Columbia Pictures Ford acted in West Coast stage companies and had a role in the short
Night in Manhattan (1937) before joining
Columbia Pictures in 1939. His stage name came from his father's hometown of
Glenford, Alberta. His first major movie part was in
Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence (1939) at
20th Century Fox studios, written by
Dalton Trumbo. Ford's first movie for Columbia was a "B",
My Son Is Guilty (1939). He went on to other "B" movies, such as
Convicted Woman (1940),
Men Without Souls (1940),
Babies for Sale (1940), and
Blondie Plays Cupid (1941). Ford was in the bigger-budgeted
The Lady in Question (1940), which co-starred
Rita Hayworth. This was a well-received courtroom drama in which Ford plays a young man who falls in love with Rita Hayworth when his father,
Brian Aherne, tries to rehabilitate her in their bicycle shop. Directed by Hungarian emigre
Charles Vidor, the two rising young stars instantly bonded.
So Ends Our Night Top Hollywood director
John Cromwell was impressed enough with Ford's work to borrow him from Columbia for the independently produced drama
So Ends Our Night (1941), where Ford delivered a poignant portrayal of a 19-year-old
German exile on the run in
Nazi-occupied Europe. Working with Academy Award-winning
Fredric March and wooing (onscreen) 30-year-old
Margaret Sullivan, (who had been nominated for an
Academy Award for 1938's
Three Comrades), Ford's portrayal of a shy, ardent young refugee riveted attention even in such stellar company. "Glenn Ford, a most promising newcomer", wrote
The New York Timess
Bosley Crowther in a review on February 28, 1941, "draws more substance and appealing simplicity from his role of the boy than anyone else in the cast." After the film's highly publicized premiere in Los Angeles and a gala fundraiser in
Miami, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the film in a private screening at the
White House and admired the film greatly. Young Ford was invited to Roosevelt's annual Birthday Ball. Inspired and enthused by the President, he returned to Los Angeles and promptly registered as a
Democrat and a fervent FDR supporter. "I was so impressed when I met Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt", recalled Glenn Ford to his son decades later, "I was thrilled when I got back to Los Angeles and found a beautiful photograph personally autographed to me. It always held a place of high honor in my home." His next picture,
Texas, was his first Western, a genre with which he would be associated for the rest of his life. Set after the
American Civil War, it paired him with another young male star also under contract,
William Holden, who became a lifelong friend. More routine films followed, and Ford made enough to allow him to buy his mother and himself a new home in the
Pacific Palisades community.
So Ends Our Night also affected the young star in another way; in the summer of 1941, while the United States was still neutral in the
Second World War, he enlisted in the
United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, though he had a class 3 deferment (for being his mother's sole support). He began his training in September 1941, driving three nights a week to his waterfront unit in
San Pedro and spending most weekends there. He continued to appear in movies for Columbia such as
Go West, Young Lady (1941) and
The Adventures of Martin Eden (1942).
World War II and Eleanor Powell Ten months after Ford's portrait of a young anti-Nazi exile, the United States entered World War II with the
Imperial Japanese surprise
attack on Pearl Harbor naval and air bases in
Hawaii. After playing a young pilot in his 11th Columbia film,
Flight Lieutenant (1942), Ford went on a cross-country, 12-city tour to sell war bonds for Army and Navy Relief. In the midst of the many stars also donating their time – from
Bob Hope to
Cary Grant to
Claudette Colbert – he met popular dancing star
Eleanor Powell. The two soon fell in love; they attended the official opening of the
Hollywood USO canteen together in October. Ford made
The Desperadoes (1942), another Western. Then, while making another war drama,
Destroyer with ardent antifascist
Edward G. Robinson, Ford impulsively volunteered for the
United States Marine Corps Reserve on December 13, 1942. The startled studio had to beg the Marines to give their second male lead four more weeks to complete shooting on their picture. In the meantime, Ford proposed to Eleanor Powell, who subsequently announced her retirement from the screen to be near her fiancé as he started Marine Corps boot camp. Ford recalled later to his son that his friend
William Holden, who had joined the
United States Army Air Corps, and Ford had "talked about it and we were both convinced that our careers, which were just getting established, would likely be forgotten by the time we got back ... if we got back." He was assigned in March 1943 to active duty at the Marine Corps Base in
San Diego. With his Coast Guard service, he was offered a position as a Marine Corps officer, but Ford declined, feeling it would be interpreted as preferential treatment for a movie star, and instead entered the Marines as a private. He trained at the Marine base in San Diego where
Tyrone Power, the number-one male movie star at the time, was also based. Power suggested Ford join him in the Marines' weekly radio show
Halls of Montezuma, broadcast Sunday evenings from San Diego. Ford excelled in training, winning the
Rifle Marksman Badge, being named "Honor Man" of the platoon, and being promoted to sergeant by the time he finished. Awaiting assignment at
Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base, Ford volunteered to play a Marine raider – uncredited – in the film
Guadalcanal Diary, made by Fox, with Ford and others charging up the beaches of Southern California. He later showed this to his little boy Peter, along with his many other black-and-white battle scenes in other films. Frustratingly for Ford, filming battle scenes was the closest he would ever get to any enemy action. After being sent to 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 radio section of the Public Relations Office, Headquarters Company, Base Headquarters Battalion, where he resumed work on the
Halls of Montezuma film. Just as Eleanor, now his wife, was expecting the birth of their child and Ford himself was looking forward to Officers Training School, he was hospitalized at the U.S. Naval Hospital in San Diego with what turned out to be
duodenal ulcers, which afflicted him for the rest of his life. He was in and out of the hospital for the next five months and finally received a medical discharge on the third anniversary of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1944. Though without the combat duty for which he had been hoping, Ford was awarded several service medals for his three years in the Marines Reserve Corps: the
American Campaign Medal, the
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, and the
World War II Victory Medal, created in 1945 for anyone who had been on active duty since December 1941. After the war, Ford continued his military career in the Naval Reserve well into the
Vietnam War era, reaching the rank of captain.
Gilda The most memorable role of Ford's early career came with his first postwar film in 1946, starring alongside
Rita Hayworth in
Gilda. This was Glenn Ford's second pairing with Hayworth; like the first, it was directed by Charles Vidor.
The New York Times movie reviewer Bosley Crowther did not much like, or as he freely admitted, even understand the movie, but he noted that Ford had "just returned from war duty" and did show "a certain stamina and poise in the role of a tough young gambler." Reviewing the film in 1946, Crowther did not yet have the phrase with which
Gilda would soon be associated, a term that French critics had not even invented in 1946:
film noir. The erotic sadism and covert homoeroticism were actively encouraged on set by director Vidor, a sophisticated Budapest-born expatriate, though Glenn Ford always denied any awareness of the latter in his character's fervent loyalty to his boss, who had unwittingly married the love of Johnny's life. convention in 1979 The film was entered in the
Cannes Film Festival in France, then in its first year. Ford went on to be a leading man opposite Hayworth in a total of five films.
Leading star Now established as a star of "A" movies, Ford was borrowed by
Warner Bros. studios to play
Bette Davis' leading man in
A Stolen Life (1946). Back at Columbia, he was in
Gallant Journey (1946), a biopic of
John Joseph Montgomery; then, he did a thriller,
Framed (1947), and a comedy,
The Mating of Millie (1948). Hayworth and he were reunited with Vidor in the expensive color filming of the drama,
The Loves of Carmen (1948). Ford appeared in a comedy,
The Return of October (1948) and a popular Western
The Man from Colorado (1948). The latter co-starred William Holden. Both Ford and his friend William Holden flourished throughout the 1950s and 1960s, but Ford was frustrated that he was not given the opportunity to work with directors of the caliber that Holden did in his Oscar-winning career, such as
Billy Wilder and
David Lean. He missed out on
From Here to Eternity – as did Rita Hayworth – when production was stalled by Columbia studio head
Harry Cohn. He also made the mistake, which he bitterly regretted later, of turning down the lead in the brilliant comedy
Born Yesterday (also planned with Rita Hayworth), which Holden then snatched up. Columbia kept Ford constantly busy:
The Undercover Man (1949), a film noir;
Lust for Gold (1949), a Western with
Ida Lupino; and
Mr. Soft Touch (1949), with
Evelyn Keyes – another crime mystery film noir.
MGM borrowed him for
The Doctor and the Girl (1950), and he went over to
RKO Studios for
The White Tower (1950). Back at Columbia, Ford did
Convicted (1950) with
Broderick Crawford and
The Flying Missile, a
Cold War-era movie. ==Freelance star==