Anecdotes

In 1936 he sought out his widowed natural mother. After a long search, he found her living in an automobile trailer near Manchester, England. She had become the wife of a blind match seller.

At the time of his death he was survived by his only daughter, Mrs. Patricia Zachery, and two grandchildren.

He and his future wife met when they both acted in a play together in New York. His wife, Martha Haworth, was 19 when she appeared on Broadway in "Abie's Irish Rose" as one of the bridesmaids. He was playing the part of Abie. They married about a year later.

His real name was Samuel Jones Grundy. He took the name "Wallace Ford" in honor of a close childhood friend who was killed trying to hop onto a train.

According to Ford's Petition for US Naturalization, he became a naturalized US citizen on 23 March 1942. Within that same document, he also petitioned to legally changed his name to Wallace Ford.

Joined the US Army during World War I, serving in a cavalry unit at Ft. Riley, KS.

He has appeared in four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Freaks, la monstrueuse parade (1932), Entrée des employés (1933), Le mouchard (1935) and L'ombre d'un doute (1943).

Brother-in-law of Joe Haworth and Ted Haworth.

In 1914, 16-year-old Samuel and another youth named Wallace Ford decided to head south to the United States to seek their fortunes, riding a freight train illicitly. During the trip, Ford was killed beneath the wheels of a train. Later, Samuel adopted as his stage name the name of his dead traveling companion.

After the death of his wife in February 1966, Ford moved into the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital at Woodland Hills, California, and died in the hospital there of heart failure four months later.