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SECRETS Behind Hollywood
Heartbreaks
Eleanor Powell gave up her career to make her marriage successful
BY JANE CORWIN
• On an October evening back in 1944, a solemn young couple stood side by side in the flower-decked living room of the bride’s Beverly Hills home. Softly, in words barely audible except to each other, they repeated the marriage vows. “Only once before in my entire thirty-five years in the ministry,” said the Reverend Ray Moore afterward, “have I ever performed a ceremony where the strength of feeling between two people was so marked.
“Standing there, so straight and tall and so deeply in love, they were a symbol of everything fine and good and clean in this world.”
This was the wedding of dancing star Eleanor Powell and Glenn Ford, actor turned Marine sergeant. It was a wartime marriage, and their love seemed the only stable thing in a world of confusion. In the year of
1952, confusion in full force seems to have entered the lives of the Glenn Fords.
There were hints of trouble as far back as 1946, when Glenn came home from the service and made “A Stolen Life” and “Gilda.” At that time, he admitted that a, few adjustments were being made in the household. “But we’ve never discussed anything so drastic as parting,” he said.
Lately the rumors have been revived. There are those who insist that Eleanor at one point not only consulted a lawyer, but was bent on filing for divorce, when Glenn somehow managed to persuade her to give their marriage another try.
Recently the story of a quarrel reached the papers. The accounts were many and varied. One reporter said that Glenn had left home ( Continued on page 102)
After a rift, Glenn Ford has asked Ellie to give him another chance
BY JAMES WILDER
• It happened a long time ago. A tall, gangly youth was perched high on the roof of the Wilshire Theatre in Santa Monica. He wore an ill-fitting raincoat to ward off the rain. His face was eager and tense as both hands hung onto a huge twisting searchlight that swept the sky. Thus he clung for four hours each night, twisting the light that guided theater-goers to the box office below. For his services, he got to see the show — free! Each night he could lose himself in the magic world of make-believe — the world that one day was to be his world if it took the last ounce of his being.
Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford from Glenford, near Three Rivers in Quebec, didn’t have to grow taller. But he did become older and wiser and one day, as Glenn Ford, he appeared in a Paramount short called
“A Night in Manhattan.” This time there was no free movie for his services. For his acting chore, he received the magnificent sum of twenty-five dollars, and never before or since has he been so genuinely thrilled. The rest is now Hollywood history.
Glenn Ford has come a long way. He’s richer today in worldly goods. Experience has been a great teacher. Would he want to change places with the eager, wistful boy back on the theatre rooftop? Sometimes, when that unhappy expression creeps into his eyes, when the corners of his mouth tighten and he sighs as he talks in soft, quick gasps, Hollywood wonders. His restless nature, his cautious attitude do not bespeak a happy man.
This may well be the heritage of his Welsh ancestry. There have been and probably ( Continued on page 103)