Glenn Ford
(Filed: 01/09/2006)
The Telegraph.co.uk
Glenn Ford, the Canadian-born film actor who has died aged 90 enjoyed a
long, busy cinematic career as one of Hollywood's most dependable and
efficient second-stringers.
In the course of his career, Ford turned his hand to almost every genre in
the book. He was an adeptly impish comedian; and in westerns and dramas he tended to play the amiable yet introspective "Little Man" battling bravely
against the forces of fate.
Ford's very niceness, though, seemed to ensure that he received more than his fair share of lightweight roles which failed to challenge his undeniable talents.
Stocky, with quizzical eyes and thick, well-groomed hair, Ford shot to fame
opposite Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946), in which he played a gambler who resumed a love-hate relationship with an old flame.
Both stars were married at the time, but made no secret of the fact that
they were enjoying an off-screen romance. Ford's admiration for Hayworth
endured even after she died: he always kept a red rose next to her portrait
in his house.
Ford's finest film was undoubtedly The Big Heat (1953), in which, under Fritz Lang's Teutonic tyranny, he achieved an affecting intensity as the dogged cop who, after the death of his wife from a bomb intended for him, goes undercover to track down the gangsters single-handed.
His other notable films from the 1950s included The Blackboard Jungle
(1955), in which he was a slum-school teacher who eventually gains the
respect of his class of murderous delinquents; 3-10 to Yuma (1957), in which he was a sheriff charged with getting his prisoner on to a train, despite the threatening presence of the prisoner's outlawed friends; and The Sheepman (1958), an understated but effective Western in which he played a tough sheep farmer at odds with the inhabitants of a cattle town.
"I never tried to shape my career," Ford once said, "as I always respected
the judgment of others, but I guess I always play the 'Sheepman', the nice
guy who never gives up."
More recently Ford scored a hit with his portrayal of Superman's step-father.
Glenn Ford was born Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford in Quebec, Canada, on May 1 1916. His father was a railroad executive and mill-owner, and a descendant of Sir John A MacDonald, the first Prime Minister of the dominion of Canada who, when confronted by a crisis, was reputed to retire to bed with six bottles of port.
Ford, at some points, maintained that his date of birth was 1921, and there
was always confusion over his age. "It started early on, when I was younger than some of the actresses I played opposite," the actor claimed. "The producers decided to make me five years older."
The boy made his acting debut aged four when, clad in Little Lord Fauntleroy suiting, he appeared in Tom Thumb's Wedding. When he was eight his family moved to California, where he soon decided on a theatrical career.
He gained some experience at a Santa Monica high school, then worked as a stage manager before concluding that "the actor's job was easier than mine".
He spurned acting school - in the belief that classes would take away his
"spontaneity" - and worked his way up to playing leads with a variety of
small West Coast theatre groups. In 1939 he made his Hollywood début in
Heaven with a Barbed-Wire Fence, as Jean Rogers's impoverished sweetheart.
His first substantial role came in So End Our Night (1941), opposite
Margaret Sullavan - as a Jewish couple befriended by an anti-Nazi Fredric
March. But this did not stop Columbia subsequently casting him in a series
of dim programme-fillers, such as Texas; Go West Young Lady; and The Adventures of Martin Eden.
In the Second World War Ford served with the Marines, and was seconded to the French Resistance. He rarely spoke of his military service; and it was
only 30 years later, when he was presented with a Liberator's Award by the
Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, that it emerged he had been responsible for an act of extraordinary courage and compassion.
Immediately after Germany's surrender, Ford had discovered that, while
attention was focused on Dachau, some 15,000 intended victims were still
alive, but barely, at the nearby camp of Fernwald, outside Munich. Defying
orders that rations should not be diverted to displaced persons, Ford
persuaded supply-sergeants to turn a blind eye while he loaded his truck
with food and medical supplies for the starving survivors. It was a lifeline
he kept going for seven weeks. He was credited with single-handedly saving the lives of between 5,000 and 6,000 of the abandoned inmates, and women in the camp named new-born sons after him.
On his return to Hollywood in 1946 Ford found some difficulty in resuming
his career. One day, though, while loitering around the Warner studios, he
met Bette Davis, who was looking for someone to star with her in A Stolen
Life.
Unimpressed by his captain's uniform, she inquired whether he owned "a pipe and a decent jacket". The next day she approved his audition and he was given the role.
Ford and Hayworth displayed a more convincing screen chemistry, though, and after Gilda they were reunited in The Loves of Carmen. Ford's career then once more fell on barren ground, with numerous pale parts in films such as The Undercover Man and The Redhead and The Cowboy. After The Big Heat, he worked again with Lang - and again opposite Gloria Grahame - in Human Desire, a not entirely convincing remake of La Bête Humaine.
His fortunes improved again, with The Blackboard Jungle, which he followed with two fair westerns, Jubal (1955) and The Fastest Gun Alive (1956).
Ford then had a surprise success with The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), based on an artful Broadway hit about the trials of the US Army while grappling with the peacetime Japanese, who included Marlon Brando.
A string of undemanding service comedies followed, though, and Ford's
box-office descent began in earnest with a crude remake of Cimarron (1960).
Cry for Happy (1961) soon afterwards did nothing to redeem his flagging reputation. Another remake, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1961), was greeted with even worse reviews than Cimarron.
Relegated to the B-movie slot, he remained as professional and reliable as
ever, but latterly his best work was done for television - where his parts
included the New Mexican sheriff in the series Cade's County, and the poor, backwoods minister in the 1930s period piece, The Family Holvac.
Ford's warm, reassuring voice was used for the narration of Havoc, a 13-part series which detailed, with the help of the Sherman Grinberg film library, the stories of spectacular disasters.
His many television movies included Jarrett, Evening in Byzantium, Beggarman Thief and The Sacketts.
For most of his life Ford lived on a small cattle-ranch, where he practised
his favourite hobby, DIY, installing everything from the plumbing to the
air-conditioning system himself.
He married first, in 1943 (dissolved 1959), Eleanor Powell, one of the
world's best tap-dancers; they had a son. He married secondly, in 1966
(dissolved 1968), Kathy Hays; and thirdly, in 1977 (dissolved 1984), Cynthia Hayward, an American model 34 years his junior. Latterly he had a long relationship with Karem Johnson, a model 44 years his junior.
Glenn Ford was found dead by paramedics at his home on Wednesday.
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Sujet: Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford [Glenn Ford] 1916 - 2006