Glenn Ford: A Life

6. "It's Only Make-Believe"

6 “It’s Only Make-Believe” G lenn began the new decade of the 1950s with, by his own reckoning, one of the worst decisions of his career. Harry Cohn had paid an unprecedented $1 million to obtain the movie rights to the hit Broadway comedy Born Yesterday, the story of a bellowing junk merchant, his tough but soft-hearted tootsie, and the writer who tutors and falls in love with her. From the beginning Harry had earmarked the part of the writer for Glenn Ford and imagined Rita Hayworth for the role of Billie Dawn. But when the film was finally ready to go into production, Dad turned it down. “The other two characters were so strong, so boisterous; I felt that third part would just be swamped by those two showy parts. Bill Holden took the part, and I saw how wrong I had been. Under the direction of George Cukor and with Bill’s great performance, that part was every bit as important and an integral part of a film that really enchanted audiences.” Instead of appearing in an Oscar-winning comedy classic, Glenn entered the decade starring in a prison melodrama, Convicted, a second remake of The Criminal Code, a 1931 production with Walter Huston and Phillips Holmes. In the updated version Glenn played the man sent to prison for accidentally killing a politician’s son, with Broderick Crawford as the sympathetic prison warden. Filming began on December 12, 1949, and ended on January 19, 1950. It was a well-made film if a little old-fashioned, but it was no Born Yesterday. 108 109 In January Glenn began work on a short-lived radio program for NBC, The Adventures of Christopher London, about a globe-trotting private investigator. At NBC’s broadcast studio at Sunset and Vine in Hollywood , Glenn would record two episodes per session twice a month. Everything was done efficiently and without fuss, and Dad was delighted with the minimal time required and the $50,000-plus salary he earned for his efforts. To commemorate my fifth birthday my parents took me to Beverly Ponyland, a small but well-known local amusement park that boasted horse rides around an enclosed ring. These sorts of family occasions were not spontaneous but arranged photo opportunities to create publicity for the various movie magazines of the time. Often, a press crew from Photoplay, Movie Stars Parade, Modern Screen, or some other fan magazine would come by our home, and we would gather together, make statements to the reporters about how much fun it was to be the Ford family, then pose by the swimming pool or other places in the yard, happily smiling as the photogs snapped our pictures. As soon as the press people departed, we’d return to our real lives. As a youngster I never had the pleasure of being with either of my parents on a celebratory occasion without it being documented by the press. Most weekends at home were spent doing either chores to “toughen me up” per Dad’s instructions or photo layouts for photographers and film crews; I had little time to be with friends or to see a movie. Dad and I had graced the cover of Movie Stars Parade in January 1949, and now I smile to look at it, because I’m holding a fishing rod while seated next to him. I actually never did go fishing with my father until I was twenty-three— there were no camping trips, no sitting by the campfire, nor any other ordinary father–son bonding adventures. Once again, for my fifth birthday , we were back in Movie Stars Parade (the May issue) in an article titled “Spree for Two.” It was a sweet story about a father and son having the time of their lives, documented by thirteen photos of the happy day—no friends or birthday cake, but I guess it must have been swell. Dad’s next film was no more groundbreaking than Convicted. A story of espionage in the final days of the Civil War, it went into production as Beyond the Sunset but was released with a title intended to be more provocative , The Redhead and the Cowboy. Glenn played a cowboy with allegiance to neither side in the Civil War but who becomes drawn into a dangerous web of intrigue involving Confederate spies and Union army intelligence agents as well as a love affair with a duplicitous saloon hostess. The female...