page_title: Glenn Ford
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Glenn Ford / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Glenn Ford with his wife
context_page_description: Gwyllyn Samuel Newton "Glenn" Ford was a Canadian-American actor best known for playing ordinary men in unusual circumstances. Ford was most prominent during Hollywood's Golden Age as one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, who had a career that lasted more than 50 years. Although he played in many genres of movies, some of his most significant roles were in the film noirs Gilda and The Big Heat, and the high school angst film Blackboard Jungle. However, it was for comedies or westerns which he received acting laurels, including three Golden Globe Nominations for Best Actor in a Comedy movie, winning for Pocketful of Miracles. He also played a supporting role as Clark Kent's adoptive father in Superman.
  Five of his films have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Gilda, The Big Heat, Blackboard Jungle, 3:10 to Yuma and Superman.
context_section_description: Ford's first wife was actress and dancer Eleanor Powell (1943–1959), with whom he had his only child, actor Peter Ford (born 1945). The couple appeared together on screen once in a short film produced in the 1950s titled Have Faith in Our Children. When they married, Powell was more famous than Ford. Ford and Powell would divorce in 1959.
  Ford did not remain on good terms with his ex-wives. He was a notorious womanizer who had affairs with many of his leading ladies, including Rita Hayworth, Maria Schell, Geraldine Brooks, Stella Stevens, Gloria Grahame, Gene Tierney, Eva Gabor and Barbara Stanwyck. He had a one-night stand with Marilyn Monroe in 1962 and a fling with Joan Crawford in the early 1940s. 
  Ford dated Christiane Schmidtmer, Linda Christian and Vikki Dougan during the mid-1960s, and he also had relationships with Judy Garland, Connie Stevens, Suzanne Pleshette, Rhonda Fleming, Roberta Collins, Susie Lund, Terry Moore, Angie Dickinson, Debbie Reynolds, Jill St. John, Brigitte Bardot and Loretta Young. However, he subsequently married actress Kathryn Hays (1966–1969); marriages to Cynthia Hayward (1977–1984), and Jeanne Baus (1993–1994) would later follow. However, all four marriages would end in divorce. He also had a long-term relationship with actress Hope Lange in the early 1960s. According to his son Peter Ford's book Glenn Ford: A Life (2011), Ford had affairs with 146 actresses, all of which were documented in his personal diaries, including a 40-year, on-and off-again affair with Rita Hayworth that began during the filming of Gilda in 1945. Their affair resumed during the making of their 1948 film The Loves of Carmen; Ford impregnated Hayworth, and she later traveled to France to get an abortion. 
   
  In 1960, Ford would move next door to Hayworth in Beverly Hills, and they continued their relationship for many years until the early 1980s. 
  Ford's affair with stripper and cult actress Liz Renay was chronicled by her in the 1991 book My First 2,000 Men. She ranked Ford as one of her top five best lovers. 
  Ford also documented his many relationships by taping every phone conversation he ever had with all of his celebrity lovers and friends for 40 years. Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan are on these recordings as well as Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, William Holden, John Wayne, Cary Grant, Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck, James Mason, Lucille Ball, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Angie Dickinson, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Charlton Heston and Debbie Reynolds. Ford installed the recording system to listen in on his first wife, Eleanor Powell's conversations, fearing that she would find out about his serial cheating and leave him. She later divorced him in 1959 on the grounds of adultery and mental cruelty.
  Ford had also been engaged to Debra Morris in the 1980s and Karen Johnson in the early 1990s.
  At the height of his stardom, Glenn Ford supported the Democratic Party. He supported Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940s, Adlai Stevenson II in 1956, and John F. Kennedy in 1960. Ford later switched his support to the Republican Party. He campaigned for his old friend and fellow actor Ronald Reagan in the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections.
  Ford attempted to purchase the Atlanta Flames in May 1980 with the intention of keeping the National Hockey League team in the city. He was prepared to match a $14 million offer made by Byron and Daryl Seaman, but was outbid by an investment group led by Nelson Skalbania which included the Seaman brothers. The group acquired the franchise for $16 million on May 23 and eventually moved it to Calgary.
  Ford lived in Beverly Hills, California, where he illegally raised 140 leghorn chickens until he was stopped by the Beverly Hills Police Department.
caption: Ford with his third wife Cynthia Hayward in 1977
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