The Green Glove (1952)by Rudolph Mate Average rating:
Glenn Ford in "The Green Glove "(1952) plays Michael Blake a WWII
veteran who retuns to France to find a mysterious Green Glove he had discovered
during the early days of Normandy invasion.
Run time: 88 min
Reviewer: obieone -
- September 1, 2005 Subject: Wow! This is a real thriller. Glenn Ford is at his best and the photography by
Claud Renior is fantastic. This print is a little on the dark side, but still
the countryside of France comes through well. Sir Cedric Hardwick is the villian
in this peice and does a great job. Well worth the time to download.
Glenn Ford, who was one of the United States' most celebrated 20th Century movie stars, has died aged 90.
Mr Ford featured in a total of 85 films from 1939 to 1991, frequently starring as handsome-but-tough characters, but also featuring in roles ranging from comedy to romance.
The Blackboard Jungle was seen as the high point of his career, but he also notably starred in films noirs such as Gilda and The Big Heat.
Paramedics called to his California home in Beverly Hills just before 4pm local time yesterday found him dead, police Sergeant Terry Nutall said, reading a prepared statement. "They do not suspect foul play," he added.
Mr Ford suffered a series of strokes in the 1990s, and his health had faded notably in recent years. Illness forced the movie star to skip a 90th birthday tribute on May 1 at the historic Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, in Hollywood. But he did send greetings via videotape, adding: "I wish I were up and around, but I'm doing the best that I can.... There's so much I have to be grateful for."
At the event, Shirley Jones, who co-starred with him in the comedy The Courtship of Eddie's Father, called Ford "one of the cornerstones of our industry, and there aren't many left."
Sidney Poitier, who also starred in The Blackboard Jungle, paid tribute to Mr Ford, saying: "It comes to mind instantly what a remarkable actor he was.
"He had those magical qualities that are intangible but are quite impactful on the screen. He was a movie star."
Other famous credits include playing Pa Kent, Superman's adoptive dad, in the first Christopher Reeve Superman film, as well as roles in The Sheepman, The Gazebo, Pocketful of Miracles and Don't Go Near the Water.
An avid horseman and former polo player, more than half of Mr Ford's films were Westerns - 3:10 to Yuma, Cowboy, The Rounders, Texas, The Fastest Gun Alive and the remake of Cimarron among them.
His talents also included lighter parts, with roles alongside Marlon Brando in The Teahouse of August Moon, and with Debbie Reynolds and Eva Gabor in It Started With a Kiss.
On television, he appeared in Cade's County, The Family Holvak, Once an Eagle and When Havoc Struck. He starred in the feature film The Courtship of Eddie's Father, which later became a TV series featuring Bill Bixby.
A tireless worker, Mr Ford often made several films a year, and continued working well into his 70s. "Acting is just being truthful," he once said.
"I have to play myself. I'm not an actor who can take on another character, like Laurence Olivier. The worst thing I could do would be to play Shakespeare."
He was born Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford on May 1, 1916, in Quebec, the son of a railway conductor. The first name reflected his family's Welsh roots.
When Mr Ford joined Columbia Pictures in the 1930s, Harry Cohn, his new boss, asked him to change his name to John Gower. Mr Ford refused, but switched his first name to Glenn, after his father's birthplace of Glenford.
In 1939, he made his first Hollywood film, opposite Jean Rogers in the romance Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence. He later put his acting career on hold to fight in World War II, serving in the US Marines from 1943-45 and seeing action in the Pacific.
In 1952 he signed up for the French Foreign Legion during a heavy drinking session while filming in Europe, but managed to talk his way out of it four days later after he sobered up.
He married actress-dancer Eleanor Powell in 1943; the two divorced in 1959. They had a son, Peter. A 1965 marriage to actress Kathryn Hays ended quickly. In 1977, he married model and actress Cynthia Hayward, 32 years his junior. They were divorced in 1984.
Some films with Glenn Ford :
Gilda
Buy New: $14.99 Amazon.com essential video
All film noirs need deceit, betrayal, dialogue hard as diamonds--and dames
even harder than that. But Gilda is the only one with the dame
front and center, and for good reason. Rita Hayworth shimmers in the 1946
classic, which spins on a tortured plot involving the title character
(Hayworth); her imperious husband (George Macready), a ruthless casino
owner and head of an Argentine tungsten cartel (!); and Johnny Farrell
(Glenn Ford), Gilda's ex-lover and now her husband's go-fer. But no one
watches Gilda for the plot, except to learn that all the characters
have secrets--perhaps even ones they would kill for. Hayworth captures
Gilda's vulnerability beneath her devil-may-care front ("If I'd been
a ranch, they would have named me the Bar Nothing"). Not to be
missed: Hayworth's slinky striptease to "Put the Blame on Mame."
--Anne Hurley
Additional features
The best thing about this DVD is the restoration done by the UCLA Film
Archive, rendering the black-and-white cinematography sumptuous,
especially in scenes in which Gilda wears sequins or satin (practically
every scene). There's a short bio of Hayworth and her ascent at Columbia,
as well as trailers for Gilda and some other Columbia films that
have been released on DVD. --Anne Hurley
Pocketful
of Miracles
Buy New: $10.99 Plot Synopsis: Boozy, brassy Apple Annie, a
beggar with a basket of apples, is as much as part of downtown New York
as old Broadway itself. Bootlegger Dave the Dude is a sucker for her
apples --- he thinks they bring him luck. But Dave and girlfriend
Queenie Martin need a lot more than luck when it turns out that Annie is
in a jam and only they can help: Annie's daughter Louise, who has lived
all her life in a Spanish convent, is coming to America with a Count and
his son. The count wants to marry Louise, who thinks her mother is part
of New York society. It's up to Dave and Queenie and their Runyonesque
cronies to turn Annie into a lady and convince the Count and his son
that they are hobnobbing with New York's elite.
There's a satisfying sense of closure to the
definitive film noir kick achieved in The
Big Heat: its director, Fritz Lang, had forged early links from
German expressionism to the emergence of film noir, so it's entirely
logical that the expatriate director would help codify the genre with
this brutal 1953 film. Visually, his scenes exemplify the bold
contrasts, deep shadows, and heightened compositions that define the
look of noir, and he matches that success with the darkly pessimistic
themes of this revenge melodrama.
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Glenn Ford 
Glenn Ford