Glenn Ford

Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford (May 1, 1916 – August 30, 2006), known as Glenn Ford, was a Canadian-born American actor. He was most prominent during Hollywood's Golden Age as one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and had a career that lasted more than 50 years. Ford often portrayed ordinary men in unusual circumstances. Although he starred in many genres of film, some of his most significant roles were in the films noir Gilda (1946) and The Big Heat (1953), and the high-school drama Blackboard Jungle (1955). For comedies and Westerns, though, he received acting laurels, including three Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, winning for Pocketful of Miracles (1961). He also played a supporting role as Superman's mild-mannered alter ego Clark Kent's adoptive farmer father, Jonathan Kent, in the first film of the franchise series Superman (1978). Five of his films have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Gilda (1946), The Big Heat (1953), Blackboard Jungle (1955), 3:10 to Yuma (1957), and Superman (1978).