With his everyman good looks and palpable inner warmth, Glenn Ford was the ideal leading man for post-World War II Hollywood. In his son Peter's biography, Glenn Ford: A Life (published by University of Wisconsin Press), the actor comes across pretty much as expected: essentially decent, hard working and unpretentious.
Peter, of course, had an unusually close angle on the star. “Aunt Rita” (Hayworth) along with Jimmy Stewart and Billy Wilder came to dinner or lounged at the pool. Charlie Chaplin accidentally ran over Peter's dog. His mother, Eleanor Powell, had been a star of MGM musicals and faded from the industry as his father's career brightened. According to Peter, there was no professional rivalry. Glenn seemed born to act. He was noticed on the Los Angeles stage and became a 20th Century Fox contract player shortly before the war. Although he could have wrangled something softer, Ford decided to do it the hard way and joined the Marines, fully expecting to be forgotten by the time he returned—if he returned. He came back earlier than anticipated, discharged by the end of 1944 for ulcers. He never saw combat, and entered the significant period of his career in film noir, westerns and social problem pictures.
Some of Peter's personal stories actually help illuminate the films for which his father is most remembered. Her marriage to Orson Welles crumbling, Rita Hayworth fell in love with Ford during the film noir classic Gilda. The added presence of studio mogul Harry Cohn, who “endlessly lusted for Hayworth, but she would have nothing to do with him physically,” added to the repressed sexual steam. As for Peter, he made one contribution to the history of popular culture, suggesting Bill Haley's “Rock Around the Clock” for the soundtrack of Blackboard Jungle. It marked the beginning of the rock'n'roll revolution.
