GERALD FORD: Post-War American Presidents (6)

 [This is a series describing the 12 Post-War American Presidents from a British perspective.]

Gerald Ford was catapulted into the highest office unexpectedly, winning neither election as Vice-President nor as President. Easy to debunk and caricature as a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, Ford was a worthy if uninspiring politician whose patent honesty gave America a rest after the alarums and excursions of the three previous incumbents and who dealt with thorny problems in a competent fashion.

President Gerald Ford

Gerald Ford (1913-2006), he preferred to be known as “Jerry” Ford, was actually born Leslie King, the name of his father. His mother Dorothy separated from King 16 days after Ford’s birth and quickly divorced him – King was apparently a wife-beater – and she remarried in 1916 Gerald R. Ford senior, a successful paint salesman in Rapid City, Michigan. Jerry knew nothing of King until he was 12 and Jerry spoke of the loving care he always received from his mother and step-father.

Ford was a fine athlete and also a keen Boy Scout becoming an Eagle Scout, the highest grade in the movement – Scouts provided an honour guard at his obsequies. Ford shone as a college football player and for two years University of Michigan won national titles. LBJ’s gibe at Ford’s abilities that: Jerry is a nice fellow but he has played too much football without a helmet derives from this enthusiasm.

Ford the college footballer

Ford graduated BA in economics from Michigan and went on to Yale Law School. While at Yale he dabbled in politics supporting Republican Wendell Willkie in 1940 and signing an isolationist petition – the war made him later a dedicated internationalist.  He qualified in early 1941, setting up a law practice in Rapid City. As America entered the War, Ford enlisted in the US Navy.

Becoming in time a lieutenant commander, Ford saw much active service in the South Pacific, especially in gunnery, on the aircraft carrier USS Monterrey. He survived enemy engagements, typhoons and the serious internal fire which crippled the ship. Years later the US Navy built a class of carrier known as “Gerald Fords”.

Leaving the Navy in 1946, Ford returned to his law practice. In 1948 he ran for the House of Representatives and won the first of 13 campaigns. His career there was anonymous in the sense that no piece of legislation bears his name, although he was a member of the Warren Commission investigating JFK’s assassination; he was a genial and honest Congressman, known as a negotiator and reconciler. He became the House Minority Leader in 1965 in a Democratic dominated Congress. He was respected but LBJ coarsely characterised him: “Jerry Ford is so dumb he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time”.

Jerry married in 1948 Betty Bloomer, a divorced model and dancer in the Martha Graham dance troupe. Betty proved to be an excellent and supportive wife, ready to give her opinion on the issues of the day, normally more liberal than Jerry’s and certainly than the Republican Right. Later in life she declared herself to be a recovering alcoholic and chronic pill-taker and she sponsored a number of Betty Ford Clinics to help those oppressed by alcoholism and substance abuse. She also campaigned for better breast cancer awareness when she suffered a mastectomy and was a cherished public figure.

Jerry and Betty Ford

Ford’s life took an astonishing turn in 1973. Vice-president Spiro Agnew was caught out in a bribery scandal and had to resign. President Nixon invoked the 25^th Amendment for the first time and he nominated Ford as his new Vice-president, duly confirmed by the House and Senate. Nixon himself was becoming increasingly besmirched by the Watergate scandal and as the evidence against him grew, finally, to avoid impeachment and removal he resigned the Presidency on 9 August 1974. Ford succeeded as the 38^th President. Nelson Rockefeller, a liberal Republican, became Vice-president.

 

The Nixon legacy had to be resolved. Ford decided to give Nixon a full pardon for his crimes and misdemeanours in office. This was very controversial as many Americans wanted Nixon to be put on trial. Yet it was surely prudent, after 2 years of agony, to put the Nixon story behind traumatised America. It is said that pardoning Nixon cost Ford the election in 1976 but I doubt this. Much more influential was the poor state of the American economy, suffering its worst recession in 40 years.

The administration’s reaction was confused, first raising and then cutting taxes as the need to maintain employment edged out the fight against inflation. Reluctantly federal funds were mobilised to bail out New York City but generally conservative fiscal policies were adopted and government spending restrained.

Foreign affairs loomed large. The 1973 Paris Peace Accords ended US offensive combat in Vietnam. US troops were pulled out as quickly as possible. When North Vietnam invaded the South in late 1974, President Thieu sought US aid but this was refused by Congress – aid for evacuation was granted but no military aid was forthcoming. Finally Saigon fell, amid chaotic scenes and 130,000 Vietnamese were granted sanctuary in America in 1975. It was inglorious but it was the final end of a sad chapter.

Cambodia seized an American merchant vessel and the US reacted vigorously, losing 41 soldiers in a botched rescue, but the Cambodians stepped back. Believing the US was a “paper tiger”, the North Koreans killed 2 US soldiers in the DMZ at Panmunjon. A huge show of force by B52s deterred Kim Jong- Il, who issued an unprecedented apology. The Middle East was unstable as ever: Israeli intransigence in peace talks with Egypt’s Sadat infuriated Ford and in 1975 he told Israel there would be a “reassessment” of their relationship. For 6 months Israel received no aid, to the noisy dismay of Israel’s supporters in Washington, and it was only resumed after Israel signed the Sinai Accords with the Arabs.

The most constructive foreign policy achievement were the Helsinki Accords of 1975 signed by Ford and Brezhnev, limiting nuclear arsenals and providing for inspections. Ford had retained Henry Kissinger as his Secretary of State and his experience was invaluable.

Ford was only President for 895 days and he was reluctant to stand as the Republican candidate in 1976. Nevertheless he overcame the challenge from Governor Ronald Reagan of California and was nominated – Senator Bob Dole becoming his Vice-presidential running-mate in place of Nelson Rockefeller, considered too liberal by the Republican faithful. 

The Democrats had chosen an outsider, Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia teamed with Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota. The election was a close one and Carter won by 297 crucial Electoral College votes to Ford’s 240, while Ford won 27 states to Carter’s 23. The campaign saw the return of the TV debate between candidates, not seen since 1960, and Ford gave a lively performance.

Jimmy Carter and Jerry Ford debate in 1976

Ford was often depicted as clumsy and slow-witted (Chevvy Chase made his name with Ford pratfalls) but he was much the most athletic of Presidents and part of his appeal was that he was an Ordinary Joe. He certainly had never sought the Presidency and he filled the office in a national emergency with due dignity. He healed the wounds of the Nixon debacle and his country was grateful.

Ford kept busy with good works in his long retirement and he died at Rancho Mirage, California in December 2006. He was 93.

SMD

29.09.14

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2014

GREER GARSON and MAGGIE SMITH: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (13)

[This is the thirteenth in an occasional series describing British artistes who found fame on stage or in the movies]

The two actresses described here were quite different, though both won Oscars – one an English rose the other a more wide-ranging character altogether. Greer Garson’s career was relatively short but brilliant in the 1940s. Maggie Smith has been a mainstay of the British acting profession for 60 years and is still going strong, aged 79. I am a devoted, if remote, fan of both.

Greer Garson as Mrs Miniver (1942)

Greer Garson (1904 – 1996) was born in London, the daughter of an Ulster father and a Glasgow mother. Her childhood was much spent in Castlewellan, Co Down, where her father was the steward of a large estate. She studied French and 18^th century literature at Kings College, London and then at Grenoble. Planning to be a teacher, she drifted into advertising and then acting at the Birmingham Rep. Spotted by a talent scout, she was signed up by MGM in 1937. Her first screen appearance was a bulls-eye as the suffragette live-wire energising and marrying Robert Donat in the richly sentimental Goodbye, Mr Chips (1939). It was a relatively small part, (she dies in childbirth) but she did get an Oscar nomination.

Greer Garson enchants Mr Chips Robert Donat in the Alps

Great new roles tumbled in. While the Bennett household was quite lavish by Austen standards, Greer was lovely as Miss Elizabeth opposite a rather foppish Laurence Olivier as Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (1940). Another Oscar nomination came her way.

Garson and Olivier in Pride and Prejudice

My favourite Garson role followed in 1942 as Paula Ridgeway, lover of amnesiac Ronald Colman, in Random Harvest. The final moment, with Greer crying “Smithy” over the cottage garden fence, and Colman’s loving recognition, is a two-Kleenex box superlative.

Greer cries "Smithy" in Random Harvest

The critics were sniffy but the public loved her. Maybe her nose was a little too long, but her radiant smile, her soft voice and that charming incline of her head made every bit of her a star. What a girl!

Her most famous role was as Mrs Miniver in the 1942 film of that name. She was teamed with Walter Pigeon (they were in 8 films together). This saga of a British wartime family, coping with a wounded Luftwaffe pilot, Walter taking his boat to help out at Dunkirk, with son in the RAF dipping his Spitfire in recognition as he flies over their village, everyone displaying the British “stiff upper lip” in the face of tragedy and destruction; the film enjoyed enormous wartime popularity and Greer at last won the Oscar as the Best Actress. It was the summit of her career.

Greer Garson and Walter Pigeon

Greer made more films but by 1953 or so her type was no longer fashionable. She was on Broadway as Mame and played cameo roles for some time. She had married her third husband, millionaire Buddy Fogelson, in 1949 and although she had a late flutter of fame as Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (another Oscar nomination in 1960) she devoted her long retirement to breeding race-horses in Texas. Greer Garson died a venerable 91 in 1996, never to be forgotten.

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Maggie Smith (1934-  ) was born in Ilford, near London and was educated at Oxford High School – her father was a public health pathologist at the University medical faculty. Maggie’s debut was at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952, aged 18, as Viola in Twelfth Night.

Young Maggie Smith

We associate Maggie now with spinsterish or sharp-tongued character roles and we forget how bright-eyed and pretty she was in her younger days. She threw herself into a wide variety of roles in stage comedies, in classic Shakespeare, in film thrillers, in TV and her Broadway debut was in the review New Faces of ’56. She has never been especially choosy about the roles she would accept.

She became in the 1960s something of a fixture at the National Theatre - her Desdemona to Olivier’s Othello was particularly memorable. Maggie was by this time a highly respected actress but in 1969 she exploded on the film viewing world in the astonishing The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) where she filled the screen and painted an unbeatable picture of life in a superior girls’ school in 1930s Edinburgh.

Maggie Smith as Miss Jean Brodie

The film is adapted from Muriel Spark’s novel and follows wilful teacher Jean Brodie through love affairs with colleagues to her cherished class of 12-year-old girls at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls – she calls them La Crème de la Crème. Maggie Smith adopted a perfect Edinburgh “Morningside” accent (for years I assumed she actually was Scots) and her sharp put-downs of her conservative colleagues in the common-room were a joy. But Miss Brodie’s error was her worship of power as personified by Mussolini and Franco; she thought such worship was modern but her downfall comes when one of her girls goes to join her brother in Spain and is soon killed – later to be revealed the brother was fighting with the Republicans. Maggie Smith’s performance was a tour de force and it was no surprise that she won the Oscar for the Best Actress.

Maggie became a very familiar face on the global screen – The VIPs with Burton and Taylor, A Room with a View with Helena Bonham Carter, Graham Greene’s Travels with my Aunt and Gosford Park opposite Michael Gambon all enhanced her reputation. Her second Oscar, as best supporting Actress, rewarded her performance in Neil Simon’s California Suite.

With Helena Bonham Carter in A Room with a View

Her stage career was equally varied – Ibsen, David Hare, Coward, Alan Bennett and Peter Shaffer have all been played by her, not to mention many other very commercial parts. Her spiky, spinsterish roles have now rather given over to what she calls “Old biddies”. Most familiar in Britain is Maggie’s role in the aristocratic soap-opera Downton Abbey as Cousin Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, sharp-tongued and insistent on the highest standards (her standards!). Unclassifiable is the zest she put into her Professor Minerva McGonagall part in the wildly popular Harry Potter movies.

Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey

                                                       

Professor Minerva McGonagall helps out Harry Potter

              

Still enrapturing her public at the age of 79, laden with awards and honours, Dame Maggie Smith CH, DBE is a shining ornament of the British theatre.

SMD
26.09.14
Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2014