Glenn Ford

At 90 years old, Glenn Ford has this physical status:

Gwyllyn Newton "Glenn" Ford (May 1, 1916 – August 30, 2006) was a Canadian-American actor whose career spanned more than 50 years.

Although Ford appeared in numerous genres of film, he was best known for portraying ordinary guys in bizarre situations.

He made the most famous during Hollywood's Golden Age, but he went on to become one of the country's top box-office draws of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

Gilda (1946) and The Big Heat (1953), both film noirs, and the high school angst film Blackboard Jungle (1955).

However, it was for comedies or westerns that he received acting accolades, including three Golden Globe Nominations for Best Actor in a Comedy film, winning for Pocketful of Miracles (1961).

In 1978, Clark Kent's adoptive father appeared in Superman (1978).

Five of Gilda's films have been chosen for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or visually" significant: Gilda (1954), Blackboard Jungle (1954), 3:10 to Yuma (1978), and Superman (1978).

Early life

Gwyllyn Newton Ford was born in Sainte-Christine-d'Auvergne, Quebec, on May 1, 1916, the son of Hannah Wood (née Mitchell) and Newton Ford, an engineer with the Canadian Pacific Railway, was born. Ford was a great-nephew of Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, and he was also connected to US President Martin Van Buren through his father. In 1922, when Ford was six, the family first moved to Venice and then to Santa Monica, California; Newton then became a motorman for the Venice Electric Tram Company, a job he held until he died at age 50 in 1940.

He was involved in school drama productions with other future actors, such as James Griffith, while attending Santa Monica High School. He began acting in small theatre companies after graduating. He did odd jobs, including those with Will Rogers, who taught him horsemanship, while in high school. Ford later stated that his father had no objections to his growing interest in acting, but that, "It's all right for you to act if you learn something else first." You will be able to take a car apart and put it back together. Anybody should be able to build a house. "You'll always have something." Ford heeded the advice and during the 1950s, when he was one of Hollywood's most popular celebrities, he worked on plumbing, wiring, and air conditioning at home.

On November 10, 1939, Ford became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Personal life

Eleanor Powell (1943-1989), the actress and dancer with whom he had his only child, actor Peter Ford (born 1945), was Ford's first wife. In a short film released in the 1950s called Have Faith in Our Children, the two characters appeared together on screen for the first time. Powell was more popular than Ford when they married. In 1959, Ford and Powell would divorce.

Ford did not keep his ex-wives on good terms. Rita Hayworth, Maria Schell, Geraldine Brooks, Stella Stevens, Gloria Grahame, Eugene Gibor, and Barbara Stanwyck were among his leading ladies who had affairs with several of his leading ladies, including Rita Hayworth, Maria Schell, Helene Brooks, Geraldine Brooks, Gloria Grahame, 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.

During the mid-1960s, Ford dated Christiane Schmidtmer, Linda Christian, and Vikki Dougan, as well as Judy Garland, Suzanne Pleshette, Rhonda Fleming, Rhonda Fleming, Roberta Collins, Susie Lund, Terry Moore, Brigitte Bardote, and Loretta Young. However, he married actress Kathryn Hays (1966-1969); marriages to Cynthia Hayward (1977–1984) would follow, and Jeanne Baus (1993–1994) would follow. However, both four marriages would end in divorce. He also had a long-term friendship with actress Hope Lange in the early 1960s. Ford had affairs with 146 actors, many of which were chronicled in his personal diaries, including a 40-year, on-and-offgain affair with Rita Hayworth that began during the filming of Gilda in 1945, according to his son Peter Ford's book Glenn Ford: A Life (2011). During the production of their 1948 film The Loves of Carmen, the couple's affair resurfaced; Ford impregnated Hayworth, who later traveled to France for an abortion.

Ford moved next door in 1960 to Hayworth in Beverly Hills, and the two families stayed close for many years until the 1980s.

Liz Renay, a stripper and cult actress, was chronicled by Ford in the 1991 book My First 2,000 Men. Ford is ranked as one of the top five best girlfriends in the country, according to her.

Ford also documented his many friendships by taping every phone call he had with any of his celebrities and friends for 40 years. President Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, as well as Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, John Wayne, Ava Gardner, Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck, James Mason, Lucille Ball, Angie Dickinson, Joseph Davis, Charlton Heston, and Debbie Reynolds are among the many people on these recordings. Eleanor Powell, Ford's first wife, was worried that she would learn about his serial cheating and leave him, so she reluctantly decided to eavesdrop on his conversations. In 1959, she divorced him on the grounds of adultery and mental cruelty.

In the 1980s and 1989s, Ford was still connected to Debra Morris and Karen Johnson in the early 1990s and 1990s.

Glenn Ford endorsed the Democratic Party during his heyday as a celebrity. Adlai Stevenson II in 1956, and John F. Kennedy in 1960, all supported Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940s, 1960-1960. Ford later shifted his vote to the Republican Party. In the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections, he campaigned for his old friend and fellow actor Ronald Reagan.

Ford attempted to purchase the Atlanta Flames of the National Hockey League in May 1980 with the intention of keeping the team in the area. He was hoping to match a $14 million bid made by Byron and Daryl Seaman, but he was rejected by a fund company led by Nelson Skalbania, which also included the Seaman brothers. On May 23, the company purchased the franchise for $16 million and later moved it to Calgary.

Ford lived in Beverly Hills, California, where he illegally raised 140 leghorn chickens until he was arrested by the Beverly Hills Police Department.

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Early career

Before joining Columbia Pictures in 1939, Ford worked in West Coast theatre companies and appeared in the short Night in Manhattan (1937). His stage name came from his father's hometown, Glenford, Alberta.

Dalton Trumbo's first big movie role was in Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence (1939) at 20th Century Fox. A "B" in Ford's first film for Columbia was "My Son Is Guilty (1939). Convicted Woman (1940), Men Without Souls (1940), Babies for Sale (1940), and Blondie Plays Cupid (1941).

The Lady in Question (1940), which co-starred Rita Hayworth, was in Ford's larger budget. This was a well-received courtroom drama in which Ford plays a young man who falls in love with Rita Hayworth when her father, Brian Aherne, attempts to rehabilitate her in their bicycle store. The two young actors, directed by Hungarian emigre Charles Vidor, bonded instantly.

Top Hollywood director John Cromwell was impressed enough with his film to loan him from Columbia for So Ends Our Night (1941), where Ford gave a moving portrayal of a 19-year-old German exile on the run in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Margaret Sullavan, 30, was nominated for an Oscar by Academy Award-winning Fredric March and wooing (on film) captivated admiration, despite being part of such prestigious company. In a review published in the New York Times on February 28, 1941, Glockenn Ford, a most promising newcomer, "draws more life and attracting simplicity from his character as the boy than any other cast member."

President Franklin Roosevelt attended the film in a private screening at the White House after the film's highly publicized premiere in Los Angeles and a gala fundraiser in Miami, and praised it greatly. Ford was invited to Roosevelt's annual Birthday Ball. He returned to Los Angeles and immediately registered as a Democrat, a zealous supporter of FDR. "I was so excited when I met Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt," recalled Glenn Ford to his son decades later. "I was so excited when I returned to Los Angeles and discovered a beautiful photograph hand-signed to me. In my household, it had always had a place of esteem."

Glenn Ford had young female fans begging for his autograph after 35 interviews and glowing reviews for him personally. The young man, on the other hand, was dissatisfied when Columbia Pictures did not have this fame and new fame, and instead concentrated on traditional films for the remainder of his 7-year deal. Texas was his first Western, a subject with which he would be associated for the remainder of his life. It was set after the Civil War and partnered William Holden, another young male actor under contract, with him. More regular films followed, none of which were memorable, but they were still profitable enough to encourage Ford to buy his mother and himself a new house in the Pacific Palisades.

So Ends Our Night was also affected by the young actor's in another way: in the summer of 1941, when the United States was still neutral, he enlisted in the Coast Guard Auxiliary, but his mother's sole care was denied a class 3 deferment, but it was still his mother's sole support). He began his training in September 1941 and spent most weekends in San Pedro three nights a week.

He appeared in Columbia films such as Go West, Young Lady (1941), and Martin Eden (1942).

The US entered World War II ten months after Ford's portrait of a young anti-Nazi exile. Ford went on a cross-country 12-city tour to sell war bonds for Army and Navy Relief after playing a young pilot in his 11th Columbia film, Flight Lieutenant (1942). Eleanor Powell, the well-known dancer who is also donating their time, from Bob Hope to Cary Grant to Claudette Colbert, he met Eleanor Powell, the popular dance star. The two soon fell in love; they attended the official opening of the Hollywood USO together in October.

Ford created The Desperadoes (1942), another Western. Destroyer with ardent anti-fascist Edward G. Robinson, Ford's younger brother, volunteered for the United States Marine Corps Reserve on December 13, 1942, amid another war drama. To complete shooting, the startled studio had to beg the Marines for their second male lead for four weeks. In the meantime, Ford suggested Eleanor Powell, who later announced her withdrawal from television, to be near her fiancé as he began boot camp.

Ford recalled to his son that William Holden, who had joined the Army Air Corps, and Ford had "talked about it," and we were both agreed that our careers, which were only getting started, would be forgotten by the time we got back... if we went back."

He was sent to active service at San Diego's Marine Corps Base in March 1943. He was offered a job as an officer with his Coast Guard service, but Ford declined, fearing that it would be misinterpreted as preferential treatment for a movie actor, and instead entered the Marines as a private. He worked at the Marine base in San Diego, where Tyrone Power, the country's top male film actor at the time, was based. Power advised Ford to join him in the Marines' weekly radio show Halls of Montezuma, which are broadcasting Sunday evenings from San Diego. Ford excelled in preparation, winning the Rifle Marksman Badge and being named "Honor Man" of the platoon and promoted to sergeant by the time he finished.

Ford, a waiting soldier at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base, wanted to be a Marine raider – uncredited – in the film Guadal Diary, made by Fox, with Ford and others charging up the beaches of Southern California. Peter, his little boy Peter, was shown this later in other black-and-white battle scenes. The closest he would ever get to any action was frustratingly for Ford. 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 Public Relations Office, Battalion's headquarters, where he began work on Halls of Montezuma.

Eleanor, now his wife, was planning the birth of their child and Ford himself was looking forward to Officers Training School, and he was hospitalized in the United States. The patient was admitted to Naval Hospital in San Diego with what turned out to be duodenal ulcers, which afflicted him for the remainder of his life. Pearl Harbor's third anniversary, 1944, he was in and out of the hospital for the next five months before getting a medical discharge. Although Ford was deprived of his combat service in the Marine Reserve Corps, he was given several service medals, including the Americatic-Pacific Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal, which were both established in 1945 for anyone who had been on active service since December 1941. Ford continued his military service in the Naval Reserve well into the Vietnam War, earning the rank of captain.

Later career

In 1976, Ford played RAdm Raymond Spruance alongside Henry Fonda, who played Adm Chester Nimitz, and Charlton Heston, who played a fictional Capt. Matt Garth. Clark Kent's adoptive father Jonathan Kent played a supporting role in Superman in 1978. On a car radio, "Rock Around the Clock" is heard in Ford's last scene in the film.

Ford returned to work in 1958 for the third time since being in World War II. He came from the United States. He was appointed as a lieutenant commander and was made a public affairs officer, which was the role he had played in the hit comedy Don't Go Near the Water for the previous year. He promoted the navy through radio and television broadcasting, personal appearances, and documentary films on his annual training tours.

After being sent to Vietnam in 1967 for a month of service as a location scout for combat scenes in a training film titled Global Marine, Ford continued to blend his film career with his military service, and was promoted to commander in 1963 and captain in 1968. He traveled from the demilitarized zone south to the Mekong Delta in support of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War. The navy has given him a Navy Commendation Medal for his service in Vietnam. He was promoted to captain from the Naval Reserve in the 1970s. He was given the Marine Corps Reserve Ribbon, which honors those who have served in reserve for ten years.

Ford signed him to appear in his first television program, titled The Glenn Ford Show, in 1971. However, CBS head Fred Silverman noticed that many of the featured films at a Glenn Ford film festival were Westerns. Rather than doing a Western series, Cade's County was a "modern-day Western" series. For one season (1971-1972), Ford played southwestern Sheriff Cade, a mix of police mystery and western drama.

Ford portrayed a Depression-era preacher in a family drama in The Family Holvak (1975–1976), based on the same character he had played in the television drama, The Greatest Gift.

Ford was the host, moderator, and narrator of the Mobil Showcase Network's 1978 disaster documentary film When Havoc Struck, Ford was both host, producer, and narrator.

Melissa Sue Anderson co-starred in the slasher film Happy Birthday to Me in 1981.

In 1991, Ford decided to appear in African Skies, a cable television series. However, before the series, he had blood clots in his legs that required a long stay in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He recovered eventually, but at one time his illness was so bad that he was in danger of being listed in Critical condition. Ford was forced to abandon the series and was replaced by Robert Mitchum.

After Superman's return from his quest to find traces of Krypton, the 2006 film Superman Returns features a scene where Ma Kent (played by Eva Marie Saint) stands next to the living room mantel. On the mantel is a photograph of Glenn Ford as Pa Kent.

Ford appeared in The Adventures of Christopher London, a 1950 film that was created by Erle Stanley Gardner and directed by William N. Robson. On the NBC radio network from January 22 to April 30, 1950, London was a private investigator in the weekly adventure series, which aired at 7 p.m. on Sundays. In the 1947 episode of Suspense, "End of the Road," Ford appeared on "End of the Road."

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