F**ck Glenn Ford! We'll replace HIM!*

Stinky's heart soared when he recently discovered the glorious Eleanor Powell, and his heart sank even more rapidly when he discovered she was married 15 years to the soul-sucking barnacle known as Glenn Ford. So naturally Stinky was eager to read Peter Ford's biography of his famous philandering father, Mr. Glenn Ford, ready for a great big plate of steamy, creamy, salacious dirt.

Stinky was fairly disappointed. Peter Ford threw Stinky a curve and wrote, if not a dutiful, a respectful and measured biography of his aloof and frequently estranged pappy.  Not what Stinky had in mind. As Stinky's old man says, "If you can't deliver the goods, don't get off the pot." And very little goods were delivered.

Plugging his book in a television interview, Peter Ford said, rather proudly, according to his dad's diary, he counted 143 affairs.  Pretty good by Stinky standards, but not exactly earth-shattering by world-renown celebrity millionaire heartthrob standards, especially over a sixty year span. Stinky's calculator is not working now, but if one could do the math, that comes out to fewer than two a month.

Apparently, Glenn Ford started off as a not-very-good ladies man. First, he declined the advances of Jack London's seventy-something-year old widow (which would have made for an impressive entry in the ol' diary, if you ask Stinky) and he resisted the charms of Bette Davis, even after she presented her copious bosoms. He pleaded fidelity to his loving wife. Stinky's guessing that's the only time that happened.

Only twice does Glenn Ford win Stinky's sympathy: Hope Lange and her sister ridicule Ford as being hopelessly old-fashioned because he once wore a dressing gown with padded shoulders, and those final 15 years of pills, alcohol, illnesses, jealousies, suspicions, and thieving "caregivers" are very sad. Not a way Stinky wants to go. Except maybe for the pills.

Perhaps because Glenn Ford was so enigmatic to his son the biography seems rather superficial. Stinky gathered some mildly interesting trivia, but not much more. Actor Louis Calhern was a lifetime friend, dating back to Glenn's teenage theater days. Ford once tried LSD, but was not especially impressed in a therapeutic way. He hosted parties with intellectuals Isherwood, Huxley, and such. He was a Roosevelt Democrat who morphed into a Nixon Republican. And director Richard Brooks was responsible for Ford's extremely unflattering hairstyle, perhaps the worst of any major Hollywood star.

Ford was a major Hollywood star, probably underappreciated, with half a dozen, maybe more, excellent performances on his resume. And that ain't nothing at which to sneeze.

Which would not be easy for Stinky to admit, were it not for Stinky's magnanimous and generous nature, considering Ford's careless and repeated infidelities to the angelic Eleanor Powell.

And then, thinking he could not love her more, Stinky discovers Eleanor Powell was a huge Fats Waller fan.

I know this post is about Glenn Ford, but who cares?

*What Frank Capra reportedly said when he learned that Ford wanted to replace leading lady Shirley Jones with then-girlfriend Hope Lange.