Glenn Ford : Marriages

Marriages

Why was he married so many times? My older relatives (now deceased) said that he was a wife beater. They also said he wouldn't let Eleanor Powell perform in films when they were married. I don't know if it's true but I'd like to know.


No! That's not true at all, Elvis takes 50% of everything I earn!
Col. Tom Parker

Re: Marriages

I've never heard that he was a wife beater I think his last 3 marriages were simply wishful thinking, they didn't last long..and they were to much younger women in which he would probably have little in common with.

Glenn's first marriage lasted about 16 years and produced his only child. After his first divorce he stayed single far too long so by the time he started marrying again he was in his 50's and he was probably too set in his ways by then to truly change.

Shall we play a game?

Re: Marriages

According to his son who along with his wife lived with him and were his caregivers in his final Years. Glenn had signed everything over to his last wife and when he had a health scare she left him in the hospital to die with a DNR that he had no knowledge of nor did he want. Thankfully Peter stepped up and after a long court battle everything was resolved. Glenn was a bit deluted and too trusting.

Re: Marriages

Why was he married so many times? My older relatives (now deceased) said that he was a wife be 16d0 ater. They also said he wouldn't let Eleanor Powell perform in films when they were married. I don't know if it's true but I'd like to know.
--

The story that Ford was a woman beater came from Mel Torme and his dreadful 1970 book 'The Other Side Of the Rainbow' which dealt with the story of THE JUDY GARLAND SHOW. Judy and Glenn Ford were a couple then.

Torme claimed that Judy was absent from the taping of her Christmas special [a claim not backed up by ANYONE!]. He also wrote that he was summoned to Rockingham Drive [Judy's residence] late one night, where he encountered a wildly out-of-control, and inebriated Judy. This was triggered, according to Torme, by the news that her sister, Sue, had died from cancer. He also hints that Judy had bruises on her and hints that Ford was the one who put them there.

The problem was that Sue did not die from cancer. She died from an overdose of sleeping pills following the breakup of her marriage to Jack Cathcart [Judy's onetime musical conductor].

Sue did not die until May of 1964, one month after the series ended. And Judy received word of Sue's death in a Hong Kong hospital and not Rockingham Drive.

Ford denied the incident, and everyone else on the show recalls that week as a happy one.

When the definitive book about the series ['Rainbow's End' by Coyne Steven Sanders] came out, Torme had to backtrack, so he edited his 1970 book to make changes so his book would make sense. It was re-released in 1992. He stuck to the story I told above because he couldn't change it. In the end, he began to contradict himself about other things he had told twenty-two years earlier.

Ford was angry at Torme's book and called it "despicable - Mel obviously didn't have the nerve to write those things when she was alive. I was going with her at the time, and I know the things he wrote were just not true."

In a 1975 article on Judy, I remember Ford saying that he would punch Torme in the mouth if he ever ran into him.

Ford appeared to be protective of the women in his life. He refused to discuss his personal life with Eleanor Powell and Rita Hayworth. Ford could be arrogant and difficult, but he appears to have also been a warm and caring friend.

Re: Marriages

Ford couldn't live without female companionship. He had affairs with at least 146 women.
Top