Glenn Ford (64) was released from Louisiana State
Penitentiary on Tuesday 11th March. Wrongly convicted for the murder
of a Shreveport jeweller in 1983, at the time of his release Ford had been in
custody for 30 years – most of that time awaiting execution on Death Row.
Glenn Ford was a Hollywood star. In 1958 he topped the list
of ‘Box Office champions’. Ford came to the attention of police when it was discovered
he was keeping leghorn chickens in the grounds of his Beverly Hills mansion.
The police ordered the removal of the chickens.
Louisiana State Penitentiary is a prison farm built next to the
Mississippi River on the site of former slave plantations. (Also known as
Angola – where the original slaves originated, the prison property is bigger than Manhattan.)
Inmates pick cotton, grow food crops and keep livestock – except maximum
security prisoners including those on Death Row, who are kept in their 8’ x 10’
cells 23 hours a day. The temperature in these cells exceeded 125 degrees on 85
days between May and September 2011.
In Superman (1978)
Glenn Ford played Clark Kent’s adoptive father, Jonathan. ‘Superman’ also happens to be the
name of a Texan air conditioning company which recommends servicing your AC system
every six months.
Outside the prison gates, Glenn Ford said how much he missed
seeing his son grow up. Now his baby boy has babies of his own, he observed.
Ford had not been outside his cellblock for seven years prior to his release.
Glenn Ford played an escaped convict in The Secret of Convict Lake (1951).
Glenn Ford was incarcerated in Angola when guards shot and
killed 29 year-old escapee Tyrone Brown.
Glenn Ford campaigned for Ronald Reagan to become President
of the United States.
Ronald Reagan was in the White House when Glenn Ford was first
sent to the prison house.
In 1950 Glenn Ford was born in California, where actor Glenn
Ford’s actor-friend Ronald Reagan would later become Governor, before going on
to become President.
Glenn Ford was born in Quebec in 1916. As a child he moved
with his parents to Santa Monica, California.
Glenn Ford looked young for his age. Photographs issued at the time of his arrest suggest an overgrown boy with a 1970s-style moustache.
Glenn Ford looked young for his age. Photographs issued at the time of his arrest suggest an overgrown boy with a 1970s-style moustache.
Glenn Ford was boyishly good looking. In westerns and war
films alike, his small features affirmed that masculinity need not be brawny or
brutish.
Jowly and overweight – he hadn’t been out of his cell block
for seven years, Glenn Ford now resembles a middle-aged lady. With a lightweight
beanie stretched over his head (Huck Finn’s Widow Douglas might wear it with
her curlers in), when interviewed by WVLA-TV at the gates of Angola, Ford’s face
seemed somehow emasculated.
After a series of minor strokes Glenn Ford died at his
Beverly Hills mansion on 30th August 2006, aged 90.
After almost three decades as a dead man walking, Glenn Ford
has come back to life in the outside world.
Glenn
Ford, ceci n’est pas Glenn Ford (look at the dark skin on his pinkie and you'll see it immediately).
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