Glenn Ford died a few days ago....

[BERIGAN]

Kind of surprised there wasn't a thread on this....(Then again, I could have done one sooner, eh?)I used to think of him as a lucky actor, kind of a bland leading man I thought. But, the more films of his I saw, the more I realized he could really rise to the occasion for a good role, like he did when he got the rare chance to play a bad guy in 3:10 to Yuma.

Leading Man Glenn Ford Dies at 90

By Adam Bernstein

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, August 31, 2006; 1:14 PM

Glenn Ford, a rugged but amiable leading man who appeared in nearly 100 movies, including gritty urban dramas, light comedy and Westerns, died Aug. 30 at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., police said. He was 90.

Beverly Hills police were dispatched to Mr. Ford's home about 4 p.m. and found him dead inside, said Sgt. Lincoln Hoshino. No foul play was suspected. Ford had suffered a series of strokes in the 1990s.

Three of Mr. Ford's best films were "Gilda" (1946), "The Big Heat" (1953) and "Blackboard Jungle" (1955). In them, he was a gambler, a police detective and a schoolteacher, respectively. As varied as the parts were, all benefited from his low-boil technique. It always appeared he would erupt into physical force if pushed too far.

Mr. Ford also was the Man of Steel's adoptive father in "Superman" (1978), and, in characteristic Ford fashion, he used minimal body language to convey inner strength. Film critic Gary Arnold wrote in The Washington Post that "Ford has a stunning death scene in which he fully comprehends the sign of a coronary seizure an instant before it kills him. This jolting loss of a modest, decent man leaves lasting emotional reverberations."

The son of a railroad executive, Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford was born in Quebec, Canada, on May 1, 1916, and raised in Santa Monica, Calif. He once said he knew acting held promise when, at age 4, he appeared in a community production of "Tom Thumb's Wedding" and the part required him to eat a large bowl of chocolate ice cream.

Later, he earned money for theatrical training by working as a parachute jumper at state fairs and as a stage manager for actress Tallulah Bankhead.

He appeared in a film short, "Night in Manhattan" (1937), as a nightclub emcee before his feature debut in "Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence" (1939) as a New York store clerk who ventures west.

That movie's director, Ricardo Cortez, doubted Mr. Ford's prospects in Hollywood, but Columbia Pictures snapped him up and groomed him for stardom alongside his lifelong friend William Holden.

Mr. Ford appeared in a succession of minor dramas and began a long run in Westerns with "Go West, Young Lady" with Penny Singleton, "The Desperadoes" with Randolph Scott and "Texas" with Holden.

"We competed in strange ways," he once said of Holden. "I stuffed paper in my boots to be taller than he was. Then he stuffed paper in his boots, and I stuffed more in mine. Finally neither of us could walk, and we said the hell with it."

Amid a spate of mediocre service pictures, Mr. Ford was granted a rare foray in an A-list production with "So Ends Our Night" (1941). The film was based on an Erich Maria Remarque novel, "Flotsam," and Mr. Ford played a Jewish refugee in wartime Germany.

In a cast with Fredric March, Margaret Sullavan and Erich von Stroheim, Mr. Ford was singled out by New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther as "a most promising newcomer [who] draws more substance and appealing simplicity . . . than anyone else in the film."

With the outbreak of World War II, Mr. Ford joined the Marine Corps and participated in the Battle of Midway. Later, in the Navy reserve, he did tours of duty in the Vietnam War.

Columbia showcased their veteran in better vehicles after World War II, with the agreement he sign a long-term contract. The result was a few fine pictures, including "Gilda" and "A Stolen Life" with Bette Davis playing both good and bad sisters with a yen for Mr. Ford. It also meant a succession of forgettable dramas that at least presented him in various locales ("The Man From Colorado," "Affair in Trinidad," "The Man From the Alamo").

"Gilda" was one of the most popular films of its day -- and one of the most sordid by Hollywood standards. Mr. Ford played a gambler on a long losing streak who tramps into Buenos Aires and lands a job managing a casino for a sadistic boss (George Macready). The boss is married to an old flame, played by Rita Hayworth, who performs a striptease and says at one point, "If I'd been a ranch, they would have called me the Bar Nothing."

During filming, Columbia studios chief Harry Cohn, infatuated with Hayworth, reportedly bugged her dressing room to see if she was having an affair with Mr. Ford. The actors found out about the plan and decided, for fun, to pretend to act on Cohn's worst fears.

Two years later, Hayworth chose Mr. Ford to co-star in a film she produced, "The Loves of Carmen," in which he was Don Jose, and she was Carmen.

"One of the greatest mistakes I ever made. Embarrassing," Mr. Ford once told a reporter about a role that required him to lather up in suntan oil and curl his hair. "But it was worth it, just to work with her again."

He also was a mountain climber in "The White Tower" (1950) and champion golfer Ben Hogan recovering from a car accident in "Follow the Sun" (1951). While in France making the post-war chase film "The Green Glove" (1952), he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion reportedly after a snub from co-star Geraldine Brooks and after consuming what he called "too much wine and bouillabaisse."

He managed to get out of the Legion, which was displeased by his little joke, and then headed for one of his other great parts -- as the hot-tempered cop who avenges his family's death in Fritz Lang's "The Big Heat." "As angry and icy as they come," Crowther wrote of Mr. Ford's performance, but it took many more years for the film to find its large following.

He also was in Lang's "Human Desire" (1954) as the lust-driven war veteran; "Interrupted Melody" (1955) as the caring husband of polio-stricken diva Marjorie Lawrence (Eleanor Parker); "Trial" (1955) as the courtroom defender of a Mexican youth accused of rape and murder; and a grief-stricken submarine commander in "Torpedo Run" (1958).

"The Blackboard Jungle" (1955) showcased Mr. Ford as a teacher at an inner-city school trying to control delinquent, often violent students. The film was best known for its "Rock Around the Clock" theme song and became a massive hit with audiences.

A gifted horse rider who in childhood was stable boy for Will Rogers, Mr. Ford appeared in dozens of Westerns of varying quality. Among the best were "3:10 to Yuma" (1957) as an outlaw; "Cowboy" (1958) as the experienced cowhand with tenderfoot Jack Lemmon in tow; and "The Rounders" (1965) as an aging cowpoke alongside pal Henry Fonda.

There was also "The Sheepman" in 1958 and a spate more in the late 1960s, including "A Time for Killing" "Day of the Evil Gun," "Heaven with a Gun" and "Smith!"

Though never nominated for an Academy Award, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Great Western Performers in Oklahoma City in 1978.

Mr. Ford put on modern clothes for "It Started With a Kiss" and "The Gazebo," both with Debbie Reynolds in the late 1950s. He also was an Army captain in post-war Japan in "The Teahouse of the August Moon" (1956), with Marlon Brando as his Japanese helper, and an urbane widower being set up on dates by his son, played by Ron Howard, in "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" (1963).

In the early 1960s, Mr. Ford was at the peak of his fame, and he starred and helped produce "Pocketful of Miracles" (1961), a remake of Frank Capra's old feel-good weepie "Lady for a Day." Capra came back to direct Mr. Ford but the relationship was tense after the actor insisted on casting his then-girlfriend, Hope Lange, as a brassy nightclub owner.

Mr. Ford also forced Lange on director David Swift to star with him in the comedy "Love is a Ball" (1963). Swift later likened Mr. Ford to "a 12-year-old temperamental child. Were he mine, I would have spanked him physically."

Mr. Ford starred in two television series: as the sheriff in "Cade's County," an early 1970s CBS police drama that also featured his son Peter Ford; and a Depression-era country preacher in the 1975 NBC drama "The Family Holvack."

Mr. Ford said he had no patience for acting schools and especially for the Method acting style that required plumbing his own life experiences for character motivation. He barely tolerated the usual tools of the trade, putting into his contract that he never be required to wear make-up.

"I don't believe an actor can be over-exposed unless he becomes repetitive," Mr. Ford once said. "The secret is to play different roles as often as possible."

His four marriages ended in divorce. His wives were tap dancing movie star Eleanor Powell; soap-opera actress Kathryn Hays; model Cynthia Hayward; and his personal nurse, Jeanne Baus. The final marriage lasted a month; the couple had a 40-year age difference.

Survivors include his son.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6083100870.html

Edited September 4, 2006 by BERIGAN

[catesta]

I had no idea he was still alive.

So, R.I.P. for real this time, Glenn.

[mikeweil]

So that's why his movies were all over night tv programs here during the last few days .... I always thought he was a nice alternative role model to the super tough masculine guys.

R.I.P., Mr. Ford.

[JohnS]

Sad news, a real star. Loved his worn hat in so many westerns.

[Larry Kart]

One of his best, which made good use of his equivocal nature. was the very noir Western "The Violent Men" (1955), with Barbara Stanwyck at her most terrifying (a virtual Lady MacBeth), Edward G. Robinson as her crippled cattle-baron husband (you won't believe what Babs has in store for him), and Brian Keith as Babs' covert sweetie, though he really prefers the younger (and understandably pissed off at Babs) Lita Milan. Dark complex doings here, directed in a masterly manner by Rudolph Mate.

[Alexander]

To me, Glenn Ford was always Jonathan Kent in the 1979 version of "Superman." (I know. It always comes back to comic books with me, doesn't it?) I thought his death scene was a masterful use of understatement.

[Dave James]

If Ford had never made any films other than "The Blackboard Jungle" and "The Big Heat", he would still have had a memorable career. Not a glitzy, glamorous, leading man type...more of an everyman. As Berigan pointed out, he kind of snuck up on you...you didn't realize how good he was until you really watched what he was doing. For sure, guys don't stick around Hollywood as long as he did if they're not pretty good at what they're doing.

Also agree with Larry vis a vis "The Violent Men". One of Barbara Stanwyck's strongest later roles.

Up over and out.

[BruceH]

One of his best, which made good use of his equivocal nature. was the very noir Western "The Violent Men" (1955), with Barbara Stanwyck at her most terrifying (a virtual Lady MacBeth), Edward G. Robinson as her crippled cattle-baron husband (you won't believe what Babs has in store for him), and Brian Keith as Babs' covert sweetie, though he really prefers the younger (and understandably pissed off at Babs) Lita Milan. Dark complex doings here, directed in a masterly manner by Rudolph Mate.

Happened to catch that on tv a while back; surprisingly good. More recently I saw a broadcast of The Desperadoes (1943); while not the movie that The Violent Men is, Ford is very good playing a young hothead, and Randolph Scott is the sheriff. Ford was an unflashy, dependable presence in so many films. He had a hell of a career and a very long life. You can't ask much more. R.I.P.