Glenn Ford Movies

During my research...I found Glenn Ford A Life by his son, Peter, very useful.....well worth checking out.
During my research…I found the book, Glenn Ford A Life by his son, Peter, very useful…..well worth checking out.

Want to know the best Glenn Ford movies?  How about the worst Glenn Ford movies?  Curious about Glenn Ford’s box office grosses or which Glenn Ford movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Glenn Ford movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

One of our first requested pages (5 years and 2 website homes ago) was for Glenn Ford (1916-2006).  So why the delay?  The main reason is that we generally stay away from Columbia Pictures performers.  The reason for this reluctance, is the fact that it is almost impossible to find box office numbers for Columbia Pictures movies from 1930 to 1980.  Getting box office numbers is one of the most important factors in our rankings.  Recently we got another request for Ford.  A deeper look into Ford’s career showed that many of his movies made Variety’s Top Grossing yearly movie charts.  So Søren, Flora, William, Hinton66 and Tom….finally here is your requested page.

Glenn Ford (1916-2006) was a Canadian-born American Golden Globe® winning actor.  Ford’s acting career covered 7 decades…from the 1930s to the 1990s. His IMDb page shows 110 acting credits from 1937-1991. This page ranks Glenn Ford movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, and movies not released in North America were not included in the rankings.

Glenn Ford in 1946's Gilda
Glenn Ford in 1946’s Gilda

Glenn Ford Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Glenn Ford Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Glenn Ford movies by co-stars of his movies.
  • Sort Glenn Ford movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Glenn Ford movies by domestic yearly box office rank or by trivia for that movie
  • Sort Glenn Ford movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Glenn Ford movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Glenn Ford movie won.
  • Sort Glenn Ford movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.

 

Glenn Ford in 1957's 3:10 To Yuma....our favorite Ford performance
Glenn Ford in 1957’s 3:10 To Yuma….our favorite Ford performance

Possibly Interesting Facts About Glenn Ford

1.  Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford was born in Quebec, Canada in 1916.   Ford was related to U.S. President Martin Van Buren.

2.  Glenn Ford’s path to stardom: 1.  After graduating high school started working in small theater groups. 2. Was taught horsemanship by Will Rogers.  3.  Performed with West Coast stage companies. 4.  Signed a movie contract with Columbia.  5.  After some weak B movies hit a homerun with 1941’s So Ends Our Night.  6.  After serving in the Marines during World War 2 he returned to movies.  7.  In 1946, Ford appeared in one of his most famous roles, Gilda.  Ford was a star the rest of his life.

3.  Gummo Marx helped get Glenn Ford his first Columbia movie contract.  Gummo was the 2nd youngest Marx Brother.

4.  Glenn Ford was never nominated for an Academy Award®.  For more on this please visit our Classic Actors Who Got Hosed By The Academy page.

5.  Glenn Ford did get nominated for 3 Golden Globe® awards.  He received nominations for 1956’s The Teahouse of the August Moon and 1957’s Don’t Go Near The Water.  He won the Golden Globe® Best Actor for 1961’s A Pocketful of Miracles.

6.  Glenn Ford was married 4 times.  His first marriage to singer, dancer, actress Eleanor Powell was from 1943 to 1959.  They had one child….Peter Ford who became an actor and writer.

7.  Glenn Ford is credited with being the fastest “gun” in Hollywood westerns, able to draw and fire in 0.4 seconds.

8.  Glenn Ford was among Hollywood’s Top 10 box office stars 3 times:  He ranked 5th in 1956, 1st in 1958, and 6th in 1959.

9.  Glenn Ford appeared in 5 movies with Rita Hayworth: The Lady in Question (1940), Affair in Trinidad (1952), The Loves of Carmen (1948), The Money Trap (1965) and of course Gilda (1946).  The Ford/Hayworth team is one of the greatest in movie history.

10. Check out Glenn Ford‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

Finally:  Just want to take a minute to acknowledge a very awesome book on Glenn Ford.  Glenn Ford A Life by Peter Ford is a fascinating read.  Book offers a look at both Ford’s screen life and his off screen personal life.  If you like Glenn Ford then you have to check out this book.  Glenn Ford A Life.

Steve’s Glenn Ford Updated You Tube Video

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.  Golden Globe® is a registered trademark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.

 

For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.

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168 thoughts on “Glenn Ford Movies”

  1. 1 Glenn is on record as saying that Sir Alec Guinness was his favourite actor. However he also said in an interview that whilst Sir Alec won the Oscar for Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Bill Holden’s performance in that film was the “most perfect piece of screen acting” that Glenn could ever recall seeing.

    2 Prior to Blackboard Jungle in 1955 Glenn was 2nd billed when he appeared with most other major stars such as Edward G Robinson, Randolph Scott, Bette Davis, and very significantly Rita Hayworth.

    3 His greatest Top Star years were from 1955-59 during which he was voted the world’s most popular box office star and I can clearly recall us being told in those days that Glenn was in such demand that he was booked up two years in advance for movie projects. He churned out 17 mainly high quality movies between 1955 and 1959 with the result that his name was never off the lips of my teenage pals and me.

    4. My personal favourites among those movies were the 7 westerns that he made in the period:
    The Americano; The Violent Men; The Fastest Gun Alive; Jubal; 3.10 to Yuma; Cowboy; and The Sheepman. I loved the tagline on the 1955 posters for The Americano –
    IN BRAZIL THEY CALLED HIM THE AMERICANO SOME WITH LOVE!SOME WITH HATE!SOME WITH FEAR!

    5 His career faded somewhat in the 60s to some extent because The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Cimarron lost MGM some 75 million in today’s dollars according to Wikipedia. Notwithstanding that his legend has endured to the extent that he is still considered one of the great icons of Hollywood’s Golden Era.

    5 His was a deceptively simplistic style of acting that was highly effective in a broad range of parts and to portray emotion or dominate a scene he did not depend upon raising his voice like for example Rod Steiger or Lee J Cobb.

    6 Perhaps because he was not a ‘showy’ actor Oscar was not kind to him although as Bruce has explained he WAS well appreciated by Golden Globes. Personally if I were permitted to give him a posthumous Oscar it would be for 3.10 to Yuma. The expression on his face when Van Heflin thwarted his escape in the hotel room said more than one hundred Steiger tantrums and should be mandatory viewing for the students in any acting class.

    7. Glenn Ford was unique in big ways but he was perhaps also historically unique in one small way. He is the only actor that I know of who acted in a combination of films with Marlon Brando (Teahouse of august Moon 1956) Marlon’s sister Jocelyn (Glenn’s leading lady in The Big Heat 1953) and Brando’s wife (Anna Kashfi in Cowboy 1958).

    8 In an old TV interview that I saw recently Glenn warmly spoke of his on-screen relationship with MB in Teahouse thus exposing as bunkum gossip by some biographers that they feuded during the making of that film. Both of them are in the second half of my own favourite all time actors and if I were to hair-split I would say that overall probably Brando was the slightly better actor but that Glenn was the more entertaining of the two for me personally

    9 The new titles that Bruce has included in the update are a bonus with ones like The Green Glove and Appointment in Honduras holding a special nostalgic value for me.
    .

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob.
      1. Thanks for checking out the latest update….and this was a major one…..as I was able to add in 16 movies….I was able to figure out the entire missing 1940s Glenn Ford missing movies.
      2. I agree with you about Holden and Guinness….Guinness had the showy role…while Holden carried the movie from beginning to end.
      3, His run from 1955-1959 was incredible for sure. The Bradley Cooper of that time frame?
      4. I need to see more of those westerns…..as the only one I have seen….and I liked it a lot was 3:10 to Yuma.
      5. Yep the 1960s….like your buddy Bud’s were not too kind to him…..but he still generated a lot of movies.
      6. I think it is cool that Harrison Ford’s first movie was in a Glenn Ford movie.
      7. That is good trivia concerning acting with Brando and his relatives.
      8. Good to know that Glenn Ford is one of your favorites…..makes me think ….what my Top 10 would be….I got the Top 3 locked up….Willis, Caine and Grant…..not sure who would make up the last 7.
      9. Glad I was able to FINALLY include The Green Glove and Appointment in Honduras.
      Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Mr. Ford.

      Reply

      1. BRUCE

        1 You will see that Flora and I have been discussing movie coincidences and one further coincidence is Cary Grant being in your Top 3 because it was entirely due to Cary that I initially discovered COGERSON.

        2 I was browsing the net to see what general box office info I could find on Cary when I accidentally stumbled into your page on him. I could not believe the comprehensive nature of it

        3 Even then I did not appreciate the treasure trove that I had unearthed because I thought that the Grant page was simply an isolated project that someone had undertaken for a bit of fun and I did not realise at first that it was part of a much wider dedicated facility that would seek to eventually cover ALL major stars and embrace a number of general movie topics as well.

        4 So I’m sure you will appreciate my delight when I typed Brando’s name into your site and up popped his page as well! It was not long before I realised that my other faves such as Peck. Jimmy Stewart Widmark etc were either there or were going to be there at some stage.

        5 Indeed when I wrote to you requesting Deanna Durbin and Robert Taylor those were the only two that you hadn’t done of all the stars in whom I was particularly interested.

        6 So at the risk of boring you I can only once more register my appreciation of the wonderful facility that you have provided. Not only have you given me piles of ticket inflation adjusted stats for my database; but I have been able to amuse myself by doing spin-off exercises based on your figures such as my CPI?Bureau of Labour Statistics purchasing power calculations. Information elsewhere would never have been anywhere near sufficient for me to do those types of fun exercises without your figures as a base.

        BOB

        Reply

        1. That’s not boring Bobby.

          Yes.

          It is the very delight that you mentioned which is the reason why I love this site and why I am willing to write for free here.

          Reply

    2. FABULOUS ESSAY ON “MY” GLENN:

      When Glenn Ford died, the TCM tribute video was still a star with dialogue over fabulous montage video pictures. The dialogue was from Teahouse of the August Moon with him talking to Brando.

      It is dialogue from a film, but it is indeed very much the man who really existed:

      “I used to worry about being a big success.”

      Reply

  2. A reminder that Glenn Ford westerns start tomorrow daytime on TCM.

    Then in the evening Keith Carradine will be back to introduce more westerns on TCM

    Reply

    1. Hey Flora. You need to take a deep breathe. Bob has long since gone to sleep as it 3:00 in the morning there. If you look at the time line he said he was sorry to you first. Find a movie to watch. 3:10 To Yuma sounds like a good one. As I said before the next update will be a Glenn Ford page….and some of the movies I missed the first time should now make the page. So that is something to look forward to….plus it is time for a new classic page….looking at your requests…the top 3 candidates are Thelma Ritter, Telly Savalas or Vincent Minnelli. Which would be the one you would like the most?

      Reply

  5. FLORA
    Please, please forgive me if I have upset you in any way. I thought we were having a bit of harmless fun but obviously it got out of hand.

    BOBBY

    Reply

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