Glenn Ford’s racy story told by his son

He had a one-night stand with Marilyn Monroe, a 6-month fling with Judy Garland, and a 40-year, on-and-off affair with Rita Hayworth.

After a 16-year marriage to dancing star Eleanor Powell, he married three more times while he chased a series of younger and younger women, gold-diggers who plundered his hard earned fortune and then left him.

He developed a drinking problem so severe that it nearly killed him and left him unable to walk for a decade before he died in 2006 at age 90.

And he taped the most famous taper in history: he installed a secret telephone recording system in his Beverly Hills mansion that recorded intimate conversations with his many Hollywood lovers (143 at last count) and some big-time politicians, including President Richard Nixon.

Those are just a few of the juicy revelations in a biography with the remarkably understated title “Glenn Ford: A Life,” written by his son Peter Ford and released last May. And for those who question Ford’s claims, he has the documents to back them up: every letter his parents ever exchanged, every one of his father’s day-by-day diaries, and boxes of reel-to-reel tapes from his secret phone recording system.

“I found one labeled ‘Peter’s conversations,’” said Ford, who will appear at the Manhattan Beach Public Library on Feb. 29. Although he was offended by his father’s invasion of privacy, he admitted: “It was kind of fun to listen to myself as a teenager.”

Books written by children of Hollywood legends have become a well-defined literary genre over the last 40 years. There are two basic sub-genres: Daddy was a Drunken Tyrant who beat the hell out of me (Bing Crosby), and Mommy was a Drunken Monster who tried to control every aspect of my life (Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich).

Now Ford, the only child of 1950s superstar Glenn Ford, has invented a third sub-genre: Daddy drank way too much and cheated constantly on my beloved mother but was a great actor and did the best he could given his incredible journey from a no-luxuries upbringing in Santa Monica to a no-limits life as a Hollywood superstar.

“I had to walk a fine line between telling the truth and not discrediting my father,” he says of his 7-year struggle to turn out the manuscript.

But his fair and balanced approach, which resulted in a richly textured, deeply nuanced portrait of a real human being with all his strengths and weaknesses laid bare, doesn’t highlight the scandals he uncovered. Instead they are revealed casually as afterthoughts in the straight-ahead narrative that flows from his childhood to his prime adult years to his brutal old age. Nor does it provide the primal emotions of emotional patricide and long-awaited revenge that can generate mass-media book reviews and a place on the New York Times bestseller list.

Although his book has sold more than 6,000 copies since it was released by the University of Wisconsin Press, it has been ignored by the mainstream press and currently ranks 33,914 on Amazon.com. Without a major publisher and its marketing machine behind him, Ford has had to promote the book on his own.

That’s why Ford will be at the Manhattan Beach Library next Wednesday, Feb. 29, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., answering questions and selling copies of his book. The next morning, at its monthly Coffee and Classics series, the library will screen one of Ford’s best-known films, Gilda, produced in 1946 and starring Ford and Rita Hayworth.

Other Ford classics are Blackboard Jungle, the 1955 film that alerted America to the problem of juvenile delinquency and 1953’s The Big Heat. Blackboard Jungle starred Ford as Richard Dadier, a straight-laced teacher at an urban high school who faces down the proto gang-bangers led by Vic Morrow and connects emotionally with the willing-to-be-saved students led by Sidney Poitier.

It was roles like Mr. Dadier and straight-laced Police Det. Dave Bannion, who takes on a corrupt city government in The Big Heat, that helped establish Ford’s public persona: a good-guy gentleman with a steel backbone, an ordinary man forced into heroic action by extraordinary circumstances.

“But the image Glenn projected on the screen was not like him at all in private life,” Vicki Dugan, an actress who dated Ford in the 1960s, said. “He was exactly the opposite.”

The 310-page book is really four stories rolled into one. The core story is Peter Ford’s journey from the Santa Monica Community Players to the heights of Hollywood. Second is his mother Eleanor Powell’s journey from poverty to being an MGM star ranked as the top female dancer in history by no less an authority than Fred Astaire. Third is Peter’s own tale of growing up a lonely child longing for a normal relationship with a normal dad. He finally came to grips with the reality that it was never to be when his father broke his promise and failed to show up at his high school graduation.

“Being the child of a Hollywood star is a killing field filled with suicides and drug addicts,” says the bear-like Ford, an imposing presence at 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds with his father’s chiseled good looks and great hair. “I finally realized I couldn’t keep hoping against hope for what would never happen.”

The fourth story is that of Rita Hayworth, the so-called Love Goddess who lamented that “Men fall in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me.” She became an alcoholic who burned through several marriages on her way to Alzheimer’s disease.

The key film in these interwoven stories is Gilda, the erotic noir thriller released in 1946 that starred Ford as the manager of an Argentine casino who is in love with his boss’s new wife, Gilda, who just happens to be his former girlfriend. It was such a box office hit it elevated both Ford and Hayworth from rising stars to full-fledged celebrities.

Featuring the ultimate in love-hate relationships, filled with sub-plots about Nazis and police spies in post-war South America, “Gilda” was filmed just two years after Ford’s parents married and just after Ford was born in 1945.

The volatile passion on-screen was real: it was the start of their 40-year affair that eventually led to them having side-by-side houses in Beverly Hills during the 1960s with a gate cut into the back fence so Rita wouldn’t be seen going over to his house. And he adds a new wrinkle to their long-rumored affair: Ford got Hayworth pregnant while they were filming The Loves of Carmen in 1948, but she went to Europe for an abortion.

The affair during the making of “Gilda” was the first time his father cheated on his mother, says Ford. He knows that because the diaries reveal that just a few months earlier Ford rejected the unsubtle advances of Bette Davis, who had picked him out of the crowd of contract players to star alongside her in A Stolen Life.

The first mention of any affair is on page 62, the first mention of his alcoholism is on page 120, and the first mention of his secret phone taping system is on page 129. Ford admits that he could have sold a lot more books by highlighting those scandals in the book.

“But I have no regrets,” he said. “I wanted to tell the truth in a way that was cathartic for me. He was a very complex guy with a big dark side. But he was also a great actor.”

Peter Ford will be hosting a talk about Glenn Ford: A Lifeat the Manhattan Beach Public Library from  7 – 8:30 PM at 1320 Highland Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266.  For information call  (310) 545-8595.

Contact the writer: paulteetor@verizon.net.