Actor Glenn Ford has died in Beverly Hills at age 90.
Largely forgotten for the last few decades, Glenn Ford was a huge star in the 1940s and 1950s, when he played upright American cowboys and colonels in movies like Flight Lieutenant (1942), The Big Heat (1954) and The Fastest Gun Alive (1956). He also played against type as the murderous heavy in 3:10 to Yuma (1957).
Ford’s popularity took a steep drop in the 1960s, a fact that is mentioned unflatteringly in William Goldman‘s screenwriting memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade. Describing his own initiation into the harsh realities of the film business, Goldman recalls a representative of Paul Newman talking about negotiations with a studio: “Someday Paul will be Glenn Ford, but right now they’ll wait for him.”
The Los Angeles Times has Glenn Ford’s obituary.