica High School, Glenn was active in school drama productions with other future actors such as James Griffith. After graduation, he began working in small theatre groups. While in high school, he took odd jobs, including working for Will Rogers, who taught him horsemanship.
Ford became a naturalised citizen of the United States in 1939. He acted in West Coast stage companies before joining Columbia Pictures in 1939. His stage name came from his father's hometown of Glenford, Alberta. His first major film part was in Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence (Ricardo Cortez, 1939). Top Hollywood director John Cromwell was impressed enough with his work to borrow him from Columbia for the independently produced drama, So Ends Our Night (1941), where Ford delivered a poignant portrayal of a 19-year-old German exile on the run in Nazi-occupied Europe. Working with Academy Award-winning Fredric March and wooing (onscreen) 30-year-old Margaret Sullavan, recently nominated for an Oscar, Ford's shy, ardent young refugee riveted attention even in such a stellar company. "Glenn Ford, a most promising newcomer," wrote The New York Times's Bosley Crowther, "draws more substance and appealing simplicity from his role of the boy than anyone else in the cast."
After 35 interviews and glowing reviews for him personally, Glenn Ford had young female fans begging for his autograph, too. However, the young man was disappointed when Columbia Pictures did nothing with this prestige and new visibility and instead kept plugging him into conventional films for the rest of his 7-year contract. His next picture, Texas (George Marshall, 1941), was his first Western, a genre with which he would be associated for the rest of his life. Set after the Civil War, it paired him with another young male star under contract, William Holden, who became a lifelong friend.
More routine films followed, none of them memorable, but lucrative enough to allow Ford to buy his mother and himself a beautiful new home in the Pacific Palisades. So Ends Our Night (John Cromwell, 1941) also affected the young star in another way: in the summer of 1941, while the United States was still technically neutral, he enlisted in the Coast Guard Auxiliary. Ten months after Ford's portrait of a young anti-Nazi exile, the United States entered World War II. After playing a young pilot in his 11th Columbia film, Flight Lieutenant (Sidney Salkow, 1942), Ford went on a cross-country 12-city tour to sell war bonds for Army and Navy Relief. Amid the many stars also donating their time – from Bob Hope to Cary Grant to Claudette Colbert – he met the popular dancing star, Eleanor Powell. The two soon fell in love; they attended the official opening of the Hollywood USO together in October.
Then, while making another war drama, Destroyer (William A. Seiter, 1943), with Edward G. Robinson, an ardent anti-fascist, Glenn impulsively volunteered for the United States Marine Corps Reserve in December 1942. The startled studio had to beg the Marines to give their second male lead four more weeks to complete shooting. In the meantime, Ford proposed to Eleanor Powell, who subsequently announced her retirement from the screen to be near her fiancé as he started boot camp.
Spanish postcard, no. 141.
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 121. Photo: Columbia Pictures.
Dutch postcard. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
A film named Gilda
Glenn Ford was assigned in March 1943 to active duty at the Marine Corps Base in San Diego. With his Coast Guard service, he was offered a position as an officer, but Ford declined, feeling it would be interpreted as preferential treatment for a movie star and instead entered the Marines as a private. He trained at the Marine base in San Diego, where Tyrone Power, the number-one male movie star at the time, was also based. Power suggested Ford join him in the Marines' weekly radio show 'Halls of Montezuma', broadcast Sunday evenings from San Diego.
Ford excelled in training, winning the Rifle Marksman Badge and being named "Honor Man" of the platoon and promoted to sergeant by the time he finished. Awaiting assignment at Camp Pendleton, Marine Corps base, Ford volunteered to play a Marine raider – uncredited – in the film Guadalcanal Diary, made by Fox, with Ford and others charging up the beaches of Southern California.
After being sent to the Marine Corps Schools Detachment (Photographic Section) in Quantico, Virginia, three months later, Ford returned to the San Diego base in February 1944 and was assigned to the radio section of the Public Relations Office, Headquarters Company, Base Headquarters Battalion, where he resumed work on 'Halls of Montezuma'. Though without the combat duty he had been hoping for, Ford was awarded several service medals for his three years in the Marines Reserve Corps.
The most memorable role of Ford's career came with his first postwar film, Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946), in which he starred alongside Rita Hayworth. This was Glenn Ford's second pairing with Hayworth; his first was in The Lady In Question (Charles Vidor, 1940), a well-received courtroom drama in which Glenn plays a boy who falls in love with Rita Hayworth when his father, Brian Aherne, tries to rehabilitate her in their bicycle shop. Directed by Hungarian emigre Charles Vidor, the two rising young stars instantly bonded.
Their on-screen chemistry was not immortalised, however, until Gilda, also directed by Charles Vidor, who knew a good thing when he saw it. Ford went on to be a leading man opposite Hayworth in a total of five films, and the two, after their location romance (his marriage survived, hers did not) became lifelong friends and next-door neighbours. Beautifully shot in black-and-white by cinematographer Rudolph Mate, Gilda has endured as a classic of Film Noir.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 599. Photo: Columbia.
German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 335. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer Film.
Vintage card. Photo: Columbia.
A landmark film of teen angst
Both Glenn Ford and his friend William Holden flourished throughout the 1950s and 1960s, but Ford was frustrated that he was not allowed to work with directors of the calibre that Holden did in his Oscar-winning career, such as Billy Wilder and David Lean. He missed out on From Here to Eternity when production was stalled by Columbia studio head Harry Cohn. He also made the mistake, which he bitterly regretted later, of turning down the lead in the brilliant comedy Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950), which Holden then snatched up.
He instead continued to turn in solid performances in thrillers; dramas such as A Stolen Life (Curtis Bernhardt, 1946) with Bette Davis; action films such as Appointment in Honduras (Jacques Tourneur, 1953) with Ann Sheridan, and Film Noirs such as The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953), co-starring Gloria Grahame, with whom he re-teamed the following year in Human Desire (Fritz Lang, 1954), loosely based on 'La Bête Humaine', the 1870 novel by Emile Zola.
Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks, 1955) was a landmark film of teen angst. It tackled racial conflicts head-on as Ford played an idealistic, harassed teacher at an urban high school that included a very young Sidney Poitier and other black and Hispanic cast members, while Vic Morrow played a dangerous juvenile delinquent. Bill Haley's 'Rock Around the Clock' under the opening credits was the first use of a rock and roll song in a Hollywood film. Richard Brooks, the film's writer and director, had discovered the music when he heard Ford's son Peter playing the record at Glenn Ford's home.
In Interrupted Melody (Curtis Bernhardt, 1955), Ford starred with Eleanor Parker. The Westerns with which he always was associated included The Secret of Convict Lake (Michael Gordon, 1951) with Gene Tierney, Jubal (Delmer Daves, 1956), The Fastest Gun Alive (Russell Rouse, 1956), 3:10 to Yuma (Delmer Daves, 1957), and Cimarron (Anthony Mann, 1960) with Maria Schell. Ford's versatility allowed him to star in several popular comedies, almost always as the beleaguered, well-meaning but nonplussed straight man, set upon by circumstances as in The Teahouse of the August Moon (Daniel Mann, 1957), with Marlon Brando.
He played an American soldier sent to Okinawa to convert the occupied island's natives to the American way of life and is instead converted by them. Also, he starred in Don't Go Near The Water (Charles Walters, 1957) with Gia Scala, and the romantic comedy The Courtship of Eddie's Father (Vincente Minnelli, 1963) with the young Ron Howard as his son Eddie. In 1958, Ford was ranked the number one box-office star in America. He starred in four films that year: the Western Cowboy (Delmer Daves, 1958), the Western The Sheepman (George Marshall, 1958), the comedy Imitation General (George Marshall, 1958), and the war film Torpedo Run (Joseph Pevney, 1958). After being nominated in 1957, 1958, and in 1962, Ford won a Golden Globe Award as Best Actor for his performance in Pocketful of Miracles (Frank Capra, 1961), a film he helped produce. It was a remake of Frank Capra's Lady for a Day (Frank Capra, 1933).
Vintage postcard, no. 141. (Ford's first name is misspelled as 'Glen').
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 511. Photo: Paramount, 1954. Ford's first name is mistakenly spelled as Glen.
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 30. Photo: Columbia / C.E.I.A.D.. Ford's first name is mistakenly spelled as Gleenn.
A notorious womaniser
In 1971, Glenn Ford signed with CBS to star in his first television series, a half-hour comedy/drama titled The Glenn Ford Show. However, CBS head Fred Silverman noticed that many of the featured films being shown at a Glenn Ford film festival were Westerns. He suggested doing a Western series, instead, which resulted in the "modern-day Western" series, Cade's County (1971–1972). Ford played southwestern Sheriff Cade for one season in a mix of police mystery and Western drama. In The Family Holvak (1975–1976), Ford portrayed a Depression-era preacher in a family drama, reprising the same character he had played in the TV film, The Greatest Gift. In 1978, Ford had a supporting role in Superman (Richard Donner, 1978) as Clark Kent's adoptive father Jonathan Kent. In Ford's final scene in the film, the song 'Rock Around the Clock' is heard on a car radio.
In 1981, Ford co-starred with Melissa Sue Anderson in the slasher film Happy Birthday to Me (J. Lee Thompson, 1981). In 1991, Ford agreed to star in a cable network series, African Skies. However, before the start of the series, he developed blood clots in his legs which required a lengthy stay in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Eventually, he recovered, but at one time his situation was so severe that he was listed in critical condition. Ford was forced to drop out of the series and was replaced by Robert Mitchum. The film Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, 2006) includes a scene where Ma Kent (played by Eva Marie Saint) stands next to the living room mantel after Superman returns from his quest to find remnants of Krypton. On that mantel is a picture of Glenn Ford as Pa Kent.
Ford was married four times. His first wife was actress and dancer Eleanor Powell (1943–1959), with whom he had his only child, actor Peter Ford (1945). The couple appeared together on screen once in the short film Have Faith in Our Children (1955). When they married, Powell was more famous than Ford. She divorced him in 1959 on the grounds of adultery and mental cruelty. He subsequently married actress Kathryn Hays (1966–1969); Cynthia Hayward (1977–1984), and Jeanne Baus (1993–1994). All marriages ended in divorce, and Ford did not remain on good terms with any of his ex-wives.
Ford was a notorious womaniser who had affairs with many of his leading ladies, including Rita Hayworth, Maria Schell, Geraldine Brooks, Stella Stevens, Gloria Grahame, Gene Tierney, Eva Gabor, and Barbara Stanwyck. He had a one-night stand with Marilyn Monroe in 1962 and a fling with Joan Crawford in the early 1940s. He also had a long-term relationship with actress Hope Lange in the early 1960s.
According to his son Peter Ford's book 'Glenn Ford: A Life' (2011), Ford had affairs with 146 actresses, all of which were documented in his personal diaries, including a 40-year, on-and-off-again affair with Rita Hayworth that began during the filming of Gilda in 1946. Their affair resumed during the making of their film The Loves of Carmen (Charles Vidor, 1948). Ford impregnated Hayworth, and she later travelled to France to get an abortion. In 1960, Ford would move next door to Hayworth in Beverly Hills, and they continued their relationship for many years until the early 1980s. Ford also documented his many relationships by taping every phone conversation he ever had with all of his celebrity lovers and friends for 40 years. Ford installed the recording system to listen in on his first wife, Eleanor Powell's conversations, fearing that she would find out about his serial cheating and leave him. Glenn Ford retired from acting in 1991, at age 75, following heart and circulatory problems. Ford suffered a series of minor strokes which left him in frail health in the years leading up to his death. He died in his Beverly Hills home in 2006, at the age of 90.
British postcard by Picturegoer, London, no. W. 265. Photo: Columbia.
French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 844, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 26 H (of 100). Photo: Browning Studio - H.P.S.
Italian postcard by Nannina, Milano, no. 30.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
This post was last updated on 30 March 2024.
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