Quiz

John Wayne gave the eulogy at his funeral.

Although John Ford mocked many actors mercilessly (including John Wayne), Bond probably was on the receiving end of the worst verbal punishment from the director (who counted Bond among his favorite actors). At Bond's funeral, Ford walked up to Andy Devine and said, "Now YOU'RE the biggest ass I know".

Although his career was cut short by his premature death in 1960 at age 57, he was one of the most prolific of Hollywood's actors over a period of 30 years. He regularly appeared in 10 to 20 films per year, with the record year for him being 1935, when he acted in 30 movies.

Family rumor is that Bond was a roommate at USC with John Wayne, who convinced him to go into acting. They were apparently best friends; one of their favorite activities in their youth was to go to bars, get drunk, and start fights.

Was an epileptic, a closely guarded secret not made public until many years after his death.

Died at the Town House Motor Hotel on 2914 Harry Hines Boulevard in Dallas, Texas.

Bond appears in the most films (seven) of the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest American Movies: Accadde una notte (1934), Susanna! (1938), Via col vento (1939), Furore (1940), Il mistero del falco (1941), La vita è meravigliosa (1946) and Sentieri selvaggi (1956).

He had been diagnosed with high blood pressure but refused to cut back his work schedule on Carovane verso il west (1957).

Once while on location, John Ford had a photo taken of himself and John Wayne standing on either side of the rear end of a horse. He sent the photo to Bond with the caption, "Thinking of you".

Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 2001.

He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960.

He appeared in three Best Picture Academy Award winners: Accadde una notte (1934), L'eterna illusione (1938) and Via col vento (1939). Irving Bacon, Eddy Chandler and Wallis Clark also appeared in all three films.

A popular urban myth holds that on the day he died, Bond was scheduled to meet singer Johnny Horton in Dallas to sign a contract to appear on Carovane verso il west (1957). Horton died in an auto accident, hit by a drunk driver, at 1:30 a.m. and Bond died in Dallas at noon the same day. However, Bond was only the star of the series and not a producer, so he had no say in casting.

In Le ali delle aquile (1957), Bond played his friend, director John Ford, under the character name John Dodge (the name itself was a play on American automobile names. Ford was a real-life friend of the film's subject character). The set dressing, wardrobe, and Oscars in the scene are all actually Ford's.

Worked with director John Ford on 26 films. Few, if any, actors, have appeared in so many films for a single director.

Entered films in 1928 while attending the University of Southern California.

Bond has been officially remembered by a Ward Bond Memorial Park in his birthplace of Benkelman, Nebraska.

He appeared in 13 films that were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, Un popolo muore (1931), Signora per un giorno (1933), Accadde una notte (1934), Strada sbarrata (1937), L'eterna illusione (1938), Via col vento (1939), Lungo viaggio di ritorno (1940), Furore (1940), Il mistero del falco (1941), Il sergente York (1941), La vita è meravigliosa (1946), Un uomo tranquillo (1952) and La nave matta di Mister Roberts (1955).

On July 17, 1944, Bond was leaving the Hollywood premiere of Da quando te ne andasti (1944) and was attempting to cross the street when he was struck by an auto. His left leg was so severely fractured that physicians wanted to amputate, but Bond refused to allow it, and although it took several months, Bond recovered. He limped in his next few films, and was still recovering, using a cane, when he served as best man at the wedding of John Wayne to his second wife in January 1946. The driver, a retired cosmetics manufacturer, was fined $25 for speeding but was not charged with failing to yield right of way to a pedestrian. In 1945, Bond was awarded $50,000 at a civil trial.

Bond's deep involvement in ultra-right-wing politics--and especially his enthusiastic efforts to blacklist suspected Communists and anyone with "progressive" political views in Hollywood--earned him the enmity of many in the film business. For several years, he could not get any work in films other than those of his right-wing friends like John Wayne, and he believed that "liberal" producers and directors blacklisted him. Then in 1957, at age 54, he made an enormous comeback as Major Seth Adams in Carovane verso il west (1957), and was finally a star in his own right.

According to Orson Welles, one night at Chasen's Restaurant in Hollywood, Bond cut off Welles' tie. The same story is told but with Gwinn Williams, not Bond, as the perpetrator.

He was survived by his mother, who died in 1974 at the age of 90.

Bond did not have any children. He had a stepson, Kenneth Duane Childs (1927-2003), his wife Doris's son by a previous marriage.

Campaigned for Republican Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, despite admitting in an interview that he was not very enthusiastic about Nixon.

He entered the University of California on a football scholarship.

Although he often played characters of Irish nationality, he was in fact of English ancestry.

John Ford owned eight acres in Reseda, which became a rehabilitation center for both veterans of Ford's movies and veterans of U.S. wars. Syd Kronenthal was the supervisor - he was also hired to help Marlon Brando play a paraplegic in his first film role - and he remembered the Ford team getting drunk all the time: "They were all very right-wing, and when they got loaded they'd start spewing anti-Semitic remarks. The worst of them was Victor McLaglen, and Ward Bond was anti-Semitic as hell. They either didn't know I was Jewish or they forgot".

Many sources incorrectly quote 1905, and/or Denver, Colorado, USA regarding his birth.