A six-gun salute to subtle cowboy star Glenn Ford

Glenn Ford was voted Hollywood’s number one box office attraction in 1958 and remained a durable name on the marquee for 52 years. Twenty unearthed photos and videos cast light upon Ford’s affinity for westerns — e.g. “3:10 to Yuma,” “Cowboy,” “Cimarron,” and “The Rounders” — plus drop dead gorgeous costars Angie Dickinson and Inger Stevens. Cutting a dashing leading man profile at age 47, Ford is Union Army Captain Jared Heath in director George Marshall’s absurdly deadpan “Advance to the Rear,” a black and white comedy western unleashed on June 10, 1964, costarring Stella Stevens, Melvyn Douglas, Joan Blondell, and future “Gilligan’s Island” castaways Jim Backus and Alan Hale, Jr. Image Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

A Canadian-born Hollywood star unusually adept at portraying average Joes facing seemingly insurmountable circumstances, the perpetually under-appreciated Glenn Ford possessed an effortless grace and undeniable charisma.

Never nominated for an Academy Award, Ford did receive a Golden Globe for his work as a suspicious street savvy gangster in director Frank Capra’s 1961 swansong, Pocketful of Miracles. The World War II veteran once mused why fans kept coming back for more. “When I’m on camera, I have to do things pretty much the way I do things in everyday life,” said Ford. “It gives the audience someone real to identify with.”

Perhaps surprisingly, only 27, or somewhere in the neighborhood of one quarter, of the versatile actor’s 102 films were Westerns, not counting the short-lived modern day Western-police procedural Cade’s County [1971–1972]. Ford’s 1939 inauspicious film debut fittingly came in the quickie B-Western Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence. Seven years later directorial master Charles Vidor’s stylish black and white film noir Gilda made stars of both Rita Hayworth and Ford.

He made occasional Western forays during the early stages of his career but did not fully capitalize on his affinity for the genre until 1955 with The Violent Men, an underrated range war excursion with Edward G. Robinson and…