Glenn Ford was an unusual star in his lack of unusual-ness – good looking but not spectacularly so, he gave the impression of being a nice, decent man, perfectly in line with his name. It was a surprise to read in Frank Capra’s memoirs that he was such a beast on the set of Pocketful of Miracles. Surely Ford was as nice as his image? Would he have the clout to have a big head?
Well, yes he did – for a time, anyway. In 1958 Ford was voted the most popular star in the US. His looks and demeanour perfectly suited the Eisenhower era – the persona of a handsome World War Two veteran who’d settled down in the suburbs; family men with a history of violence who were comfortable with authority. This meant he was ideal to play cowboys, cops, teachers, businessmen and army officers. He actually wasn’t in that many huge box office successes, but enough to keep him in the public eye, especially in the second half of the 50s. Eventually the tide went out, but he remained steadily employed until his retirement.
Just as many all-Australian types are born in New Zealand, all-American Ford was born in Canada. He moved to the US as a young boy for his family’s health, settling in California. He wanted to act from a young age, and joined the Santa Monica Players, for whom he appeared in a large number of plays over a short period of time. It’s hard to break in an actor but the people who have the least hard time of it are handsome young men with a good build and voice – there are always parts for them to play.
Ford benefited from the fact that a big wheel in the organisation was Harold Clifton, a gay man who had a crush on him. (Ford didn’t reciprocate but showed his loyalty by getting this guy hired as a dialogue coach once he became a movie star. Along with some ex-gaolbird, Clifton formed Ford’s entourage.) It also helped that he supplemented his acting jobs by stage managing – this helped him get some professional gigs (aspiring actors take note!).
Apart from a brief stint as an extra, Ford’s first movie role was a lead. Yes it was only a quickie but there was a demand in Hollywood for handome young men and he got the gig. It didn’t set the world on fire but later he was signed by Columbia who used him as a juvenile. As a result he didn’t really work his way up via the cast list, more via the budget of his films. An appearance in So This is the Night (outside Columbia) kicked his career up a level, but the momentum was stalled by war service (unglamorous service, too - he enlisted, but didn’t see action and was invalided out with ulcers).
But when he returned he was lucky enough to support two stars in hit films: A Stolen Life and Gilda. These turned Ford into a star, a position he maintained despite a run of astonishingly unremarkable films over the next eight years or so. Bland comedies and Westerns that were on the whole indifferently received (he turned down the William Holden part in Born Yesterday) – yet Ford was still considered a name.
He did make a classic with The Big Heat but what really turned things around for him was starring in The Blackboard Jungle and signing with MGM in the early 1950s. He became Metro’s major male star during the next eight years or so, featuring in a series of hit films. Again, mostly Westerns, crime films and comedies, but of a far higher quality. His standing never really recovered, though, from starring in two massive flops at the studio, Cimarron and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Joe Dante once commented that the 50s really ended in America in 1963, when JFK was shot. That’s what seemed to happen to Ford’s career – his last hit was in 1963, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. The public didn’t seem to take to any of the films he made after that – too many of them were old-fashioned, second tier entertainments that audiences simply weren’t going to any more (Peter Ford is a big fan of The Rounders, though).
Ford was married for a long time to Eleanor Powell, and their association probably helped his career, if only to keep his name in the public eye at key periods in his career. Powell was very conservative, a 29 year old virgin when they married (no wonder her tap dancing had so much energy). It doesn’t have seemed to have been much of a union. They were separated by work for long periods of time – Ford on location, Powell off touring with her tap dancing shows.
And Ford was unfaithful pretty much from the get go – he had flings with Rita Hayworth (on the early films they made together), Geraldine Brooks, Rhoda Fleming, Gloria Grahame, Barbra Stanwyck, and Felicia Farr. The majority of his female co-stars, it seems – a perk of the job, I guess. Before marriage he had a fling with Joan Crawford, as seems to be required by all male stars of this period. Afterwards there was Hope Lange, Marilyn Monroe, Maria Schell, Connie Stevens (!), Judy Garland (!!), Stella Stevens, Angie Dickinson, and many more.
Although Ford's career declined in the 60s and 70s he still seemed to have a pretty good life, still getting good roles on TV and accepting every junket going around the world (he attended the 1972 Logies in Australia and boorishly refused to shake Doug McClelland’s hand due to McClelland’s perceived anti-Americanism – which Ford’s son puts down to Vietnam and foreign policy, ignoring the fact that it was actually due to the fact McClelland was pushing for quotas of Australian drama and Ford thought this meant putting American actors out of work.)
His life became less happy in the 80s and 90s – he developed a drinking problem, blew a lot of his money, fell out with his son, had two divorces, came under the control of a nurse who tried to rip him off, was the subject of a custody battle between his son and the nurse, struggled against poor health. He was a spoilt child in many ways and the chickens came home to roost somewhat. Still, he enjoyed relative comfort and died in the embrace of his family.
Lots of fascinating bits here: Ford got Hayworth pregnant during filming of The Loves of Carmen and she had an abortion; Bette Davis tried to seduce him during A Stolen Life – her technique was to open her blouse and show her breasts, which were apparently spectacular; Ford was so heartbroken after a fight with Brooks during the making of The Green Glove in France that he enlisted in the foreign legion and had to have people get him out of it the next day; after his divorce Ford hung out with a more gay crowd, including Tennessee Williams and Chris Isherwood; he had a reputation as a necrophiliac (Ford Jnr traces the origin of this very wittily); one of his carers in the 90s was actor Roberta Collins, the New World starlet; he made a film for Roger Corman, A Time for a Killing – but Corman quit the movie.
It’s a superb book – I can’t imagine a better one on Glenn Ford. As Patrick McGilligan points out in his introduction, there’s three stories here – Glenn’s, Eleanor Powell's and Peter Ford's. I would have thought Eleanor Powell would have featured more, but I guess it’s not her book and she does sound a bit dull anyway – just someone who tap danced a lot and was deluded about her husband; she later found God, and managed to not have much money at the end of her career despite years of working.
Ford Jnr admits Glenn was a bad father and that he got along much better with him once he elected to be his friend rather than his son. He points out many of his personal flaws (spoilt, selfish) but always tries to see the positive. He goes too easy on his father’s behaviour on movie sets – Frank Capra wasn’t the only one to find him a handful. On Fate is the Hunter, for instance, he took his costume without asking and David Swift went on record saying how much he hated working with him. But that’s a minor, forgivable flaw in a wonderful, emotive piece of work.
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