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"Gilda," "Superman" Star Ford Dies
In the 1950s, Glenn Ford stood squared shoulder to squared shoulder with the likes of Cary Grant, Marlon Brando and Jimmy Stewart.
Ford, the Eisenhower Era box-office draw of Blackboard Jungle, revered by film buffs for his noir turn in Gilda, died Wednesday at his Beverly Hills home. He was 90.
Before retiring in the early 1990s due to deteriorating health, Ford enjoyed a 50-year-plus screen career. In addition to Gilda and Blackboard Jungle (the original teacher-in-a-tough-classroom classic), the film legend's other
highlights included:
? 1963 comedy The Courtship of Eddie's Father, forerunner of the 1969-72 TV series of the same name;
? 1962 epic The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse;
? 1961 Damon Runyan tale, Pocketful of Miracles, costarring Bette Davis and directed by Frank Capra;
? 1956 comedy Teahouse of the August Moon, starring Marlon Brando;
? 1976 World War II battle flick, Midway;
? 1978's Superman: The Movie, in which Ford played the young hero's sensible-but-doomed Earth father, Jonathan Kent.
Invariably, Ford was described as a steady or durable star, possibly because iconic didn't fit. He never won (nor was he ever nominated) for an Oscar. He didn't rate a spot on the American Film Institute's Greatest American Screen Legends list, nor did he make a film on their Top 100 Hollywood movies list. And he didn't sing or sashay to "Put the Blame on Mame"--the indelible Gilda moment that belonged to his costar, Rita Hayworth.
Instead, Ford was the kind of star whose considerable body of work was made to be discovered in late-night study sessions on Turner Classic Movies. Fittingly, upon news of Ford's death, the cineaste-devoted network announced it would celebrate the actor with a six-film marathon on Sept. 10.
Last May, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, Ford was honored with a theatrical film series in Hollywood. Debbie Reynolds and Martin Landau were among the names to turn out. Ford himself was supposed to attend--his first planned public appearance in more than a decade--but it was not to be.
"I wish I were up and around," Ford said in a statement at the time, as reported by Variety, "but I'm doing the best that I can...There's so much I have to be grateful for."
Born Gwyllyn Ford in Canada on May 1, 1916, the future leading man moved with his family to Santa Monica, California, while still a boy. There, he did theater before landing a movie studio contract in his early 20s. He made his feature debut in the 1939 drama, Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence.
In 1942, the New York Times cited Ford as a "normally presentable young fellow with a wry sort of boyish face"--a guy's guy who "doesn't look at all like Superman."
In the midst of his lengthy film career, Ford also worked two stints in the military: the first during World War II, when he served in the Marines; the second during Vietnam, when, in his late 40s, the U.S. Naval reservist sought--and received--an active duty assignment.
Ford married and divorced four times, including one union to dancer/actress Eleanor Powell.
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